---
title: '"Weird Al" Yankovic, Diamond Records, and Snare Drums with Bermuda Schwartz'

description: 'Jon "Bemuda" Schwartz has been the drummer and right-hand man of Weird Al for the better part of four decades. He''s toured the world, been on the Simpsons, played on certified diamond records, and made his mark across genre and culture. He joins the pod to share his love of music and regale us with tales of the absurd journey. In 2020 Jon became a published author with BLACK & WHITE & WEIRD ALL OVER, a coffee-table book featuring more than 200 of his unreleased black-and-white photographs of Weird Al from the early ''80s. LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACCORDION! followed in 2022, with more than 300 color photos of Al and the band.'

status: complete

date: 2024-02-20

kind: guest

guestSlugs:
  - bermuda-schwartz

listenUrl: "https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovemusicmore/episodes/Weird-Al-Yankovic--Diamond-Records--and-Snare-Drums-with-Bermuda-Schwartz-e2fvg8u"

lmwUrl: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU0ADI7UKtg"
appleUrl: "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/weird-al-yankovic-diamond-records-and-snare-drums/id1567355195?i=1000645980278&uo=4"
spotifyUrl: "https://open.spotify.com/episode/5XJARJhVIOf3oBLMc6Ik0m"
youtubeUrl: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAZwzeYUov8"

topicsDiscussed:
  - "Drums"
  - "Classical and orchestral music"
  - "Genre"
  - "Music production"
  - "Satire and absurdism"
  - "Touring"
  - "Meeting Weird Al: Dr. Demento live show, right place/right time"
  - "Snare archaeology, documenting samples (Word Crimes, Radioactive parody)"
  - "Tour craft, different setlists nightly, no repeats on back-to-back nights"
  - "Orchestral tours, unplugged pivots, and keeping decades-long shows fresh"
  - "1985 Dare to Be Stupid era: videos, book, early tour infrastructure"

hostNote: |
  Bermuda Schwartz ("Jon Bermuda") is the **drum platform** under four decades of Weird Al parodies, a diamond-selling comedy catalog that still requires serious production detective work. His job is to **decode whatever the source hit did** (Michael Jackson to Imagine Dragons) and build a pocket Al's accordion can sit on top of.
  
  We trace how he met Al at a Dr. Demento live show in LA (pure luck, unrepeatable), why accordion lessons preceded drum lessons, and the obsessive habit of **writing down exact snare samples** so years-later revisits stay faithful. Tour stories go deep too: ~40 songs in rotation, 16–18 per night, **zero repeats** on consecutive nights in the same city, plus orchestral runs and unplugged pivots to keep a lifelong show from going stale.

selectedMoments:
  - label: "Diamond record parody artist"
    startSec: 21
    note: "Decode drums across every genre so Al can play accordion on top; 40 years of it."
  - label: "Accordion lessons before drums"
    startSec: 267
    note: "Palmer-Hughes method at eight or nine; inherited brother's kit in Phoenix."
  - label: "Meeting Weird Al: Dr. Demento live"
    startSec: 392
    note: "Right place, right time in LA; couldn't have engineered the introduction."
  - label: "Drum sounds from anything but drums"
    startSec: 1831
    note: "Reverse-engineering producers when the source isn't a machine you recognize."
  - label: "Snare samples written down"
    startSec: 2531
    note: "Word Crimes / inactive parody, document samples because memory won't hold."
  - label: "Different set every night"
    startSec: 3056
    note: "~40 songs in rotation; back-to-back nights in one city = no repeats."
  - label: "1985 Dare to Be Stupid tour"
    startSec: 1442
    note: "Video era, Showtime special funding, companion book The Authorized Al."
  - label: "Orchestral tour, conductor in every city"
    startSec: 3089
    note: "2019/2022 pivots, local orchestra, dedicated conductor, fresh arrangements."

excerptQuotes:
  - text: "As a parody artist over 40 years they've done everything in popular music — Imagine Dragons to Michael Jackson — and I've had to decode and figure out the drums to create a platform for Weird Al to sit on top of and play accordion."
    startSec: 192
    reviewed: true
  - text: "Meeting Weird Al was completely right place, right time. You can't create that — I didn't know he was going to be where I met him."
    startSec: 384
    reviewed: true
  - text: "They're making drum sounds with anything but drums. I got to a point where I couldn't determine what they had done — my goal was to listen until I could recreate it."
    startSec: 1833
    reviewed: true
  - text: "I've got all of this written down — exactly the samples I used. I don't remember it, but I wrote it all down so I could go back."
    startSec: 2525
    reviewed: true
  - text: "Every night was a different set — about 40 songs in rotation, 16 to 18 a night. Two nights in the same city? We made sure the next night had no repeats."
    startSec: 3054
    reviewed: true

faq:
  - question: "How long has Bermuda Schwartz played with Weird Al?"
    answer: "Since 1980, drums, producing, and touring across Weird Al's full career. On Love Music More he discusses decoding source-track drum language for decades of genre-spanning parodies."
  - question: "What does Bermuda Schwartz say about snare drums on this episode?"
    answer: "He describes obsessively reverse-engineering snare and drum sounds from parody targets, including documenting exact samples used on tracks like Word Crimes, because parody production requires faithful recreation of wildly different source records."

transcriptPublished: false

draft: false
---