Harry Miree | 100 drum kits, and a day job with Hardy

Most touring drummers spend their days off asleep. Harry Miree spent his driving to schools with drum kits in the back.

Over 100 drum sets, donated to American schools with underfunded arts programmes, delivered along a tour route — and the money came, improbably, from Charles Barkley.

He also happens to be a very good drummer, which is the part that got him the award.

Who is Harry Miree?

Harry Miree is an American drummer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist based in Nashville.

He tours with Hardy, the platinum country-rock artist whose live show is far closer to a rock gig than a country one — and has played the CMA Awards and the Grand Ole Opry with him.

Drumeo’s voters gave him Country Drummer Of The Year in 2023.

The drum donation

This is the story that made his name outside drumming circles.

Miree made a video challenging Charles Barkley — who had promised to donate drum sets to schools if a viral video won a Webby Award — and the two of them, working with the music education charity Music Will (formerly Little Kids Rock), ended up putting over 100 drum kits into American schools with underfunded arts programmes.

He then delivered a great many of them personally, visiting schools along Hardy’s tour route and teaching masterclasses while he was there.

That is a considerable amount of effort for someone whose actual job involves being in a different city every night.

What Harry Miree actually does

He plays country-rock, heavy on the rock. Hardy’s material is loud, riff-driven and closer to a hard rock band than a Nashville one. The drums are correspondingly big.

He plays a small kit, loudly. A 20” bass drum on an arena stage is an unusual choice — most drummers in this space go to a 22” or 24”. A 20” is punchier, faster and easier to mix.

He is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He writes and releases his own material, which is a different discipline again.

He is an educator by instinct. The school masterclasses were not a publicity requirement. He kept doing them.

Harry Miree’s drum kit

• Drums — Pearl Reference One, in Arctic White with black hardware: a 20”x16” bass drum, a 12”x8” rack tom, and 14”x14” and 16”x16” floor toms.
• Cymbals — Meinl, where he is a listed artist.
• Heads — Evans, likewise.

Every era, with buy links, is on Harry Miree’s Rig Vault page.

Want the sound without the rig?

His kit is a genuinely instructive spec, and the interesting part is the size.

Try a 20” kick. Smaller than the default, and better in almost every way for modern production: it speaks faster, needs less muffling, and sits in a mix without eating the bass guitar’s frequency range. Plenty of professionals have quietly moved this way.

Then two floor toms and one rack. A 12” up top with 14” and 16” down low gives you a wider tonal spread than the usual 10/12/16, and it is a far more comfortable kit to play.

Our beginner drum kit guide covers what shell sizes actually change, and the Gear Guru will price the configuration up.

Where to start listening

• Hardy — live footage, any recent tour. Country on paper, rock in the room.
• The CMA and Opry performances. Him playing it straight in the most traditional rooms in the genre.
• His own solo material. A completely different Harry Miree.

Final thoughts

There is a version of this profile that is entirely about the drum donation, and that would sell the drumming short. He won a national award for playing, not for philanthropy.

But it is worth saying plainly: a working touring drummer used his own visibility to put a hundred drum kits into schools that could not afford them, and then turned up to teach the kids how to use them.

That is a better use of a platform than most people manage.

See Harry Miree’s full rig in the Rig Vault, or read about Cody Ash and Fred Eltringham — the other two Nashville drummers on this list.