Hey, it's funny, I will need to do something similar as well.
After some research, I saw this video (they use FL Studio, but it should work in Sonar fine:)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7J5IG-hFao It's basically using short notes, close together with velocity adjustments.
Looking at the video, he also uses double tracking and pans one slightly left and the other slightly right. One the other sample, I would change the pitch of one every so slightly so there's a slight difference, talking a few cents. A little bit of reverb/spatial processing helps round it out a bit.
I also had a look at this tutorial by Cakewalk on Drum Production:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3sKXjBgjoE&t=40s Have a look around the 3:20 mark.
In this video, they use the Step sequencer and play around with flam settings and CC data to create a drum roll. This method has a LOT of advantages for doing it this way, mainly then you can work in the Step Sequencer to 'sequence' the rolls, and you also can then get MIDI patterns that can be used to 'paint' rolls when you need them.
I'm going to try to do this with the SS with Session drummer first and try to do the similar thing just like in the 1st video over the next few days (time permitting). There looks to be sufficient samples in Session Drummer for me to get started, but I may also switch to Battery or Geist or other sample packs that I have. I'll will try to post back here and let you know what I've been able to do.