_Unless something pops up for next weekend, the Bar Pilots will wrap up its first year as a band. Since last October, Rob has informed me that we've played 24 shows to 3000 attendees. The drum chair has transitioned through three drummers, which meant that we covered the same ground each time we got a new drummer up to speed, so the two of us got further along in the maturation of our songs and our sound.

We've made a lot of fans so far, but the thing that perplexes us is the fact that most bars don't do the least to promote their live music. We put our own custom posters up in their establishments, we e-blast and facebook our friends; from a fanbase of over 1,000 people. But sadly, most bars don't even post a calendar, or have a website, or at the very least, update their facebook page. All the action on their facebook page comes from us announcing our shows. Yet they expect you to fill the place for them.

So we play and have fun and entertain our faithful fans who come out. That's the satisfaction we take into the Christmas season, thankful that we've been blessed with some talent, some showmanship, some good equipment and lots of love from our friends. We love you all right back! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Bar Pilots. Here's to an even better year in 2012.
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I'm riding a bummer after hearing of Steven Job's death. It is a grief not unlike the ones I experienced after John Lennon and Stevie Ray Vaughn died so tragically. What is it with innovators leaving the earthly plane before their creative arcs are complete? Only 56, lost to pancreatic cancer, the most formidable of its many forms, Job's was a game-changer. What didn't his contributions touch? From computer technology and how it would define the internet, to mobile smart devices and this is the one of mixed feelings-iTunes, and how it has redefined the music industry, the artists, and the enthusiasts. I'm glad it has weakened the traditional corporate strangle-hold on artists' creative control and diminished its power to decide what music is culturally relevant and marketable. It has put ownership back into independent musical efforts and made its offerings globally accessible, for $.99 at that! But in another way, it has brought about a sea change in the way musicians are rewarded and intensified the more difficult aspects of making a living at it. I expect that it will all smooth out eventually. Still, iTunes has made it possible to open yourself to the musical universe and hear new things in the time it takes to click your mouse. But all of this irons out, right? We'll see. In the meantime, I'm sad about Steve Jobs. Another rock star has died all-too-young, and we'll be hard-pressed to imagine the things that were in-store for us from this true visionary.
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A private party that asked us to play has canceled. They agreed to the fee and then three weeks later they basically said thanks anyway, we found a band that will play for free. As we say in the South: my, wasn't that tacky? This hirer agreed to an oral contract and then backed out. Well sister, good luck with that free band, because you're gonna get what you paid for. I have a feeling you would've been a hard time anyway. So, on the other hand, thanks for saving us the trouble.
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I get an email just two hours ago checking my availability for a gig that's four weeks away. I email back that I'm available, but get an automatic response that the person is away. In the meantime, I'm looking over the reference media links he sent. Remember, this is all within two hours of an email stating "please let me know if this is something you might be interested in".  So I call the dude to tell him I can do it and he says "thanks, but I got it filled". 

"Okaaaay" I replied, a little off-balance. He went on, "yeah, 'Joe' called back first after I sent an email blast out to several drummers". Then he asked me about my drumming experience. "What's the point?" I'm thinking, but I filled him in, referred him to my website and commented, "I guess that's how they do it out here. Back on the east coast I always got a chance to respond before the next guy got the call". (Meaning: you go down the line as a courtesy. To me it shows you care about who you hire.) I think he got my point. This happens all the time in Portland. I guess it's more important to just get somebody and cross it off the list than it is to practice good business ethics, for a gig four weeks away, mind you!

But I'm easily irked about this stuff. To a bandleader, I know I'm just one of many available subs, even though I've worked hard at my trade and I can step into unrehearsed gigs with ease. I just think if I'm taking the moment to consider the gig and look through the stuff as asked, then call back within a reasonable time only to be told that someone else called first; then I just wasted a bunch of time for nothing.

Most likely, I'm irked because I talked myself into thinking I should do the gig (because I'm intentionally not accepting as many drum gigs). Then I feel dissed. I realize he was not trying to dis me. But every time it happens I feel the same way. So it must be bugging me for good reason. What do you think?
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Bottom line and happy about it: the Bar Pilots, in which I play bass, has a new drummer. His name is Tom Krause and he's a likeable, experienced player and vocalist. We found him on Craigslist.

Craigslist is a great source. It's also a bad source. We got lucky with Thom, because good musicians continue to use Craigslist. But putting a classified ad on CL is like trolling in a bog; most of what you net, you throw back in. I realize that the CL musicians' community page is good for just that: our music community. Newly relocated players can network and immerse themselves in our scene, and inexperienced players can get their feet wet.

Here's where it lacks socially. Coarse, flaky, big-talking wannabes pool in this site. A lot of time was wasted in the process by musicians who led me on, backed out, or just didn't show up to scheduled auditions.

Drummers already suffer a bad reputation, "they're not really musicians, they're unpredictable, without a girlfriend they're homeless, and one has been known to spontaneously combust."  I haven't witnessed immolation with syncopation, but I have seen drummers pass out behind the kit, forget their drum sticks, and throw tirades at innocent club-goers.

