Drummer Jay Bellerose has recorded and performed with dozens of accomplished musicians, including Paula Cole, Elton John, Bonnie Raitt, John Mellencamp, Aimee Mann, Regina Spektor and Ray LaMontagne.

In concert photos, the Old Orchard Beach native is often seen near the back of the stage, partially obscured by the other players. He’s the drummer, and somebody else is the headliner. But the musicians who want to play with him, who keep him in constant demand and rely on his artistry and vision, don’t talk about him as somebody simply backing them up.

“I can’t express properly here how important he is to me, how much I love him. Jay is one of my influences, right there with Aretha Franklin or Joni Mitchell,” said Cole, who has been recording and performing with Bellerose for more than 30 years. “And now I see so many derivatives of Jay in the drummer world.  He is an original, an influence to so many, including me.”

Bellerose, 56, is now based in Los Angeles, but will be coming home to Maine this summer. He’s currently on tour with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss and will be on stage for the duo’s sold-out show July 3 at Thompson’s Point in Portland. At least three dozen friends and family members are planning to attend the show.

In-demand drummer Jay Bellerose, a Maine native, testing out the merchandise at Nelson Drum Shop in Nashville, Tennessee. Photo by Bryson Nelson

MUSIC ALL AROUND

Bellerose says he first became fascinated with the drums because his older brother, Nelson, played. There’s a family photo of Bellerose as a toddler, about 10 months old, sitting at his brother’s drum set and holding sticks in his hand.

“I don’t remember that, but I still have that picture,” said Bellerose, from his home in North Hollywood, California. “I just know that drumming and music overtook every part of my being, for better or for worse. I’ve never looked at it as a career, a way to make money, there are easier ways to make money. The power music has over me on a spiritual, soulful level has kept me on this path and brought me so much joy.”

Jay Bellerose on his brother’s drums in Old Orchard Beach, about 10 months old. Photo courtesy of the Bellerose family.

Nelson Bellerose, about 18 years older than his brother, remembers the day of the photo very clearly. Bellerose crawled over to his brother’s drums and pulled himself up onto them. When Nelson handed his brother the sticks, he expected the toddler to grab them stiffly, but he instead held them loose, like a seasoned drummer. When Jay hit the drums with a stick, it made a musical sound, not the thump most first-timer drummers make.

Bellerose, the youngest of eight children, said he “worshipped” his drumming brother, followed him around and listened to the music he listened to, ranging from rock and pop to jazz and big band. He also paid really close attention to any drummers he saw on TV, including one named Paul Humphrey, who was on “The Lawrence Welk Show” (he watched with his mom) and who also had played with Marvin Gaye. He got to hear a huge variety of music just walking into any of his siblings’ rooms and hearing whatever they were into. When he was old enough to buy music on his own, he became very drawn to classical recordings.

Nelson played in bands in the area, and as a teen, Jay would follow him to gigs at local clubs around Old Orchard Beach. Sometimes the band of grownups would let the much younger Bellerose sit in with them. At home, Bellerose said, he was encouraged to practice as much as he wanted to.

“Sometimes I’d be playing and not know my mother was having tea with somebody, and they’d say to her, ‘How do you put up with this racket?'” Bellerose said. “But she always told me that when she heard me playing drums, she knew I was safe and was doing something I loved.”

At Old Orchard Beach High School, he joined school bands and earned some national attention. He was selected as a member of the McDonald’s All-American High School Band that marched in the 1985 Tournament of Roses Parade and won a scholarship given out by Modern Drummer magazine. He credits his band director at Old Orchard Beach High School, Paula Remick Vargas, with encouraging him and supporting his ambition. He stays in touch with her and visited with her in Florida earlier this year.

Drummer Jay Bellerose grew up in Old Orchard Beach and has worked with dozens of accomplished musicians over the past 30 years or more. Photo by Bryson Nelson

After graduating in 1985, he spent two years at the Berklee College of Music. There, he met Paula Cole, who was a fellow student. He stayed in Boston for a few more years, playing with “great musicians.” He said when Cole first was signed to a record deal, she “took me along.” He played in Cole’s band and on eight of her albums, between 1995 and 2021. He says when Cole moved to the Los Angeles area more than 20 years ago, he decided to move there, too.

