So what’s the deal with drummers?

In every band you need a drummer, but a more unstable and strange lot doesn’t exist.

Perhaps the incessant violence required to beat skins with sticks, or the unnatural and crazed look that takes them over while staring into the eyes of the rhythm gods? Who’s to know where it went wrong, but there is just something wrong with people who play drums.

Now if you grew up in some old school churches you’ve heard that drums themselves might be from the devil, IE it’s “Jungle Music” and that comes from Africa where there are wicked things like drums and jungles, but as much as I enjoy drums and even other unholy things like Rock and/or Roll, I still reserve the right to mistrust drummers.

Even ones not from the jungle.

My brother had a girlfriend who broke up with him in college, destroying his tiny heart (I say tiny because he’s like a shark in a feeding frenzy during board games), so he decided he would take his anger out in the form of learning how to play the drums.

A month later and twenty Rage Against the Machine songs, he was still alone, slightly less angry, but could also play the drums?

How is that normal? Hmmm. I’m super mad right now, so I think I’ll take up an Angry Hobby?

It’s just not a healthy instrument to play. Who gets all worked up about something and decides to take out their frustrations musically? Like besides every Hip Hop artist?

Country music isn’t much better as they’ve pretty much given up and resigned themselves to their wife cheating on them and leaving and their dogs getting run over by their tractors, or whatever Country music stars sing about, at least drummers are leaning into their lives and not just going straight for the pail of ice cream at 2 AM.

One of my favourite Country jokes is when the devil offers someone fame and fortune in exchange for their souls and they don’t really care how they get it, so he makes them a Country star? I made that up years ago and still really enjoy telling it to Country fans. I hate Country music, but spent an hour at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville in August, so I’m slowly accepting the fact that it seems to be popular? Actually it’s growing on me, but I don’t want to talk about it.

I had a drummer one time who was amazingly talented but when the band lead was trying to give direction, he would randomly do cymbal crashes with everybody glaring at him because he just couldn’t sit still for forty seconds.

The same drummer called me two minutes after practice started from sixty minutes down the road saying he might “be a bit late”, all the while driving in the opposite direction. Did he have any intention of making it? Well no, he was headed the wrong way.

Commitment issues. Drummers have them.

I had a Worship Experience drummer sleep in, show up hung over, then get mad that we wouldn’t let him play in church.

 

Drummers! You can’t constantly be trying to impress us with beats WHEN WE’RE ALL TRYING TO ADULT! We know you play the drums! That’s why you’re here. No one else feels the need to turn their volume past safe eardrum level, wait for a quiet moment, and then feed their need for attention by making everyone mad! If you enjoy being yelled at, just ask someone quietly!

The reason my daughter started playing drums in my dad’s church before we planted Venue Airdrie was simple: the drummer didn’t show up one morning at all. We didn’t see him for the next couple of years. I guess his life was “too much” and he quit?

So I said to Arwen “You want to play this morning?”

“Yeah, I’ll give it a go!”

Now, not to be a jerk, but why would she walk into a no – win scenario like that?

She’s a drummer, that’s why!

But I’m not complaining anymore because this drummer shows up every Sunday, if she wants lunch after that is…