It doesn't turn the tide of common opinion when drummers respond to want ads with emails that are full of typos, misspellings and braggadocio. Wouldn't you cringe to find a typo on your resumé after it leaves your hands? The effect is the same. Maybe that's why so many drummers can't find work.

But one of them has, and he's with us. Now I can concentrate on other things, like the music. Thanks, Craigslist, for the most part.


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When I was little, my mom and dad made sure that I got to spend time with my cousins who lived out of town.  But this particular cousin was already in college and I wasn't yet ten years.  So, I spent some quality time with the drum set he left behind while he was away at school.  They were a 60's red sparkle Japanese knock-off of a four piece Gretsch kit.  My folks would have to tear me away from them when it was time to go home.  Before my dad married and settled down, he was a USO-touring rock and roll doghouse bass player.  He understood the pure joy I felt when I put the drum sticks to the skins and why I would turn inward on our long rides home.  A year later, the same red sparkle Norma drums appeared under our Christmas tree; my cousin sold them to my pop for $100.  That gift remains the best thing I ever got for Christmas, and subsequent birthdays were celebrated with cymbals, sticks and pedals to upgrade the worn out parts.

I really wanted dad to teach me bass, but he was so busy providing for us he didn't have the time. Still, I felt his pride, in the orchestra pit of a community theater production, when we became a father & son rhythm section.  At home, mom played piano and sang songs her mother had written in her native Spanish; the tears rolling down her cheeks with love and sadness, I'm sure.  We were a musical family and my interests were encouraged, even though that meant ten years of bombastic noise coming from my bedroom. 

To this day, the drums remain a constant in my life and have been the reason for so many of my life experiences.  After my folks  moved on, (no doubt singing love songs to each other), my father's bass continued to haunt me, untapped and unresolved.  Years passed by until I went out and bought the nicest Fender Jazz bass guitar I could afford.  That was about six years or seven years ago.  Playing drums for so many years with great bass players gave me an incredible head start with my new love.  I can't pick it up without thinking about my pop. I hope and pray I never will.
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The 1970's. American-built muscle cars and my teen years. When everything important to a kid was cast and set in motion.  My first car was a '70 Pontiac LeMans with a 350 cubic inch V8.  After killing it twice and rebuilding it with my pals, I raised hell in a '77 Camaro followed by a '79.  It gets murky after that, something about an RX7 and a couple of Ford pickups.  But in those formative, fevered, and halcyon weekends, performance was the centermark.  The roar and vibration of going way too fast and the immortality of youth pushed me, pulled me, kept me directed during the awkward years of boy into man.  But the noise and pulse weren't only generated from gunning an engine.  It came strong and steady, from my soul through my body, at the drums.  They were '74 Ludwigs, and wildly popular due to Ringo Starr's affinity for American drums. They came to define me. Through endless hours playing to records in my room to teen dance gigs. To making a living with them and trying to make a living with them.  For the drums' inherent capacity to provide stress therapy and a place to escape within, I've had no better confidant and no truer a partner.

Through life's many diversions, careers and false starts, and the many drum kits (most of them Ludwigs) along the way, what matters most is happiness.  For me that still boils down to performance.  Real performance.  SuperSport performance.  Anybody want to get rid of their old Chevy Chevelle SS?  I'm always looking.
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Okay, I didn't make this up, but it's a true story that goes something like this:

The bandleader informs the band that he just took a pro-bono gig that starts early Saturday morning. The drummer quickly responds that he can't do it because he's got anal glaucoma. The band leader asks "what's that?"

The drummer responds "I just can't see my ass getting up early to play no gig for free"!
(you can use this excuse in any situation) Thanks to Lynn Axtell, Kalama, WA.

-V-



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Every time I pack my drums for a gig, I also pack my emergency drum repair kit. It's a little sectioned plastic box I purchased at a hardware store. Inside it I keep felt washers, cymbal thread sleeves, wingnuts, pedal straps, drum keys, an extra high-hat clutch, snare tape or wires, moongel or moleskin for drum head dampening, a multi-bit screwdriver, pliers, an eXacto-knife, wire cutters, bandaids, and a bottle opener.

I also keep on hand super glue, nine-volt batteries, guitar picks, a guitar cord, and an old guitar strap. Your bandmates will thank you for saving their bacon on the oft occasion when they forget something. A little preparation makes for a more enjoyable gig.

What do you have in your repair kit that I've forgotten?

-V-





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Cymbal bags and hardware cases can get very heavy and unwieldy. You can injure yourself just by awkwardly lifting them. When I was favoring my right shoulder due to a rotator cuff injury, I pressed my left arm into more service on the load-ins and load-outs. That's when I developed tendonitus or "tennis elbow". Only time and TLC will cure that. So now I wear ACE tennis elbow straps on my forearms when I load. The strap puts support pressure on the tendon so it doesn't bear the brunt of the weight of your carry item. Remember to take them off before you play as you shouldn't wear them all the time.

-V-



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