Sammy Siegler

Sammy Siegler is a third generation drummer born and raised in New York City. He came up in the New York Hardcore Straight Edge scene in the late eighties, playing CB-GB’s Sunday matinees and recording for Revelation Records with such influential bands as Side By Side, Project X, Gorilla Biscuits, Youth of Today, Judge and Shelter. His Father, who leads a Samba School today, exposed him to a variety of music including Brazilian, Jazz and Latin music. In the 1990’s he joined a local reggae band called 32 Tribes and attended the New School’s Jazz program where he studied with Chico Hamilton and Reggie Workman among others.

When punk became mainstream in the mid 1990’s his band CIV got a record contact with Lava/Atlantic. With a buzz clip on MTV they toured the world including three Warped Tours and a spot opening for KISS at Madison Square Garden. He met producer Ross Robinson and in 1999 recorded the first Glassjaw album, Everything You Wanted To Know About Silence (Roadrunner). Sammy decided to stay with his other project called Rival Schools whose album United By Fate (Island/Def Jam) was deemed “the next Nirvana” by Rolling Stone Magazine. Their follow up in 2010 was entitled Pedals, which was well received by critics and fans. He started an independent label called Some Records and along with his three partners released albums by Hot Water Music, Eric Mingus, Earl Greyhound and others.

In the mid 2000’s he started another project called Nightmare of You (Warner Brothers). He was asked to play drums for Patti Smith for a benefit concert in NYC, which he did. He also filled in for The Lost Prophets and The Movielife. Sammy would occasionally do session work as he did with A Static Lullaby on the album, Faso Latido (Columbia Records). He reconnected with producer Ross Robinson who asked him to play and write on the Limp Bizkit album The Unquestionable Truth Part 1. He played on the TECH N9NE album, entitled Therapy Session and connected with Gabby Glaser of Luscious Jackson to make the album Gimme Splash.

More recently, Sammy has returned to his hardcore roots with a new project called World Be Free featuring Scott Vogel of Terror on vocals. Their album The Anti Circle was released in 2016. He continues to play concerts and festivals around the world with many of the bands he once played in.