Four Years Drumming

This holiday season marks the end of my 4th year as a drummer. I think I've started this reflection a few times now, but I can't find where. So much for tags and organization. So here it goes again, my apologies if I'm blatantly repeating myself.

I bought my house in Sept/Oct of 2005. On my trip to Indiana for Christmas of that year, I stopped by Drums and Moore "just to look". There was a full used kit with hardwear and cymbals for less than $400 and I couldn't help myself. And so it began.

That summer after a couple of intro lessongs and many months spent alone in my basement with the Wings greatest hits and the first MP disk, I answered a Craig's List ad and joined a band which I have nicknamed "The Sea Turtles" because we didn't actually have a name. We didn't last long either. It was three guys from Milwaukee. Serious stoners. We had two or three rehearsals I think. And then they just stopped showing up and never contacted me again.

In August I answered another ad and started getting together once a week with JA at his place. We'd soon added MFthe7th and became The Lollards. We played together until summer 2007, mostly originals (22 songs at the end of the run, only 6 of which were covers). We recorded a 5 song (was supposed to be 6 but the 6th got eaten) EP and played out about once a month. JA decided to move away and broke up the group.

Right about the time I saw that The Lollards was ending, I answered yet another Craig's List ad and joined what was then called Champion Brunch in summer 2007. We were soon Shanghai Party Boss and played together through August of 2008. We also played out about once a month, played nearly all originals, and we recorded a 12 song album. They kicked me out and moved on under the moniker The No and Maybe Game.

A few months later I got the bright idea to audition for Aniv de la Rev, then realized it was not to be. On a drunken whim, JG invented a new band, I suspect just so we could play together. And so the Seven Stone Weaklings were born. We flipped the trend of playing originals...and play mostly covers.

There's been a rehearsal or two of a few other things that never got off the ground...and just a month ago I started playing with a aforeto-unnamed project with two of the surviving members of The MF7 and another.

Today I realized that I have a great deal of video documentation on the progression of my public drumming(I found more than 20 videos online today of me playing with SPB for instance and nearly that many already of SSW). And there's something nearly every year at this time. Here's the last four years of my life in drums via crappy music videos:

November 2006: The Lollards first show


December 2007: Christmas with Shanghai Party Boss (playing the only song I wrote for the band, Tumblin' Down)


Fall/Winter 2008:
This space left intentionally blank

September 2009: Labor Day with Seven Stone Weaklings (we have Christmas time shows planned, but don't suspect the playing will be any better than it is here...and don't know if they'll be video evidence). Witty bantor, me singing Warsaw, plus a JG original.