Drum Circle of Life

My fascination and love of the drums began many years ago in one of those Gaussian memories in which my father escorted me to a drum kit set up for a wedding reception we attended. I was no more than five and with the drummer’s permission, Pops set me on the throne (the seat a drummer sits on) and I got to hit the drums and cymbals. The view from that perspective is one I can still conjure and I remember feeling as though that vantage had to be the best in the whole band. I was immediately enamored and that fascination stuck with me throughout my childhood and adolescent years.

By the mid-nineteen nineties, my life had taken on the hue of a Charles Dickens or V.C. Andrews novel. My mother and step-father spent much of their time in Houston seeking treatment for my mother's leukemia, leaving me all alone in a very big, very old house. Other than weekend visits from my brother and step-siblings (my stepfather's mother lived in her own home on the property and prepared meals for us), I was essentially alone. During this time, fed by the memory of that long-ago drum kit, I taught myself to play the drums. We didn't have a kit at our house, though. By using a mish-mash of items collected from around my house (a Sears catalog, water jugs, the side of an actual tom-tom drum I had salvaged) and sticks I bought to beat on any surface around me, I created a sufficient enough replica of a drum set that I could play along with music videos and recordings of concerts and slowly begin to build rudiments and gain proficiency.

At some point—as my childhood best friend Lee relates it—I told my small group of musically inclined pals at high school that I could play the drums. They laughed. I apparently said a lot of things back then. I was a teenager, after all. They were surprised when, sitting down at our school's drum kit one day, I began to play and, as Lee tells the tale, played well.

We eventually started a band. Our band teacher at the time allowed me to join the jazz ensemble and play with some of the older kids, further building on my piecemeal skill. A drummer friend from another band let me have time on his personal set. Soon enough we had recorded several demo tapes and had gig venues booked. I was the band's drummer and piano player (also self-taught) and one of the vocalists. We grew and got better as a group and I continued to practice and get better myself. After graduation Lee and I headed to school in the Midwest, where I was exposed to even more talented musicians and became even more proficient at drums. The future, as Tom Petty said, was wide open.

Like in all such tales of youth the glory was fleeting. My mother died in the middle of my freshman year at college and it tore the potential of my musical future out of its frame, at least as far as playing the drums were concerned. After that year, I never returned to school with Lee. I took part-time courses at the local community college and the closeness with other skilled drummers evaporated. Our band continued to play during breaks when everyone was home over the next few months, but it was never again like that brief, glorious era of being the drummer in a busy band. Soon enough, other priorities and other events changed the courses of our lives.

After my mother’s death, I moved in with my father, who was, at that time, in the midst of pretty unpleasant marital problems and I was told there would be no drum kit welcome there. Soon enough, I fell in love with the guitar, which drew and kept my attention for many of the coming years. I played in countless open mic nights, and after moving to Asheboro, several small “porch gigs” around town. I have taken one of my guitars to work to play for events, and for a time, had my electric guitar in my office to noodle around with whenever the mood hit. My nephew-in-law recently built me a custom guitar which I love. Guitar is one of those instruments that can be practiced and played without waking up the neighbors and one can have several without worrying about space.

Of course over the years I’ve told people that I was a drummer at heart. I am pretty sure it was obvious, since I played “air drums” any time a good song was on or tapped and banged my limbs to the beat in my head, but it seemed that, unlike guitar and piano, drumming was to be allocated only to that brief shining time in high school. A full drum kit is expensive, takes up a lot of space, requires a lot more attention than just changing strings and the occasional tuning. Drummers, unlike guitar players, are somewhat rare and are usually pulled in a number of directions; they play for home bands, in church bands, in other people's bands sometimes, even in studio recording sessions and in symphonies and jazz festivals. It’s a much more specialized skill set. A bad guitar player can still hamfist through a set. A bad drummer cannot hide.

Life, John Lennon famously wrote, is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans. I met the love of my life, moved to North Carolina, got married, dove head first into the “hectivity” of a husband and father. The years sped by. Careers changed. We moved. The boys grew, went to college, became young men and soon enough, I was middle-aged. I love my life and I have been so fortunate to have been part of my amazing, brilliant, funny and entertaining family. I’m completely devoted to my role as husband, father, father-in-law and now, Pop Pop.

From time to time though, I would still regale myself with those memories of sitting behind a drum kit and playing with a band. We had both said over the years, Micki and I, that someday I would have a set of drums again and I held onto that hope, of course, but life is busy and there is work to be done. Anyway, by this point in my life, I was probably so rusty that it would be better if I just gave up the ghost of hope that remained. I could play well enough in my head.  Even so, I was content to hope.

