‘Weird Al’ Yankovic’s drummer has played with him for over four decades. Here’s why

“Weird Al” Yankovic didn’t make much of a first impression on Jon “Bermuda” Schwartz.

“I wish I could tell you when I met him, I saw stardom in his future and my future,” Yankovic’s longtime drummer said from a tour stop in Montgomery, Alabama. “I had no idea what the future held; he had no idea. It felt like a fun thing.”

The tour comes to Kansas City’s Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts on Friday, but tickets may be sold out.

The two met in 1980, when Schwartz was a guest on radio’s “Dr. Demento Show” and Yankovic was answering request lines. “Weird Al” was debuting a parody song, “Another One Rides the Bus,” and asked Schwartz to keep rhythm on Yankovic’s accordion case.

“You should have a band,” Schwartz recalls telling him after the performance, “And I’ll be your drummer.”

Indeed, along with bass player Steve Jay and guitarist Jim West, Schwartz has been with Yankovic for more than four decades of recording and tours.

“I never knew there’d be any kind of longevity like this,” said Schwartz, who got his nickname from Yankovic. “It’s almost unprecedented for any group to stay together and continue to do well with its same members for 40-plus years.”

The band continues on the road with “The Unfortunate Return of the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour,” which began in April and continues through a late October date at Carnegie Hall in New York.

The concerts are heavy on “Weird Al” originals and light on his bread-and-butter parodies and take place without costume changes and video effects.

“It was deliberately aimed at smaller audiences and more of a hardcore fan base,” Schwartz said of an earlier tour. “Al thought it was time to do it again. We changed up a couple of things.”

The set list for every concert is different, rotating 38-39 songs, Schwartz said.

“Some songs get repeated more often than others, but every night is a different show,” he said. “A lot of fans will come to the shows just to see the different order, to hear songs they missed the last time.”

Most of the original songs, Schwartz said, are “style parodies” or pastiches, taking on a genre of music rather than a specific song or artist.

Like the previous tour, comedian Emo Phillips is the opening act.

Schwartz, whose nickname was bestowed on him by Yankovic, is releasing his second book of photos from the “Weird Al” tours, titled “Lights, Camera, Accordion!” in November. Like his 2020 book, “Black and White and Weird All Over,” it includes images taken from 1980-2006, although the new book will be all color photos.

“I’m a little surprised it’s gone as well as it has,” Schwartz said.

By 2006, Schwartz said, he lost some interest in photography as film was migrating toward digital production.

“I’m not as rabid about it as I was before, but on the other hand it doesn’t cost me anything,” he said of pictures taken on his smartphone. “I don’t ever hesitate, if I think there’s something I might use in the future.”

Also in November, the bio “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,” starring Daniel Radcliffe as the five-time Grammy winner, debuts streaming on The Roku Channel.

Yankovic has released 14 studio albums in the past 39 years, and Schwartz said there are no plans for another in the near future. In the past, he said, the act was contractually obligated to a 11-12 song album on a regular basis. But in the current era of downloads and streaming, Yankovic or any other artist can record a song and release it days later.

“There’s freedom to do one song if he wants to do one song,” Schwartz said. “He doesn’t have to wait for the other 11 to record that one song. … It really caters to the artist more than it did originally.”

Schwartz said the “Weird Al” he’s worked with for decades is as driven as he is nice.

“He knows what he wants. As producer and director of his videos, he knows in his head what he wants and how to extract it from the people around him. And he’s got a very good sense of what works, musically and visually and everything,” Schwartz said. “We have a lot of respect for him, and he has a lot of respect for us.

“It’s not just a one-way street with him,” he continued. “He’s open to suggestion, sometimes he’ll take the suggestion, sometimes not. He’s a good guy to work for. He’s pleasant, he doesn’t yell. He doesn’t get mad. I can tell when he’s unhappy with something, but most people would never know. That helps too, since we’re 24/7 on this tour for six months.”

What “Weird Al” fans see is what they get from him at work, Schwartz said.

“He’s really that nice guy he portrays,” he said. “He genuinely likes and appreciates the people who come to see him, and who make all of our careers possible. There’s nothing phony about him. He doesn’t walk off the stage and start pouting and getting depressed. He’s up all the time, he’s very genuine.”

The 66-year-old Schwartz said the reason he and his bandmates have stuck with Yankovic for decades is simple.

“Mainly, we enjoy it. We enjoy working with Al, we enjoy working with each other,” he said. “If we didn’t enjoy it, we would ask for more money.”