This story isn't as powerful in written words as the actual incident, but perhaps it is worth sharing.
I was playing an acoustic jazz gig with my trio at a venue that we work at quite often. The owner is always happy with our performances and we do have a loyal following. On this particular night, the manager asked if one of his
regular patrons could “sit in” on a couple of numbers.
As I have written before, I usually do not let strangers play my drums. However, the owner was really pushing for this fellow to play and I reluctantly agreed....with the provsion that anything he damaged would be replaced. The owner said "Oh he won't hurt your drums. He's been playing for years. I knew him back in college."
Now, I was using my small acoustic jazz kit (18” bass drum, 13” snare drum, 8”, 10” and 13” toms) and my light weight Paiste Traditionals cymbals. I had been playing with brushes and some very small maple drum sticks. Translation......my gear was set up for jazz lounge volume.
The fellow sat down at the drums as the keyboard player announced a tune and counted it off. The guest player hit “one” by crashing the ride cymbal and the crash cymbal with the butt end of these little sticks at about a quadruple forte volume level. He proceeded to play on the small snare like he was playing in a Metal band with round house tom fills every four bars. He wasn't drunk, he was just playing a (not-so-good) hard rock style in a jazz setting. I knew my single-ply coated heads weren't going to survive the punishment he was giving them.
The immediate reaction was that several customers got up and left. The other members of the band couldn’t be heard so it sounded (to the audience) like a loud drum track to some unknown tune.
At about three long minutes into this situation, the owner came to me and said “what the hell are they doing?” I said “THEY aren’t the problem. The problem is that your friend is driving your customers right out the door, and it looks and sounds like he just ruined a new set of batter heads on MY drums. My question is what are YOU going to do?”
He went up onto the stage; grabbed a microphone and said “okay ladies and gentlemen, let’s hear it for our guest drummer, Mr. ____ ____.” He, along with me and the band clapped our hands…………….but absolutely no one else in the entire room did. My guitar player softly played the intro riff to "Cold Shot" as his comment, and that brought a laugh from the audience. Fortunately, the ownwer didn't "get" the pun.
“I stepped up to the microphone beside the owner and said, “We’re going to take a ten minute break right now, but we’ll be right back to play some of the jazz requests you’ve made tonight. There's lots more cool jazz coming your way.”
The owner left the stage with his “regular patron” who left right after we ended our break and began to play again. At the end of the evening, the owner apologized for the whole incident. I accepted his apology and have never mentioned it to him again. I also brought him the drum shop receipt for a new set of replacement batter heads and the pitted, dented, ruined drum heads....as his souvenirs. He wrote me a check without hesitation.
Aside from the inconvenience of having to replace the drum heads, it was worth it because the owner learned a lesson that would never have been received well had I refused to let his "guest" play that night.
The owner wants happy customers and good sales receipts at the end of the evening. We provide those results for him on a regular basis. The happy ending to this story is that we don’t have to be concerned with his “guest players” anymore.
[ XML URL List ] --© 2007-- www.drumsoloartist.com
Drum Related Ads