Kickstarter

Hello Everyone,

Isn't this a great poster Hannah McGhee created for me?!

Well, I have my drums all tuned and polished for next Wednesday's recording!  For those that are new to me, I am about to celebrate my 30 year anniversary of getting my beautiful looking and sounding Sonor trap kit.

Here is the story - The day after Christmas, 1977, I launched a lobbying campaign on my parents to get my first trap kit. They got me a brand new Reuther 5-piece drum set complete with cymbals. It was a great student kit. However, as I got better and became really serious about drumming as a career, I began to outgrow the instrument. No matter how I tuned the drums, I could never get them to sound like those I listened to on the records. So, I began to save money for my first professional kit, scraping about $300 to get a Gretch 3-piece (no snare or hardware) from the world famous Frank’s Drum Shop in Chicago. My mom drove me from DeKalb to Chicago so I could make my purchase. When we got there, I eyed this 4-piece Rosewood Sonor kit in the corner. I simply could not take my eyes off it. I would go and look at it, then back to the Gretch kit I could afford. The salesman saw my curiosity and told me the kit was on sale for half price since Frank’s was going out of business and they needed to move their merchandise. I told him I only had a fifth of that. Then my mom piped up and said, “Your uncle Jimmy used to say, that sometimes you just have to go first class!” With that, the kit you see pictured was mine, which I have had for 30 years. I spent a year paying back my mom working at McDonald’s. Thanks Mom!