Then my brother-in-law got a drum kit. He has no musical ability to speak of, just the freedom to do whatever he wants to do. Difficult as it is, I admit that upon hearing that news, I was stung by jealousy. I pride myself on being easy going and I am not generally susceptible to the petty tides of envy that may affect other people. We Bare's are generous of spirit. I tried like mad to be happy for him, but my heart had been wrung with the pangs of a negative internal dialog. I was the drummer in our family, self-taught, with demo tapes to prove it. Where did he get off having a drum kit? It really colored things for a while. After that I wrestled with the possibility that my time as a drummer had been like a fleeting love affair, the warmth of which had now faded like a winter's afternoon to frozen starlight, clear but remote, dear to me, but never again to be repeated.

The pain eased eventually and I felt sheepish and chagrined for my flirtation with the green-eyed monster. Anyone should be able to get and have drums, I said to myself. The more the merrier, I said to myself. I knew that this wasn't about my brother-in-law so much as it was about me owning up to reality. I have a lot to be grateful for, I told myself. Shape up, I said. And up I duly shaped.

Time passed as it always does. In November, we went to my brother-in-law’s house for an early Thanksgiving gathering with some family and he told me to go play his drums if I wanted. So I did. I was most assuredly rusty. It felt good to engage those old parts of my physical and mental muscle memory, though. Micki’s cousin’s grandson, who was totting around keeping us all entertained with the comedy that only three-year-olds can muster, was immediately aware of the drums and me playing. He wanted to play. Cognisant of my father placing me on that drum throne all those years ago, I stepped in and placed the lad on the seat and gave him the sticks. He did quite well. What I hadn’t been aware of at the time, though, was that everyone else had been caught off guard by my playing. Rusty as I was, I still had it. 

I heard later that my brother-in-law was very unhappy about the kid playing his drums. I won’t say that this didn’t give me just a twinge of pleasure to hear. Anyway, the kid needed exposure, just as I had been given. I will say, being able to play again awakened that age-old urge in me. Somehow, too, having been able to take up the sticks and hammer away for a bit also reminded me of the sheer joy that playing any instrument gives me. I felt better, perhaps even healed a bit and my hopes that one day I would have my own kit kindled again in that secret place in my heart.

Then Christmas rolled around. We shopped and prepared mentally and emotionally to share the holidays with everyone (including us) away from home. We packed the car with presents and our pups and headed to the mountains to celebrate our new grandbaby’s first Christmas. All thoughts of drumming were, for the time being, out of my head.

Our tradition is to open presents from one another on Christmas Eve from youngest to oldest. As usual, we took a million photos and celebrated and made a big mess of paper and boxes on the carpet. I handed the phone to my son to take pictures of me opening my presents, one of which was two pairs of black drumsticks. I found this an awesome gift, as we drummers can use any surface from a car dashboard to a kitchen counter to make beats. The next gift I opened was a nice, heavy-duty winter shirt from my list. Then, Micki instructed me to open the larger box. Inside was a snare drum. I was too flummoxed in that moment, to truly capture what was happening. I got a drum. Just one and I was so full of joy and excitement that I couldn’t process what I was hearing. “The rest of it is at home,” Micki said.

“The rest of what?” I asked, demonstrating my keen brain.

“The rest of your drum set. It’s in my office. You have to put it together.”

I wish I could write well enough to express my feelings at that moment. I was shocked, surprised, completely thrilled. In my house, three hours away, in a box, was a complete drum set. Just waiting for me to come home and put it together. If it hadn’t been for the baby, who is quite good at keeping her Pop Pop distracted with her oceans of sweetness and adorability, I think I may have actually needed a straight waistcoat by the end of our visit. Every moment that I wasn’t helping the kids with special “Dave” projects or cooking or holding the wee bairn, I was thinking about my drums.

On the way home, Micki told me that once we arrived and got settled, we’d get my Green Behemoth Room set up and cleared out so I could build my kit. We got a carpet and some new drapes, too. I spent that evening putting the kit together. It had been so long since I’d set up a drum kit from scratch, but it all came back to me as if I had been doing it every day since high school. Now I have a drum kit. Much to my neighbor’s aural displeasure, I’m sure. I will be making things quite noisy regularly from now on.

I can say with absolute certainty that this was the best Christmas gift I’ve ever received and there have been plenty of genuinely good ‘uns. Sitting there in my music room, glossy, black and sleekly ready for me to make thunderous beats, my drum kit is just waiting patiently for me to practice and get better. The epoch of drumlessness is over and worth the wait. I have already begun to make a list of drum needs—things to buy to add to my kit, including hearing protection. My kit is perfect, of course, but tweaking, adding, moving, tuning, adjusting; it's what we do.

Perhaps, during those twenty-five years I never actually stopped being a drummer after all, but I certainly feel like a drummer renewed and thanks to my brilliant wife my life has come full circle, at least as far as playing the drums is concerned. It occurred to me recently that, just like we have showers for brides-to-be and new babies, we ought to have drummer showers, where family and friends ‘shower’ drummers with gifts from a carefully and thoughtfully curated list. I’m registered anywhere fine drum products are sold. In the meantime, if you hear that rumbling coming from my house, that's me.