Toby Dammit
Toby Dammit (born Larry Mullins, 13 December 1966, Knoxville, Tennessee), is an American musician, percussionist and composer. He made his first professionally released album in 1990 under the production of the legendary Lou Adler (Rocky Horror Picture Show, Cheech & Chong, Mamas & Papas) with a band called The Ringling Sisters.
He is mostly known for a nine year period of working closely with Iggy Pop from 1990 to 1999 as his drummer and collaborator. During these years he recorded three albums with Iggy (American Caesar, Naughty Little Doggy, and Avenue B.) as well as several soundtrack appearances (Freddy's Dead - The Final Nightmare, Fast Track to Nowhere, The Crow - City of Angels, CoFFEE and Cigarettes, Monster Men - Space Goofs) and the entire score for Johnny Depp's film The Brave, which starred Marlon Brando. He also toured extensively during this period with Iggy, clocking in over 700 concerts worldwide. Their live performances together is well documented in the live DVD Kiss My Blood from the original Paris Olympia in 1991.
He also joined the New York based band Swans in 1995 and continued to work together with front man Michael Gira's transition from Swans into The Angels of Light making in all 10 published releases together.
For many year he has been rumored extensively to have been involved with The Residents as a MusicAL collaborator, but has denied any such direct explanations, often derailing all details to the direction of The Cryptic Corporation. He is indeed credited on numerous releases from The Residents as some sort of "sound contributor" but details remain "foggy" as to what it is he may or may not have actually done.
He has worked on many other films both as composer or musician including notably School of Rock, The Legend of Apple Jack, Monsieur N., Scott Walker: 30 Century Man, Eierdiebe and Dead Dogs Lie. From 1980 to 1982 he wrote lyrics for all of Canadian musician Nash the Slash's non-instrumental songs.
In 2000 he started a record company called Hit Thing Records based in Hamburg, Germany. The label specialized in rare re-issues by Yello, Die Haut & Nick Cave, Liaisons Dangereuses and Georges Montalba as well as collaborations of Toby Dammit with Thomas Wydler of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and Luther Hawkins.
Toby Dammit has also worked with a long list of artists from around the globe (particularly France) including: Bertrand Burgalat, Keren Ann, A.S Dragon, Paul Personne, Marie Modiano and Raphael. However his list of artists around the world extend much further: Ely Guerra from Mexico City, - Stephan Eicher from Bern, Switzerland, - Rufus Wainright from Montreal, Canada - Jessie Evans from San Francisco, California - Cano Caoli from Tokyo, Japan - Peter von Poehl from Mälmo, Sweden' - Mark Eitzel from San Francisco, California - Arno from Brussels, Belgium - Jesse Malin from New York City, New York - April March from Los Angeles, California - Chuck E. Weiss from Los Angeles, California - Anna Clementi from Rome, Italy - Katharina Franck from Berlin, Germany - Bee and Flower from New York City, New York - The Living Things from St.Louis, Missouri.
An extensive chronological discography and tour dates history can be found on the official Toby Dammit website: http://www.tobydammit.com