I started playing drums around 1978 before I was 10 years old.
It must've been around that time my Uncle Greg, who was more a big brother to me than a younger half-brother to my mom, put together this ramshackle drumkit in his mancave of a basement. Well, it was his parent's basement and Grandma Wright--Lord love her!--put up with our noise making! The foundation of the kit was a 4-piece, Ringo-style kit with pearlized shells, but my uncle had added other drums, like a snareless snare drum that was gerry-rigged with cable and tape as a "rack" tom and then there were the mismatched cymbals.
Let me backup and set the stage for you, so to speak...and there was actually a stage. In the northwest corner of my grandma's basement, under the guest bedroom and bath, sat what today we'd call a mancave. In there, my uncle had his workbench, a converted model train table cluttered with projects in various stages of completion. He was a tinkerer by hobby. Across the room, he'd built a one-foot high drum riser out of plywood and two-by-fours that he covered with artificial turf, the bright green scratchy kind. Atop that riser, sat his ramshackle drumkit that would've looked appropriate as part of Fat Albert's Junkyard Gang.
Now the masonry walls were painted a deep blue, a shade darker than royal, but lighter than navy. Upon that backdrop, my uncle had hand painted the Journey "Evolution" album cover and something from the Prince collection, who at that time was still the artist KNOWN simply as Prince. Now the painting may have come sometime later, probably the 80's, but this is how I remember Greg's mancave. Against the wall sat his behemoth homemade speaker cabinets with two woofers--12- or 15-inch, I'm not sure which. Suffice to say, those suckers were loud. They were powered by this pieced together Hi-Fi system that was my uncle's crown jewel!
His album collection contained the hottest rock on vinyl from that era--Journey, Foreigner, Styx, Toto and the like--so that's what he liked to play along to. The first songs I remember him playing for me were "Hot Blooded" and "Hold the Line," at such extreme volumes so as to hear the music over his heavy-handed playing. I wanted to emulate him, emulating Foreigner's Dennis Elliott and Toto's Jeff Porcaro. When I took the 5A sticks in my hand and felt the pedals beneath my feet, there was a jolt of energy and something took hold of me. Those sticks would become my magic wands, of sorts.
I played for countless hours--to my grandparent's chagrin--along with those records, trying to get every nuance of Jeff Porcaro's 4/4 blues pattern with the triplet feel and matching the power of Elliott's hard-driving pulse. I would eventually work up the nerve to try capturing Neil Peart's essence on 2112 "Overture/Temples of Syrinx." That album, brought over by my uncle's buddy Gary Davis, transfixed me for hours and launched my lifelong love affair with Peart and his band, Rush!
Long after Uncle Greg's flirtation with the drums ended, I began making magic on his ramshackle drumkit in the basement. He'd be out with girls during his high school days (Class of 82) or playing basketball with his buds in the backyard and I'd be hammering away Loverboy's "Turn Me Loose" or Journey's "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'" inside. In fact, that Journey tune was probably the second song I learned after "Hot Blooded." Those two and "Hold the Line" (Toto) were the first three songs I ever played on a set of drums. Prior to that, I'd only played pillows on my bed or mom's couch with two Lincoln logs.
I'd eventually graduate to much more diverse music, starting with Styx, Rush, Led Zeppelin and Triumph, but everything I played I learned by ear. I'd already trained myself to listen to the beat of any song first, to learn the drum pattern and to play in time along with records or the radio. I think that's the best way to learn to play the drums. Playing in-time with vinyl records was better than trying to match the speed of the metronome because music has a pulse and a groove. There is no way to simulate that any other way, unless you have recorded rhythm tracks with which to keep time.
When we moved away from Indiana after my high school graduation in '86, my uncle offered for me to take his drumkit with me. It had been scaled down to the original Ringo-style foundation and a couple of cymbals, but it was the perfect size to fit our Tallahassee apartment bedroom, the one I shared with my brother. My parents would never buy me a set of drums. Apart from the expense, they didn't have the patience or hardness of hearing like my grandparents in Princeton (IN). However, they graciously acquiesced because they knew how much my passion for drumming had grown.
It was in that small apartment bedroom at Cameron at Woodcrest in Tallahassee (now Live Oak at 850), that I worked up the nerve to play publicly. So that when asked to play in front of the youth group at church, I did and I was hooked on the live playing experience. I cut my teeth playing for youth group, adult choir and orchestra and eventually the "first string" worship team at Christian Heritage Church. That's where I cut my teeth on the drums and learned various forms of music, including gospel, R&B and big band swing--everything learned by listening, "by ear." Thus launched a lifetime of drumming passion, a pursuit that continues to this day, mostly as a side gig.It wasn't until the Spring of 2012 that I decided to join a local cover band in Fort Myers Beach that I actually played paying gigs outside of church music. I loved it so much that I've been a gigging drummer in local cover bands ever since!
