via BroBible
What does living the dream as a drummer actually look like? Forget the private jets and trashed hotel rooms. For John Hoffman, it looks like taking the stage in your hometown, not as the guy hustling gigs for beer money, but as the goddamn drummer for Primus. He stepped on stage only to see a sea of faces you’ve known for 20 years all wearing your signature white sunglasses.
If that’s not living a dream as a drummer, I’m not sure what is.
Just a year ago, Hoffman was another talented musician grinding it out in Shreveport, Louisiana. Today, he’s the guy who cashed in the rock and roll lottery ticket of a lifetime. After Primus launched a public search for a new drummer, similar to American Idol, but for crazy talented drummers, Hoffman won the throne in February 2025.
Before we get into his incredible story, consider the greats of his profession.
Start with the Mount Rushmore of rock drummers. Ringo Starr with The Beatles, John Bonham with Led Zeppelin, Neil Peart with Rush, Keith Moon with The Who, Stewart Copeland of The Police, and Travis Barker with Blink-182. You know them because, in addition to being crazy talented, their legacies are in the DNA of the bands they helped create. They weren’t just the guys holding it down on the kit to keep time; they were architects of a sound, present at the creation of the music their band is associated with. The traditional path to drum god status is to be there from the jump, a founding father of the rhythm.
For over 15 years, Brandon Wenerd has been at the helm of BroBible.com as the site’s Publisher. He pulls back the curtain on the digital media grind and shares his latest music obsessions in his Subtack newsletter, The Weekly Wenerd.
READ + SUBSCRIBE ON SUBSTACK
But that’s the old playbook. John Hoffman’s story rips that page out, lights it on fire, and uses it to start a bonfire. It’s refreshing as hell to see someone break the mold. There are many paths to the mountaintop, and Hoffman’s, or Hoffer’s, is more of a switchback through the forests of obscurity than a speed run.
Instead of a closed-door audition and an announcement, Primus launched the “Drum Derby,” showing fans and the drumming world the process. The result was an insanely compelling and well-produced YouTube series that turned the search into a public spectacle. It was a modern, digital battle royale for one of the most revered and weirdest drum thrones in modern rock. Fans ate it up.
Hoffman didn’t have to be there in the Bay Area garages of the late ’80s to get the job. He just had to be confident enough in his abilities to know the music, gutsy enough to submit an audition reel, and, when it was time, good enough to play his heart out for Primus masterminds Les Claypool and Larry “Ler” LaLonde.
He did, and then won over Primus fans in the process. He’s less than a year on the job, but he’s a part of the band’s new chapter now.
I caught up with Hoffman in a dressing room backstage at the iconic Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, just hours before he’d take the stage with Primus for the first time in Los Angeles to play an instant-classic, guest-filled show. We even worked in some drummer jokes.
The dressing room kinda felt like the antechamber of a freshly landed UFO, the air thick with the promise of imminent abduction. We were all just waiting for the hatch to hiss open and begin our one-way trip to Planet Primus, right here in the hills of Los Feliz.
Watch my full interview with John Hoffman here:
OK, so we’ve established that Hoffman has big shoes to fill. We’re talking about stepping into a job that requires navigating a rhythmic universe so bizarre and intricate it would make lesser mortals’ brains leak out their ears. But Hoffer has swagger and chops, and you damn better believe he’s going to show them.
And you could say it’s a legacy he was born into. Music is in his blood, thanks to a professional musician father who played keys in an Austin-based reggae band called “The Killer Bees.” But Hoffer’s specific strain of the Primus virus was contracted the same way as millions of others in the ’90s: MTV, and through the pixelated glory of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, with “Jerry Was A Racecar Driver” serving as the gloriously weird soundtrack to countless hours of virtual kickflips.
Now owning that legacy means channeling the ghosts of drummers past. In addition to learning some wildly complicated drumming parts, Hoffman also had to learn the distinct musical personalities of the men who came before him, especially Tim “Herb” Alexander, the band’s founding drummer and the man behind the kit for many of the band’s biggest hits.
“He was on a lot of the… big hits, you know, ‘Jerry [Was a Race Car Driver]’ and ‘My Name Is Mud,’ and that’s all Herb,” Hoffman explained. “He was pioneering from when these songs were born… as the Primus sound was coming into their own. And not only with that, but we have Brain and Jay Ski as well, all very different drummers… And so I have to consciously keep in mind for every song that I’m playing. Oh, this is a Jayski song, it has a Jayski vibe. Brain song, Brain vibe. And Herb, Herb vibe.”
But the gig itself is only half the story. The truly legendary part, the chapter that makes you feel like the universe occasionally gets things right, went down when the tour rolled through his hometown of Shreveport in July.
The city didn’t just show up; they orchestrated a moment of pure, unadulterated awesome. It started with a surprise that hit him the second he walked on stage.
“So, for the sunglasses, like, I didn’t see that coming. That was a surprise,” Hoffman explained. “I walk out on stage and, you know, I’m wearing my sunglasses, so it’s a little darker. And so I take the stage, and I look up up front, I go, ‘Oh, cool, man. These people up front have glasses.’ And then my peripherals kick in a little bit. And I’m like, ‘Oh man, the whole front row has glasses.’ And then again, my peripherals kick in. I’m like, ‘Oh, dude, everyone has glasses on, you know?’ So that was a really fun surprise, man, just big time the way that they showed the support like that.”
For any musician who’s ever begged their five closest friends to come to a Tuesday night gig, the scene was something out of a movie. Everyone in Shreveport who ever knew Hoffer came out that night, like a full-blown reunion.
