This article is the first part in a series on using new technology to succeed in the music business. For part two click here.

This interview was recorded by Steve Gordon for his Internet radio show.

Steve Gordon: Will Calhoun graduated Berklee School of Music in Boston, where he received a Bachelor’s degree in Music Production and Engineering. Will’s unique blend of improvisational hard rock and drumming can be found on each of Living Colour’s four releases by Epic Records, including the ground-breaking multi-platinum debut, “Vivid.”

A prolific songwriter, Will wrote many of Living Colour’s greatest hits, including “Cult of Personality.” As a member of Living Colour, Will received a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance by a Group, and another Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance.

These days he’s still touring with Living Colour, working on new collaborative projects with Mos Def and producing his own recording projects.

Let’s talk about your new album Native Lands. I understand the album includes a DVD with over 90 minutes of music videos and documentary materials that chronicle the last ten years of your life. Tell us a little bit about the album and the DVD.

Will Calhoun: I sort of planted seeds while touring with Living Colour in Central America, South America, and parts of Europe, and I wanted to go back to those places and really research my instrument, music, drumming, rhythms.

So I videotaped stuff, I had field recordings, I studied with master drummers and master musicians, and I documented everything.

I had no idea I was going to use that in a DVD sense, but the CD came from me wanting to work with musicians that I didn’t have a chance to work on in my own aspect, like Pharoah, and Mos Def and Buster Williams, Wallace Roney, Stanley Jordan, these kind of guys.

SG: They’re all on the album?

WC: They’re all on the album. I did a duo with Nana Vasconcelos when I was in Brazil on vacation. I called him up and he happened to be home. All of that stuff is on the DVD. I went to his house, we had a nice little meal, and we talked about the history of Brazilian music.

It was a combination of vision that I had in terms of connecting the dots between my history and my research. I’m also into photography.

I took a lot of pictures during the times I was in Morocco at the Gnaoua Festival. I wanted to marry my photography with the music and the ambient sounds of music, jazz, African music, hip hop, and all of the above, and make one piece out of it.

So, I titled it Native Lands, and I made a DVD, which I’ve made my own music videos to, and music. It’s a combination of a lot of loves in my life: media, interactive media, the drum set, percussion, loops, engineering— all those things sort of looped into one.

SG: Putting all of your interests in one place. Is it being distributed through a label?

WC: It’s being distributed right now in America through Rykodisc. If you’re in New York, I recommend you just go to the Blue Note Club, because it’s on Half Note Records, and that label is run by the Blue Note Jazz Club on West 3rd Street.