Veteran drummer Leon Joyce lends his percussion skills to an organ trio.

From the very beginning, drums have been Leon Joyce Jr.’s only instrument. He recalls tapping out rhythms to music playing on the radio and television, using boxes with pencils before pounding on pots and pans with silverware in the kitchen. His mom gave him drum lessons when he was just 7 – probably to save the utensils – and his die was cast.

Shortly after graduating from high school in Meriden, Connecticut he enlisted in the Marine Corps. It was there that he received additional training, emerging not only as a drummer but also as a bandleader. He recalls being wowed by jazz piano great Ramsey Lewis’ 1977 albumTequila Mockingbird. Little did he know he’d end up being the keyboard legend’s drummer a quarter-century later.

Joyce was playing a July Fourth side gig in 2001 in Chicago with Lewis’ bassist, Larry Gray, who passed Joyce’s name to Lewis. His phone didn’t ring until September. “It had been so long I was surprised he even called at all,” Joyce recalls.

Lewis offered up four gigs, the first two of which were cancelled in the wake of 9/11. And before the other two happened, Joyce received a second call asking him to come to the recording studio.

“I still had never even met him and here he was asking me to help finish his record,” Joyce says. The two men finally played live together at a jazz festival in Phoenix that October. After the show, Lewis asked Joyce to be his primary drummer. “I was floored, and when I told my mom she was speechless,” Joyce says. “We couldn’t believe it.”

The association lasted nine years spanning six albums, two television specials and multiple tours. Joyce still calls the pianist “Mr. Lewis.”

Since relocating to Seaside from Chicago in 2011, the drummer has been a mainstay of the regional jazz scene, largely in the Bay Area. He brings a talented trio of himself, bassist Ken Okada and organist Brian Ho to downtown Monterey this weekend as part of a regular Sunday night jazz series at East Village Coffee Lounge. Expect traditional and contemporary jazz stylings, fueled by a drummer whose feeling-laden, detailed style invokes Max Roach, Buddy Rich or Louis Bellson rather than the brainiac power styles so present today.

“They can call me old-school if they want,” Joyce says. “A friend of mine, Oakland guitarist Calvin Keys, likes to say ‘Old-school is the real school.’ So be it.”

LEON JOYCE ORGAN TRIO 5pm Sunday, Jan. 26. East Village Coffee Lounge, 498 Washington St., Monterey. $10. 373-5601.