David Foster and Katharine McPhee don’t have an explanation for their 2-year-old son Rennie’s impressive drumming skills.
“We play together and I jam with him, but I don’t know where he learned,” Foster, 74, exclusively told Us Weekly while on the Golden Globes red carpet in Beverly Hills on Sunday, January 7. “I swear I’m not a drummer. I have no idea how he learned. So fluid. That’s the real mind-blowing thing.”
Foster added, “He’s not even potty-trained.”
Other than his prodigious musical skills, Rennie is “just a normal kid,” Foster emphasized. “He puts the drums down and plays with his toys.”
Though Rennie will be on the road as Foster and McPhee, who married in 2019, tour together starting in February, don’t expect the parents to bring their toddler on stage. “I don’t want to parade him in front of everyone. He’s young, he’s a kid,” Foster said.
Rennie was jamming on the drums in a video shared via Instagram by Foster, a prolific music producer, last week. It attracted praise from Charlie Puth, Jewel, Jermaine Dupri and more. Velvet Revolver drummer Matt Sorum even commented, “He’s killing it , The 1 is there !! crazy fills and always nails the 1 , I like how you were getting him to do 16ths on the hat and he finally went there.”
Rennie’s latest video even shows improvement from the October 2023 clip McPhee, 39, posted — which was still very impressive.
“I think for a long time we thought it was cute and interesting that he really loved the drums and seemed to be talented towards them, but he’s really gone to another level,” the American Idol alum told Us at the time. “And so now the text messages between me and my husband are changing. ‘This is really crazy, right?’ The control, the obsession of the drive of playing as much as he does throughout the day. I’ll say, ‘Do you want to go to the park? Do you want to go somewhere, like, fun?’ Somewhere where any kid would say, ‘Yeah!’ And he said, ‘I wanna play my drums.’”
McPhee, who married Foster in 2019, admitted that she wasn’t so sure Rennie was a prodigy when he first showed signs of talent.
“I’d sort of pooh-poohed it for a long time where I didn’t think that it was anything like what people were saying it is, but it looks like it’s something really kind of undeniable for him in his future,” McPhee told Us. “I don’t know whether he’ll stick with it, but it’s pretty impressive, I will say.”
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