He said doing session work in Los Angeles was tough for him at first. He found that a lot of people just wanted certain beats or grooves, but he was always reacting and responding to the music on an emotional level instead. He said he got fired “or fired myself” from several jobs because he didn’t fit the mold the producers wanted.

Cole says she remembers how producers tried to change Bellerose’s sound at first, tried to tell him how to play.

“It nearly crushed him at times, but he stayed true to his beliefs, his sound, his concept of music, and that is the greatest part of Jay,” Cole said.

Bellerose found a like-minded musician to play with after a couple years in Los Angeles, when songwriter, singer and Grammy-winning producer Joe Henry called him about playing on one of his albums. (Henry now lives in Harpswell but was based in Los Angeles until two years ago).

Jay Bellerose performing with Alison Krauss and Robert Plant in Las Vegas on June 14. Photo by Denise Truscello

Around the same time, he got a call from Talking Heads frontman David Byrne, who wanted to talk to Bellerose about touring with him. As much as he loved the Talking Heads, he didn’t feel that touring with Byrne would be right for him. Henry is a songwriter whose lyrics are poetic and full of imagery, and when Bellerose heard some of them, he knew he should take the job with Henry.

The two have worked on many projects together over the past 20 years, and Henry calls Bellerose “my closest friend outside of my immediate family.”

“Jay approaches every song, in the studio or upon a stage, with deep respect and curiosity. He doesn’t have an idea in a vacuum that he’s looking to impose on a piece of music, but rather is listening for how he might illuminate the story from his particular chair,” said Henry. “He’s a painter, and at the level of a Matisse or Monet, creating atmosphere and amplifying what’s most important to a song at any given moment.”

While he was becoming an in-demand drummer in Los Angeles, he met his longtime partner, Jennifer Condos, a bass guitarist. They met during a recording session and also played together in (another Mainer) Ray LaMontagne’s band. Bellerose and Condos both won a Grammy, in the category of contemporary folk album, for their work on LaMontagne’s 2010 release “God Willin’ & the Creek Don’t Rise.”

Bellerose has worked steadily over the past three decades with an impressive list of artists. Besides those already mentioned, he’s worked with Rhiannon Giddens, Hugh Laurie, Madeline Peyroux, Sam Phillips, Punch Brothers, Duncan Sheik, Allen Toussaint, Suzanne Vega, Jonathan Brooke and Susan Tedeschi.

He’s played on four albums by Maine-based singer Carol Noonan, who also runs the Stone Mountain Arts Center performance venue in Brownfield, and calls Bellerose “hugely artful.”

“I used to tell him he could make a box of macaroni sound great,” Noonan said.

Drummer Jay Bellerose, right, on stage with Alison Krauss at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Tennessee in 2022. Photo by Jenn Devereaux for Bonnaroo 2022

Bellerose’s long relationship with Plant and Krauss began about 15 years ago when the unlikely pair – he was the frontman of rock icon Led Zeppelin and she’s best known for bluegrass and fiddle playing – decided to make an album and tour.

“At first I didn’t understand, I think at the time, the idea of Robert and Alison (teaming up) was kind of out there,” said Bellerose. “But when I heard them, I could see they were developing their own sound together.”

Bellerose played on their “Raising Sand” album, which won album of the year at the 2009 Grammy Awards, and toured with them. Bellerose also played on the pair’s second album, “Raise the Roof,” released in 2021. He played with the pair at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Tennessee last summer and began touring with them again this year.

When Bellerose was growing up, he heard the music of Led Zeppelin booming through the walls of his brother Gary’s room, powered by John Bonham’s drumming and Plant’s soaring vocals. Now he’s on the drums, behind Plant, night after night. He’s gotten to know him offstage, too.

“Robert’s like a little kid with music, always researching new music, old music, trying to find something different,” said Bellerose. “When I get off tour with him, I spend all the money I made buying all the records he turned me onto.”

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