“It was like a huge party,” Hoffman said, a huge smile on his face. “Most of the people that were in the crowd were people that I recognized… it was like a sea of all the people I’ve met in my town over the last, like, 20 years, and then, like, they all came together for this show.”
The vibe was a collective, town-wide “holy shit, he did it” moment that you could feel from the stage, Hoffman tells BroBible:
“I was getting a lot of messages and texts from a lot of my friends after the show, and they were telling me how there was just, like, the environment out in the crowd was just a lot of hugging and high fives and fist bumps… the crowd itself had a very warm feeling amongst itself, like they were all here for this one thing, collectively together, and that energy, it translated up to the stage.”
And the all-day celebration for their hometown hero was oh-so-perfectly Shreveport.
“Everything about the day was just perfect… A friend of mine showed up and tattooed five or six of our crew members. And so he was, he was busting out tattoos on the scene, and it was just a cool thing, a cool day.”
But the sunglasses and the high-fives were just the icing on the cake. Earlier that day, the city of Shreveport had the main course waiting, and it was something so ridiculously cool, most people can’t even fathom it.
“And then them announcing ‘John Hoffman Day’ in Shreveport was just such a surprise,” Hoffman adds, still seemingly in disbelief a couple weeks later. “And I don’t even know what to say about that, I mean, but how amazingly cool, and what an honor that was.”
Hoffman had received an official decree from Shreveport Mayor Tom Arceneaux proclaiming July 29 as John “Hoffer” Hoffman Day.
His first move was humble, a little hilarious. He did what any of us would do: He immediately texted his new bandmates, Les and Ler, to flex a little.
“I texted them as soon as, like, it was all kind of died and down. I took a picture of the, you know, the paper that I received, and, you know, it’s like, ‘Look, guys, I got in my own day. Can you believe it?’”
If the hometown hero reception was the dream, the Onward & Upward tour stop at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles was Hoffer’s new “is this really my life?” reality.
Billed by many hardcore and casual Primus fans as easily the best show of the tour, the LA show was a revolving door of legends disguised as a Primus gig. Every face in the iconic amphitheater was melted.
Listen, I’m writing this as someone who watched what went down: It was one hell of a good time. I’ve already gushed about this on this website, but I’m still blown away by how awesome it was.
via BroBible
The show was a full-frontal sonic lobotomy, cheerfully administered by a 7-Eleven slushie machine from another dimension. It took your consciousness, flash-froze it with liquid-nitrogen funk, and churned it into a glorious, cherry-red slurry of beautiful, bizarre noises. You didn’t walk out of there the same person; you stumbled out with a rebooted nervous system, your synapses firing in strange new patterns, forever tasting the phantom sweetness of awesome. In other words, Primus sucked so hard, in the best way possible.
Comedian and secret drum beast Bill Burr casually walked on stage with Tool’s Justin Chancellor to hammer out “Too Many Puppies”. Turns out the comedian has serious chops, with everyone on my Instagram making the same joke that, of course, he does, because he’s related to Billy Corrigan. In the podcast Burr recorded the next day, he lavished high praise on Hoffer and fawned over his beautiful new DW orange kit, which sounded fantastic and glowed like a spaceship up on the stage.
In addition to Burr, the evening included South Park co-creator Matt Stone on the kit for a King Crimson cover. Tool’s Danny Carey sat in for “My Name Is Mud,” Ty Segall lent his vocals for a killer Black Sabbath cover, and funk-master MonoNeon joined Les Claypool for an explosive dueling-bass walk-off encore.
As if the night wasn’t stacked with enough new core memories, Stewart Copeland—the legendary drummer for The Police who joins Les Claypool and Phish’s Trey Anastasio in the supergroup Oysterhead—also popped by The Greek that afternoon. The nod to the supergroup felt complete when Primus even busted out Oysterhead’s “Polka Dot Rose” during the show. Just a legendary move from a guy who didn’t have to be there.
For Hoffman, meeting his hero was a monumental moment. He summed it up perfectly on Instagram: “What an unbelievably incredible day… I met the man who might be my biggest drumming influence throughout my entire life, The GOAT, Stu Daddy himself, Mr. Stewart Copeland. Talk about an overwhelming rush of shock and awe when I saw him enter the room… Moving right along, I shared the stage and drum duties for a second time with the other GOAT, Mr. Danny Carey… What a total badass.”
via BroBible
He didn’t stop there, gushing about the parade of icons who joined them. “To top off this unbelievably stacked night of double drumming, Matt Stone, yes…South Park Matt Stone, came up and played with us on a cover of Thela Hun Ginjeet by King Crimson. Matt SMASHED that! He was playing this kick pattern over my quarter note kicks that was so funky, I had the stank face going the whole time… We also brought out our homie Ty Segall to sing NIB, and the bass alien from another planet MonoNeon to do his thing on Pachyderm. Wow. What a night.”
He went on, still reeling: “These experiences I’ve had, and am continuing to have, are just mind-boggling, but I am so thankful to have the chance to be a part of this incredible series of spectacular events that keep coming my way every day. I couldn’t be more grateful.”
It’s a story that hits different because it’s so damn real. It’s about the grind paying off in the most spectacular way possible, and a whole community celebrating that win. Because just a year ago, Hoffman’s reality was the one every musician knows all too well.
“A year ago today, I was probably just in my town, hustling gigs, trying to fill my calendar with as much work as I could… and just trying to maintain a living and pay my house note doing this music thing,” he reflected. “A year ago… I would have never in a million years predicted or projected anything that’s happened to me in 2025.”
From hustling gigs to having your own holiday to sharing the stage with your heroes.
Primus Sucks, but man, sometimes life really, really doesn’t.