James Flagg

Drummer and singer who fronts 10,000 Days, Mad Alice and Stone and Echo and plays drums in the prog band Bubblemath.

James Flagg saw a drum kit at age three and knew it was for him, then spent years drumming on couch cushions before getting a first kit at 12. James later studied audio recording at Hennepin Technical College and still plays the DW maple kit bought during school. Phil Collins is James's biggest influence and Genesis is a favorite band, which showed James it was fine to sing and drum at once. James answered a City Pages ad for odd time signatures and became the drummer in Bubblemath, a quirky prog band James calls "pronk." Bubblemath toured to ProgDay in 2003 and to CalProg in Whittier, California, in 2005. From 2003 to about 2015 James played bass and sang lead in the hard rock band Season of the Fly, which opened for Saliva and recorded The Garden and Heart of Diptera. In 2014 James started Mad Alice, an Alice in Chains tribute, and in October 2018 became the singer of 10,000 Days, a Tool tribute. James also sings in Stone and Echo, an A Perfect Circle tribute, and writes and records solo music.

On the Minnesota Music Note

The Minnesota Music Note - Ep 35 - How James Flagg Took Tribute Bands to Another Level

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Fun facts from the interview

First band, Draw and Quarter, started in 10th grade as a three-piece covering Metallica and Sepultura.
Took first place in the first round of a Guitar Center drum-off.
Bubblemath's first album came out in 2002 and the second in 2017.
Bubblemath played a show in Reno with nobody in the room but the bartender and sound engineer, then played to about a thousand people at CalProg two nights later.
Season of the Fly won the first three rounds of the 2006 Emergenza battle of the bands and took second in Milwaukee.
Recorded all the drums for Heart of Diptera in about nine hours using studio time won at a St. Cloud battle of the bands.
Mad Alice played its first show in June 2014 and has four singers to cover Alice in Chains harmonies.
Mad Alice released an acoustic EP called The Spins.
Opened for 10,000 Days with Mad Alice at Route 47, then joined 10,000 Days as singer; first show was October 10, 2018.
Filled in on drums for the Primus tribute Frizzle Fry at the Red Carpet in St. Cloud.
Created a vocal-pedal preset with set delay timing for every Tool song.
Favorite song of all time is Drive by The Cars.
Has scored music for short films.
Recommended guests: Sean, the rapper in The Hybrid Theory, and Kai, Bubblemath's keyboard player.

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