Revisiting Dave Hower

I was tired yesterday from running an ill-prepared for 5K and from a couple of hours of drum practice (like real practice, on actual exercises), so I decided to just play something for fun. I've been bored lately with most of the stuff that I usually play for fun, so I pulled out three Nields records and decided to play along to one of my favorite drummers, Dave Hower.

I haven't listened to or played any Nields stuff in a good long while. I always liked Hower's style and I always thought it was many notches above my own abilities.

Playing along last night I wasn't trying to copy the parts verbatim by any means, I was just having fun, but I was surprised by how easy the songs came. His parts are much more restrained than I remember (though that WAS one of the things that I always liked about him). They were heavily based in simple eighth note bass patterns and lots of ghost notes on the snare. A modified funk pattern really, which has come to be something that I have a predisposition towards. So his parts ended up being things that I'd play if I wasn't thinking too hard.

One odd thing that I noticed, that I would not have been able to identify just a few months ago, is that he plays with a ton of rim shots. A great example is the song May Day Cafe. It's crazy! Maybe it isn't actually rim shots but some metallic type snare that I don't know much about, like timbales. Whatever it is, I didn't notice it at all before, and last night it was all I could hear.

Rimshots aren't ever something that I've tried to do, but for some reason, I tend to hit them alot. It's something about the way that I have my snare set up and my technique. Anyway, once I heard them on May Day Cafe I started noticing that he does it a fair amount.

I actually got a little bored and stopped playing. I noticed how prominent that the vocals/guitars are in these songs and what a back seat the drums take. The fact that this would bore me represents a huge evolution in my musical tastes:from the singer/songwriter/acoustic guitar player to drummer. It is strange to see it so starkly displayed.

I still like The Nields and I still think Dave Hower is a great drummer. He'll always be on the short list of drummers that made me want to pick up the instrument. But it might be awhile before I can come to appreciate him as much as I once did.

I remember the first time I kissed a girl in public that it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I thought it was true love. My much more jaded partner in crime told me that it had nothing to do with love (nor, did she suspect, with my sexual orientation)...that it was all about newness and taboo. Looking back just about 18 years later I think she was only part right. It wasn't "true love" or even "real love"...it was "young love". It was all new and fresh and I was the first one to discover everything that there was to discover in the world.

I think that I have to go through the paces of young love...the love of a new drummer discovering everything for the first time...getting obsessed with John Bonham or Tre Cool or Neil Peart or "namethedrummeroftheweek." Someday, if I keep up with this madness long term, I'll have settled down from the excitement of all of those first kisses I will actually redevelop my own taste and come to appreciate music again for reasons other than hearing the most recent, most exciting, weird or complicated new drum thing. Someday I'll be able to hear the song again, the music again, instead of only being able to hear the drum part. I think when it is all said and done there will be a place for Dave Hower again, not as a hero per se, but as a well respected fellow musician whose music I will greatly enjoy. Hopefully I'll get there without any shortcuts. Young love is worth every pointless painful minute and I wouldn't trade the ride for the world.

Great example of the modified funk beat, and a song about falling down in love, Jennifer Falling Down (more Nields tunes here for the uninitiated)