Daily Inspiration: Meet Junior Padilla

Today we’d like to introduce you to Junior Padilla.

Hi Junior, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
I was born to Dominican immigrant parents in NYC. I grew up in a poor broken home in Washington Heights. Our home was rich in Faith towards God, full of love, and a hardworking mother and stepfather, so I never really understood how poor we were. I knew we weren’t rich, but it never crossed my mind that we were poor until I became an adult.

As a musician, I started out playing drums at the age of 10 at my grandfather’s church. My musical community was very small, so I spent a lot of time or as much time as I could practicing and learning on my own, and relying on God for learning experiences.

At the age of 15, at the request of my then music mentor, Geremias Carmona urged to play the bass for a traveling church band he was creating. The band members were all my family (sisters, aunts, uncles) and he would be the leader and teach me how to play bass to his arrangements, so I did just that. We even got to record a 45 Single record in a downtown NYC studio in the 80s. It was a great experience as I was able to play drums for that record, too!

This memory of recording drums was forever etched in my mind and never left me. A few years later, he was moving to other ministry endeavors and began to teach me keyboards. My grandfather, Jesus M. Ureña, and my mom bought me my first keyboard to play in church, and as soon as my mentor left I was the main keyboardist of the church only knowing about 3 chords! In most of my musical experiences, I’ve been thrown off the deep end and it has been either sink or swim, and swim I did!

For the next 25 years or so, keys became my main instrument. I started informal lessons at the age of 17 via a generous gift of my sister’s friend that heard me practicing during a visit. It was only a one-month class at Sam Ash. I’m guessing it was more for her sanity, but I was very grateful because those lessons completely changed my piano playing. My learning ability was accelerated when I reconnected with my cousin and multi-instrumentalist, Josh Vigo. He introduced me to other great musicians and I learned even more being around them. Although I had not looked at music as a career path because I didn’t know it was possible, I always wanted and had the urge to excel.

I ended up going to college to become an Automotive Technician, which was my second passion. I love cars and I love fixing things, so this was a viable way of making a living in my mind. While I was attending the Bronx Community College’s 1st Automotive program, we were right next to the music building where they had multiple Yamaha piano rooms for student practice. My automotive classes were on weekends Friday through Sunday, and I made up my mind that I would come to school Monday through Thursday and practice piano for about 8 hours a day.

The music teacher would sometimes knock on my door and kick me out to let other students in, then Friday through Sunday I’d be in my Automotive curriculum. I also started to take the gospel and classical piano lessons in NYC during that time.

The entire 2 years I went to automotive school, I spent most of my time playing, learning, and practicing piano and it never dawned on me that I should have been going to college for music. I aced my automotive class with a 3.8 average all the while completely engulfed with music, but suddenly I realized something. Somewhere in the middle of the 2nd year, I hit a brick wall as far as learning and my physical ability to perform on piano, and I didn’t know exactly why. Also, something from within, a desire to play drums, began to rise up in me without really realizing it.

Slowly, and I mean over the course of years to come, I began losing a bit of the desire to play piano, especially after losing access to a real piano and only playing keyboards. By the time I hit 30 years old I was serving at a church and the pastor’s son was interested in learning how to play drums and was an obviously talented kid. He reminded me of myself growing up, so I began to teach the little that I knew, and it wasn’t enough. I decided to go take private lessons at the then Groove Academy and study under Pat Petrillo, one of the most notable drum instructors in our area, and every week I would share my lessons with him.

Within one year of learning with Pat, I was already becoming a semi-professional drummer in the area. Pat invited me to play in his studio while he was teaching a music recording class, and experiencing how my drumming sounded was the very thing I needed that sparked the idea of wanting to be a music producer and engineer. I ended up staying with Pat for 3 years until he sold the school, and I went on to study audio engineering at Career Technical Institute at the Lakehurst Naval Base in New Jersey. I was fortunate to have studied with the late Grammy award-winning Dennis Burke and his son. It built a great foundation for my engineering skills and music production.

Fast forward to 2022, I proudly endorse Bosphorus Cymbals and I can say that drumming has taken me to places and allowed me to work with people I could only dream about, but it didn’t happen until I poured into the gift and passion God gave me from the very beginning: Drums. I do enjoy all of the other gifts of music, but I realize now that God wanted drums to be the foundational tool for what was to come – Music Production!

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has not been a smooth road at all. Actually, I don’t know of a musician that has had a smooth road. We all face similar challenges regardless of our places in the world or economic status.

For me, one of my latest challenges has been more physical than anything else. For a while I was away from music, about 7yrs to be exact. I was going through some rough times. Sometime around 2011, I was hit by a car while riding a scooter that nearly killed me and it took over a year to recover from it. Then in 2016, I had two car accidents (none of which were my fault, by the way). In 2017, I was bitten on my arm by a brown recluse spider (I could have lost my arm) in a shop I owned right while I was still recovering from the previous accidents. Then, I was rear-ended by a truck in 2019 while driving a golf cart right before I was about to go out on a cruise ship tour.

Thank God I miraculously recovered from that last accident and was able to make the tour. I made it to the tour while still having a concussion, hurt and sore, and still pushing to learn new songs at the same time. I used up most of my free time studying and practicing as much as I could and would get on a drum set every chance I got. I felt like I had to catch up on lost time, and I had to rebuild my aging muscles. I still struggle with the amount of practice I have to do to keep up and stay a relevant musician.

Talking about relevance, staying away from music for 7 years didn’t do me any favors. When I came back to drumming, the world of drums had changed drastically, from sounds to styles, and everything in-between. I felt like a beginner learning all over again. Add to that production had changed as well. In sound, styles, and technology. So I set out to look for mentors to help me move along quickly. I was blessed to call on a friend, Michael Whittaker, a prolific music producer and composer here in Nashville to help me speed up the process.

Thanks to God he accepted me as an intern, and now I’m back on track. So much so that we’ve even partnered in productions, and I’m currently studying film scoring with him. There may be a lot of struggles, but with God, hard work, and determination everything is possible. I’ve already produced and released two singles which I’m proud of and played drums with various notable artists since I came back to music full time.

It has all been worth it.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I specialize in Music Production, and I’m known for both music production and drumming. I’m most proud of my latest production, “No Longer Mine” ft. Sharif Iman and “Heartbreak Shuffle” by Sarah Dawn. Also, two of my favorite tours as a drummer for Marie Wise Hawkins for Norwegian Cruise Lines, as well as a Christmas tour with Jaci Velasquez.

I believe that being a multi-instrumentalist and certified engineer aids tremendously in my work as a music producer, and that is something unique that I offer artists and bands in helping them make their music come alive. I’m able to take the vision of the artist and enhance it in a way that fits their sound and serves their song.

Not only creating what they have envisioned but expanding on it and helping them reach new heights where their craft has grown and is even more inspired to future creation when the project is done.

What was your favorite childhood memory?
My favorite childhood memory was growing up in NYC.

There was one summer when I was about 15 years old and with my newfound independence, I would go to High Bridge Park Pool just about every day and spend the evening playing basketball at the park across my street.

I was outdoors so much that I caught a purple tan that summer and was unrecognizable when I returned to school! Those were some of the most memorable days of my youth.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.jpadmusic.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jpadmusic
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JPADPRODUCTIONS
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/JPadMusic

Image Credits
Estelle Massry, NIVZ Photography, Bryan Collins, Glen Weis, and Melody Alvarado