Drummer Miles McPherson on navigating dichotomies by kayak

After decades on the road and years of reckoning, the Nashville session player finds peace and perspective where a river bends back on itself

Written by Lisa Battles

This headline may make established session drummer Miles McPherson cringe, cuss – and then take out his kayak on the river. He’s naturally inclined to the latter two anyway, so to address the first: He deeply rejects being taken so seriously.

Only in his early 40s and on the road for much of it, he resists being cast as a “serious student” of his instrument. Yet recent years of self-reflection have given him a richer perspective on himself and his 25 years in music.

That perspective has taken shape close to home, just west of Nashville, on the Narrows of the Harpeth River. It’s called the Narrows at that point because the river bends back and nearly meets itself, and it is the point where early industrialist Montgomery Bell commissioned a tunnel through the rock for hydropower for his ironworks in 1820.

It seems fitting that McPherson finds peace in a place with such a unique combination of natural and man-made features, given his own life of extremes.

Raised on the road

Music brought the McPhersons from Texas to Nashville in 1986, when Miles’ father, Jerry McPherson, was launching a guitar career that would eventually span decades, working with artists from Faith Hill and Dolly Parton to Chris Martin and Chris Cornell.

Miles grew up backstage and in studios and decided early that he wanted that life, too. His dad didn’t make it easy for him to pursue guitar, diverting him to other instructors.

At age 13, his desire to play the guitar evaporated when a friend let him play the drum set he’d gotten for Christmas, and he couldn’t be pulled away.

“I missed dinner, I missed presents. I just sat down there for hours and played. And I think at that moment, my parents realized, ‘Gosh, s**t, we gotta do something about this.’ And, you know, that’s a lot to have drums in the house,” McPherson says.

And yet the next Christmas, he got his own.

A snare drumming teen in a Texas canyon

That holiday season, the McPhersons were back in Texas visiting grandparents, when Miles opened a box containing a snare drum. Initially, he was disappointed to see a single drum and not a kit. Then he took it outside, where he played it all day and listened to the sounds reverberate off the surrounding canyon.

On the last day of the visit, he was still banging away when his family called him inside to reveal a full kit awaited him back home.

“That was it. That was game over,” McPherson says.

Within two years, he was gigging locally, dropped out of high school at age 16 to tour with Rich Creamy Paint, forged his paperwork to get into Belmont University and dropped out after a few months.

He took a 30-day gig on a Christian music tour and returned to his parents’ house on his 19th birthday. Their gift? A desk lamp, $100 and a note that read “Bye bye.”

He used his tour earnings to buy a car and find an apartment.

Metal, marriage & missteps

McPherson started a couple of metal bands, met and married his wife, and almost divorced as quickly over his addiction issues. After rehab, he convinced her to move to Los Angeles so he could rejoin his band.

He took sales jobs until the group got a record deal and started touring.

They made cross-country treks, racking up debt during high gas prices. Unfortunate memories of that time include an ill-fated effort to run a shuttle bus on vegetable oil and a man chasing him with a hammer for panhandling to get gas money to the next gig.

And then came a bigger twist.

“My wife and I got pregnant, and I realized that I had to grow up and quit the band. When she was six months pregnant, we routed a tour that brought us from LA back to Nashville,” McPherson says.

McPherson’s parents set the couple up with the first month’s rent and a deposit for a duplex, where they welcomed their first child, and another 15 months later. He worked three jobs a day, doing everything from parking cars to painting houses to waiting tables.

His friend and fellow session drummer, Jerry Roe, sold him a kit for $400, which he used to pick up whatever gigs he could, often playing with 14 different artists in any given month. When someone would ask what his one dream gig would be, he gave the same answer.

“I was like, ‘I don’t know … Like a Kelly Clarkson-type, pop-rock gig, f**k, I don’t know.’ It seemed like it would be fun,” McPherson says.

Broad horizons & bigger stages

Then one day, McPherson got a call from the wife of Clarkson’s music director, asking if he’d like to audition for her band.

“I was like ‘Who the f**k put you up to this?’ I really thought somebody was playing a joke,” he says.

It was real, and the competition was hot among about 16 contenders for the spot. McPherson and his family were on vacation at Montgomery Bell State Park in Burns, Tennessee, when he got the news he’d landed the gig and should report to rehearsals on Monday.

“Once we hit the road, that was it for four years, from 2009 to 2013, and it was incredible,” McPherson says.

