Pic from our last show

This is a pic from our last gig at Club 356 back on Aug.24. Yes, that's my goofy drummer's expression. I'm trying to count, what can I say! I'm just a newbie drummer although I guess I've now been playing for almost 7 years. I must have started in 2000 when I came back from a trip to Seattle. I stayed with a friend there who played guitar/keyboards. We went to the Experience Music Project, or EMP (and science fiction museum? They must have added the SF part since then). At the EMP they have walking tours of various music displays, some I think were specific to Seattle, like Heart's jackets (the girls' outfits I mean), Jimi Hendrix' guitar (if I remember correctly), etc. Incidentally, as it says on this Wikipedia entry, the EMP was designed by Frank Gehry, just like the dancing building I just saw in Prague. But more interestingly to me the EMP also had these jam rooms. You could go in there for about 10 minutes and jam on instruments. So my friend picks up a guitar, his then girlfriend got on the keys, and I sat behind the drums. Those two were jamming in seconds while I sat there stupefied. So as soon as I got back to SC I signed up for drum lessons.

My main question then was whether drumming could be learned or whether it was innate. I had this idea that getting each of the four limbs to do something different was inherent and could not be developed from training. My first drum instructor assured me that was not the case and one could learn to drum. So I started taking lessons. At home to practice I started playing on empty coffee cans with their plastic lids acting as skins. Two reasons for this: they're quieter and cheaper than a real acoustic set. In addition Corey wanted to make sure that I'd actually stick with this new hobby before I went out and blew a bunch of money on equipment (musical instruments ain't cheap).

Three drum kits and two bands later, I guess the drumming thing stuck. The kit at left is my Gretsch Catalina Maple kit. You can get more details on my drum page. This is the kit I use at gigs. I haul the whole thing around in bags in our pickup truck, carpet and all. Last time I set up at 356 it took me about 90 minutes to set up and mic the kit. I also have a Pearl Rhythm Traveler kit sitting at our harmonica player's house where we hold our weekly practices. He kindly lets me keep it there without having to break it down and set up each time. The Rhythm Traveler was my first acoustic kit. I bought it for its compactness: you can assemble it all in just a couple of bags because the toms lack bottom (resonant) heads so they just fit in like the Baboushka dolls. I could never get that kit to sound good. I think it just used pretty cheap Birch shells so its sound was never really that decent. It's good enough for practice but I don't think it's good enough for gigs. I did use it for the couple of times I played with my first trio band (guitarist, bassist, and me). We only played a couple of times before we split up. The Pearl kit is also too loud for home practice. So at home I use a Pintech electronic drum set. It's a bit quieter since it just sounds like you're hitting pads, but Corey tells me it's still annoying to the casual listener. I know the cats tend to run out of the room whenever I start playing it. One of these days I might consider changing it out for a Roland V-Drum kit; those used to be the creme de la creme of electronic kits. And I think they were also the quietest since they used mesh heads.

For now the drum kits I have are good enough for what the Hoodoo Hounds are doing. Most recently we just took some band photos last night for cover art for our demo CD. I think the intention is to lay down a few more tracks in the studio (maybe 3 songs a semester?) so that eventually we have a complete CD. In the meantime, once the 3 songs that we have recorded get finalized, we'll post them to internet radio stations, maybe Radio Paradise and maybe sell them for $3 at gigs. We'll see. Next gig may be as soon as Oct.5. At 356, where else? :)