By Brent Thompson
Though Homewood High School graduate Mitch Prewitt has performed on Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel Live and the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) as the touring drummer for the crazy popular act sombr, Prewitt has a ritual that keeps him tethered to his Birmingham roots. “Right before I go on, I text Homewood’s drumline instructor Darren Holbrooks and tell him I’m about to perform,” Prewitt says in our interview at O’Henry’s Coffee. “When I do those kind of shows, I’m picturing my dad, Holbrooks and everyone else who coached me. Instead of thinking about all of America watching, I think, first I have to impress my teachers.”
And in that brief vignette, Prewitt gives a more revealing self-assessment than he probably realizes. He is a musician staying grounded while performing in remarkable settings.
Surrounded by music since birth, Prewitt had drumsticks in his hands for as long as he can remember. His dad, Tommy Prewitt, is also a drummer, perhaps best known for his time in Month of Sundays and currently with Old City Champs. “I got my first drum set when I was two,” Prewitt recalls. “Most of my friends were throwing footballs, I was playing drums in the basement.”
Prewitt’s hobby became his passion through his involvement with Mason Music. “I signed up for Mason Music’s Rock Band League when I was in the fifth grade,” he says. “Before then, I hadn’t done anything musical with real instruction. That summer, I decided ‘this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.’ We played at Iron City in a battle of the bands. Playing on that huge stage and feeling everything in your chest made me want to do it for real and forever. (Program director and founder) Will Mason is one of the kindest people I’ve ever met in my life. He’s doing so much for the music scene in Birmingham,” Prewitt says.
Once he joined Homewood High School’s renowned marching band, Prewitt’s future as a drummer was further cemented. “I credit so much to that program,” he says. “Not the technical ability, but the leadership skills you learn, falling in line, doing what you’re told and the high standard.”
After graduation, Prewitt followed his instincts by enrolling at NYU to study music. “I took a gap year right after high school,” he recalls. “My parents were leaning toward Auburn and playing it safe, getting a degree to fall back on, but that felt wrong to me. I moved to Nashville and tried a trade school program while I was doing drum sessions and working for a drum company. Then I applied to NYU for jazz—a shot in the dark—I didn’t think I’d get in, but I did. It’s an audition-based program, and I got a full-tuition scholarship.”
While at NYU, Prewitt shifted his studies from jazz drumming to the school’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music program. It also brought his first encounter with sombr (the professional name for Shane Boose). “It’s the best recorded music program in the world and the best community,” Prewitt says with excitement in his voice. “Clive Davis funds that school, and he comes and talks—it’s incredible.”
Prewitt continues, “I met sombr, Shane, through a mutual friend before he was big. He’s from the Lower East Side, and I was living on the Lower East Side. His parents lived across the street from me. We were just hanging out, playing music and rehearsing without having any shows planned. One day, he signed this deal and moved out to L.A. I saw him occasionally when he came back home. Two years later, he called and said he had a tour coming up and asked me to join. We started that tour, and over the course of four months it skyrocketed.”
Did it ever. Currently, sombr is a Grammy nominee in the “Best New Artist” category. With Prewitt on drums, sombr performed at the televised awards show on February 1. Meanwhile, sombr’s song “back to friends” has over 1.4 billion streams on Spotify. “I’m not part of the recording process,” Prewitt explains. “(sombr) keeps those two aspects of his career separate. I’ve been on tour with him since March of last year, and we’re booked through 2026. We’re going to Europe next month, playing Coachella, Lollapalooza, then a North American tour and some European festivals.”
Currently, sombr is playing venues of varying capacities. I ask Prewitt to explain that further. “Right now, we’re under-playing because it’s all been booked so far in advance,” he says. “It can’t keep up with how fast it’s moving. One night, we played to 10,000, and the next night we played to 1,000.”
The biggest crowd Prewitt has played for to date? “40,000 in Australia,” he offers nonchalantly. “In my experience, playing to a crowd that big feels like I’m playing in my basement. When we’re playing to 1,000 people, it feels super personal, and I get nervous. There are no nerves playing to an arena crowd.”
But, along with the excitement of traveling the world and performing, the realities of constant motion and strange locations are present as well. While Prewitt admits that the regimen can be unsettling, he is embracing touring life. “I’d never been to any of these places before,” he says with a laugh. “Now that I have a backline tech, I can just show up, so I get to hang out and check the cities out. It’s kind of jarring—you fall asleep on the bus and wake up and step off and you have no idea where you are. You have to figure it out every morning. It’s a big adjustment, but they take care of us, and it’s fun.”
With ties to Birmingham, New York and Los Angeles, I ask Prewitt what he considers his current home. “Birmingham really. I love New York, but you can’t play drums in a New York apartment. In Birmingham, I have access to everything I need—it’s affordable and people can make a living and create cool art. But I’ll be moving to L.A. soon because I’m constantly getting flown there. It’s just easier to make that home base for now.”
Does Prewitt have any advice for aspiring musicians? “I get DMs from musicians asking me how I did it,” he says. “It’s not savant-level skill, and it’s not practicing for extreme hours. The one thing I preach is meeting as many people as you can, maintaining those relationships and constantly checking in. sombr was someone I met at a restaurant. Out of all the people I met that semester, he just happened to be the one that hit. We worked well together, and he took off. At this point, Instagram is your resumé. The first thing people look at is your Instagram to get a gauge on who you are, how you dress and what you do.”