The band dispersed when Clarkson paused touring to build her family. McPherson took a job moving furniture to support himself and his family.

Returning to the road

Within less than a year, he got a call from his longtime friend and former bandmate, Justin York, then a guitarist for Paramore, which was seeking a new drummer.

McPherson got the gig, which he stayed on for many months before a golf cart accident resulted in broken bones, skin grafts, acid burns and a DUI.

“It was a really f*****g stupid situation,” McPherson says.

He had a break before going back out with the band and was loading up the car for a short family trip while hanging out and drinking with his neighbor. They and their wives decided to take a spin on their golf cart. On the way down from a fast hill, the cart tipped and flipped, landing on McPherson and dragging him. The cart’s ruptured batteries caused severe burns along the left side of his body.

He spent several months in skin graft surgeries and healing broken bones.

With legal and personal issues looming, McPherson left the band, turned to session work full-time and thrived. Between 2013 and 2020, he became a two-time ACM Drummer of the Year, playing on numerous No. 1 hits.

Still, his personal issues persisted.

Discovering the Narrows

McPherson and his wife separated in 2016, a difficult time he channeled into work – and also drinking, he says. He bought more camping gear, despite not having grown up in the outdoors.

“I knew that I needed something else. Somehow, some way, I was going to start using it. It took a year or two before I started using that pile of gear that was sitting there, staring at me,” McPherson says.

He bought a kayak and discovered the Narrows of the Harpeth River, where he spent a lot of time alone, working through things every day for years. He says it saved his life, and his favorite times were when it snowed in the wintertime.

“Being on a river when everything else is covered in snow is an unfathomable quiet that is almost unsettling,” McPherson says. “Being out there on the water was such another side. It was so dichotomous and so perfect. It made so much sense for me and was the only thing that ever got me quiet and calmed me down.”

Seeking balance

McPherson’s balance with addiction and sobriety is a longtime thread. He says he’s had several stretches of sobriety, including the most recent, starting in January of this year.

Late last summer, his deteriorating relationship with his kids catalyzed his decision to enter a mental health treatment program to address the roots, which he learned were as fundamental as getting more sleep at night.

No longer in a relationship, separated from his kids and with only himself to figure out, the outdoors took an even greater place in his life. His kayak collection grew, plus he added a camper and a couple of bikes. He says they’ve been necessary tools for the physical exercise and mental space he needs as permanent parts of his lifestyle – and to have a life he loves without losing it to addiction, he says.

A different kind of touring & problem solving

Lately, besides splitting time between his home studio and continuing session work, McPherson has worked on a new CBS reality series, “The Road,” which debuted in October 2025. The show follows a group of emerging artists who go on tour, opening for one of the show’s co-producers, Keith Urban, at venues across the country, competing to win a spot in the next city.

For the show, McPherson put together a six-piece Nashville-based band, which joined a group of about 150 on the road for the show’s production, he says.

“Because it was a game show, it was fun . . . I loved the chaos in that setting and in that context. It was just – enjoyable,” McPherson says.

Reframing situations – and himself – within context has brought him more enjoyment in his work and life overall.

“I’ve gotten really good at playing for songs. That’s what I do. It’s not false modesty. I’m not a great drummer, but I am good at playing for songs that I can do all f*****g day. I love it. It makes me so happy,” McPherson says. “It’s about being handed a puzzle – a wildly different set of circumstances with a weird song, a strange arrangement, a band that’s different or a studio where things aren’t working – then taking all of the factors, which there are so many, with so many people involved in the creation of a song, then getting a finished product. That is the job.”

‘Finding curiosity in discovery’ in music

McPherson says he prefers paddling rivers over lakes for the same reason he loves studio work.

“When you’re paddling a river, it’s something new around every turn. It’s a new view. Every foot that you move forward, you’re seeing something different,” he says.

He’s begun reevaluating feedback he’d once dismissed to bring more to every session. He learned to check his confidence and treat differing opinions as puzzles instead of challenges.

“[I think] ‘Let me not try and turn it into my own thing. Let me figure out a way to make what you want to work in this song,’” McPherson says. “In doing that, I found curiosity. I found this discovery of putting myself out of the way.”

It’s made music and life more enjoyable in entirely new ways, he says.

“I do my best to just be better, constantly try and make amends where I can and just make fewer mistakes moving forward,” McPherson says.

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