Danny Carey Brings His Drums to Jazz Club for Two Nights with Webb Allstars

Danny Carey stepped behind the kit at The Baked Potato on Monday, March 30 and returned the following night to close a two-night run with the Webb Allstars, the Los Angeles jazz collective that has become his most consistent musical outlet outside of Tool. The Cahuenga Boulevard room, opened by Don Randi in 1970 and the oldest continuously operating jazz club in Los Angeles, is the kind of stage that strips a drummer down to fundamentals: every ride pattern choice, every ghost note, and every moment of restraint lands at full resolution when the room fits maybe 60 people and the PA is not doing you any favors.

The March run featured Doug Webb on saxophone, Mitch Forman on keys, Jimmy Earl on bass, and Jamie Kime on guitar, with a special guest rounding out both evenings. Two sets went up each night, at 8pm and 10pm, with inside seating and a patio livestream option for those who could not get into the room.

Watching Carey in this context requires a different set of ears than a Tool record. At arena volume, the polymetric layering and kinetic forward motion are the whole story. At The Baked Potato, the story shifts entirely to touch: how he voices a ride cymbal across a tune, where he places comping figures on the snare without crowding Webb's phrasing, and how far he pulls his dynamics down when Forman or Earl is the center of attention. His 22-inch Paiste Signature Dry Heavy Ride, the cymbal Paiste nicknamed "Monad," has a complex wash character that reads very differently at jazz club volume than in a stadium mix. In a room this size, listeners can actually hear whether he is playing the bell, the bow, or the edge, and each choice telegraphs something to the rest of the band.

Clips from previous Webb Allstars nights at The Baked Potato have circulated widely enough that guitarists and heavy-music fans regularly comment on Carey's pocket and independence in the footage; the cross-genre attention reflects how clearly his jazz fundamentals surface when the context is stripped back. The things worth tracking in any new clips from these two nights: the relationship between his ride pattern and Jimmy Earl's walking bass lines, how comping density shifts when Webb is building versus resolving a phrase, and whether the snare voicings favor the head, the rim, or full-stroke rimshots as the tune develops. These are the details that compression and mix levels erase from a Tool record but that emerge completely at Baked Potato volume.

Carey has appeared on this stage repeatedly across multiple years, with Webb Allstars dates logged through 2024 and into 2026, which means these performances carry the character of a working musician logging serious jazz reps with a band that has internalized the material together. That continuity is exactly what makes the footage valuable: the playing is evolved rather than exploratory, and the interplay between Carey, Forman, and Earl reflects a real working band rapport rather than a sit-in.

For any drummer working on dynamic range, cymbal independence, or comping vocabulary inside irregular meters, video from the March 30 and March 31 sets is worth tracking down the moment it surfaces online. Carey's jazz vocabulary at The Baked Potato is not a footnote to his rock reputation; on that stage, with that band, it is the entire argument.