Monthly Roundup #12 - February '19

Welcome back for another exciting episode of… Ah, who am I kidding - if you’re still here and interested in my drummy goings-on, it’s great to have you back! February got off to a busy start, but then settled down a bit - which is a good job really, as March is looking very busy! Here’s a brief run-down of my February…

The first thing on was a run of “West Side Story” - what a show! It was put on by a local private school, and one of the real treats of the week was that I got to play kit alongside a good friend of mine (Matt Hobson) who was on percussion, which we haven’t had the chance to do before. Needless to say it was a show that required a bit of homework, but it all came together nicely and was a real pleasure to be a part of. I had played a number of the “favourites” from the show over the years, but never the show in full, so that made a nice change.

West Side Story setup - unfortunately I did have to sacrifice the 19” Beautiful Baby on the right for space saving though, and the splash didn’t make it to the end of the week either!

Matt taking good care of the percussion side of things!

Over the Weds/Thurs/Fri of the show week, I also had some studio time during the day, which was another real treat! That was with Pete James and the guys again, but this time recording something under the name “Throwback Kid”. We last recorded an EP, “Flowing With The Feeling” back in January 2017, so now two years on, Pete was ready with a new batch of songs! Once again, it was really nice to have some time to get creative with the songs in the studio and to take some time to craft them as best we could. In the end, we were all really pleased with the songs we recorded, and look forward to hearing them again once engineer/producer Trev has worked his magic on them!

A shot of the studio setup.

Another studio shot.

After the crazy week of West Side Story and studio time all coming at once, the following week was a regular teaching one where I was able to get back into my usual routine and get back to practicing etc, then the week after that was half-term, so my wife and I took the opportunity to go away for a few days which was a welcome break!

The final week of February consisted of the usual teaching, then our second “Drum Hang” which I set up at the start of the year. Last time we gathered, spending an evening checking out one another’s snare drums got the top vote for what to do next time, and the pictures below show you what we turned up with between us… Quite a collection! While the snare drums were fun, the real pleasure was meeting up with a group of wonderful drummers, making introductions and hanging out together. I was really pleased that a few new faces were added to the group too even since our first meet, so that was great!

The group’s snare drum collections (or some of them, at least!) - with all those wonderful drums in one place, it seemed too good a photo opportunity to miss!

And this is my own snare drum collection as it stands at this moment in time… Pleased to say they all get used regularly in different settings!

So there we have it! As you see, February wasn’t too busy (besides that hectic first week!), but that’s fine by me as March is set to be pretty non-stop… That said, I’m looking forward to the variety that it’s set to hold! As always, thanks for checking in and I’ll look forward to catching you next time. All the best! Ed.