Rob started beating on various pots and pans from an early age, graduating up from beating on household items along with Sesame Street albums to The Osmond Brother records. Rob’s formal drumming career started at the age of 7 years old when he started studying percussion at The Hochstein School of Music in his hometown of Rochester, NY under the instruction of famed Chuck Mangione drummer Vincent Ruggiero. From there, during his high school years Rob studied percussion at The Eastman School of Music, and music education at Nazareth College. Through all of these years, Rob participated in various concert bands and percussion ensembles. Top grades for his abilities were the norm. While Rob is schooled in percussion, he is entirely self taught on the drumset.
Rob’s influences include Peter Criss, John Bonham, Neil Peart, Tommy Aldridge, Steve Gadd, and Steve Smith among others. During his teens Rob also picked up the guitar, and it was common to see him at Anselmo’s Musical Concepts walk out of a drum lesson and walk right back into another room for a guitar lesson! After college, Rob taught percussion at Anselmo’s while playing and recording in various local and national cover bands.
In 1990, Rob recorded numerous demos with his band, Baby Grande, as well as Court Jester’s “King For A Day” CD. In 1993, Rob teamed up with former Anvil guitarist Sebastian Marino and former Liegelord vocalist Joe Comeau to form the band “Ramrod”. Based on the strength and great reviews of their demos, Ramrod quickly landed a record deal with CMC Records in Europe. However, before recording began, Joe and Seb left to join Atlantic Records recording artists “Overkill”, thus leaving no time for Ramrod. Soon after, Rob received a phone call from acclaimed Leviathan recording artist guitarist John Hahn. John had a record deal in Japan for his band “Thick As Thieves”, and needed a drummer. In 1996, Rob traveled to Pennsylvania to record the debut release, “Rock the House”, which was released in Japan on Bareknuckle Records in 1997. Rob recorded the entire record in 2 days. The CD came out to favorable reviews.
In 2000, Rob was asked to join the Metal Blade recording artist “Liegelord”, where he performed in Wacken, Germany in front of thousands of people at the world’s premier heavy metal festival, Wacken Open Air. Soon after, Liegelord recorded a song for “A Return to Fantasy – A Tribute to Uriah Heep” on Century Media Records. Throughout the ‘90’s and 2000’s Rob was in demand, recording many demos for various artists, from heavy metal to folk/country, as well as playing countless gigs throughout New York and Canada. During this time Rob also played 3 tracks on fellow Lou Gramm bandmate Michael Staertow’s CD, “Oxygen” – currently available on iTunes and Amazon.
Prior to joining Lou Gramm’s band officially, Rob had performed many drum duties for him, including recording drum tracks for several Foreigner songs to be used for promotional purposes, as well as filling for shows and practice when needed by Lou (one such show filling in on 3 day’s notice when Lou’s drummer at the time suddenly became ill). From 2016, 2017, and 2018 Rob toured North America as Lou’s permanent drummer, getting the gig with no audition necessary. Needless to say, joining one of his rock and roll heroes on stage night after night is a dream come true. Currently, Rob has recently played with the all-star band Scrap Metal, which features the likes of Eric Martin (Mr. Big), Phil Lewis (LA Guns), Ted Poley (Danger Danger), and Barry Goudreau (Boston).
Rob Mount 