Tisch senior drums for Jay-Z

Alongside Jay-Z, Rihanna and Kanye West, Tisch senior Erik Braund runs this town.

Braund, a 25-year-old Alaska native, recently recorded a remixed version of "Run This Town" with Jay-Z, the Rutgers Symphony Orchestra and Maestro Kynan Johns. He found out about the gig through a friend of a friend, and provided the drums for the song. The recording was taped during a 12-hour production on the Lower East Side, and was broadcast as a pre-game music video for Super Bowl XLIV.

"The best part was that I played drums for Jay-Z at the Super Bowl," Braund said. "Even though I am not Jay-Z's drummer by any stretch, it is still something cool to have on the resume."

Before the television spot, Braund was a typical kid from Anchorage. He played hockey in the winter and did commercial fishing in the summer — a "standard Alaskan upbringing," by his own definition. His passion for music began at age 12 when his neighbor, musician and photographer John Argetsinger, handed him Nirvana's "Nevermind."
"I ditched my hammer pants and got an electric guitar," he said.

Though Braund started out with a guitar, his true desire was to play the drums. The young and ambitious musician did what every preteen with a mission does: He took on odd jobs, from mowing lawns to shoveling driveways, to save up the money to purchase a drum kit.

"There is something so amazingly gratifying about hitting the drums hard and making really loud sounds. They always spoke to me," he said. "Not straying from my guitar influences, Dave Grohl, Nirvana's drummer, is what made me want to play drums. To this day, he is my favorite drummer and one of my favorite musicians."

Braund attended University of Alaska and University of Colorado before finding the right fit at NYU's Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music in fall 2007. Since setting foot in New York, Braund has not stopped going after his goals.

"When Braund sets his mind to something, it becomes his," Braund's bandmate Michael Gorder said. "The best part about Braund is that he is from Alaska and it centers him; he will never be some stuck-up asshole, no matter if he is in a Super Bowl video with Jay-Z, or playing in Anchorage to 400 people."

But the Jay-Z recording is just one of many projects Braund has up in his sleeve. He is currently putting together a music licensing company and record label, Braund Media, to promote Alaskan bands. Braund is also working on an "experimental dirty electro-dance project" with his roommate, Tisch senior Oresti Tsonopoulos.

"Erik is the sort of guy who can make an entire record on his own," Tsonopoulos said. "And he can engineer, mix and master the whole thing, even market it once it's ready. He's a machine."

And this human music machine won't be stopping anytime soon.

"Playing music with a few other guys in a room satiates a part of me that nothing else can," Braund said.

Natalie Adeeyo is a staff writer.