{"id":1203,"date":"2016-02-29T19:20:59","date_gmt":"2016-02-29T19:20:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/billyrhythm.com\/?p=1203"},"modified":"2016-02-29T19:25:00","modified_gmt":"2016-02-29T19:25:00","slug":"getting-into-the-woodshed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/billyrhythm.com\/?p=1203","title":{"rendered":"Getting Into the Woodshed"},"content":{"rendered":"

So what was the impetus for me getting into the woodshed<\/a>? Why have I all of a sudden been on a practice jag? I’ll tell you the story. Listen my children and you shall hear…<\/p>\n

I\"burgundy<\/a> was playing a gig at a local place here in Rockland ME. On this particular gig, I opted to use my ’66 Ludwig Super Classic kit. (Here’s some vintage drum knowledge for you.) Burgundy Sparkle was only available for 3-4 years, from about ’66 to ’69, with maybe some spill over on either side. Usually, you could count on Burgundy Sparkle being dated somewhere in those years. The Super Classic is a designation Ludwig used for a 22″ bass drum with a 13″ tom tom and a 16″ floor tom. This particular drum kit is everything one would want to see in a Super Classic; matching “keystone” badges, rail consolette tom mounts, “baseball bat” mufflers, and white painted interiors. It’s just a regular, unmolested, honest Ludwig drum kit in somewhat rare finish.<\/p>\n

So anyway, on my break, I head to the bar for coffee (my usual drink of choice), and there’s a guy sitting there, regular looking guy, and he says to me “That’s a pretty interesting Ludwig kit you’ve got there. Is it vintage?” So of course I drum geek out on him, and tell him all about it. I ask him if he plays, and he says that he does. He then says to me “I also noticed your grip; you must’ve studied somewhere.” And so I recount how I was a music major for a little while at UMA<\/a>, and at the time I was there the jazz program was highly regarded, and it was known as the jazz school you went to if you couldn’t afford Berklee. And I said, not a little smugly, “I studied with Steve Grover<\/a>.” I looks at me quizzically. I inform him that Steve is the\u00a0<\/em>jazz cat to call for drums in ME.<\/p>\n

So this part gets a little hazy. After this little bit of bragging on my part, the guy I’m talking to mentions his name; it’s Tom Oldakowski. Then Tom drops this other little bomb on me: he’s the drummer for Radio City Music Hall.<\/p>\n

Over the last year, Tom and I have hung out a few times. When he’s in the area, we have lunch, talk drums, catch a local act, or whatever. And his aquaintance has really inspired me. As we talked that night, I told him that my hand work stinks. And it does. He, very kindly (everything he says is very kind), said he thought my hands looked good. They don’t. He’s being a gentleman. But meeting him has made me\u00a0work\u00a0<\/em>on my hands. I’m actually\u00a0practicing,\u00a0<\/em>not just playing drums along with some music on the stereo. And it’s because of a chance meeting in the little town where I live, where a big fish in a big pond let the big fish in the little pond know… Hey, you’ve got work to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So what was the impetus for me getting into the woodshed? Why have I all of a sudden been on a practice jag? I’ll tell you the story. Listen my children and you shall hear… I was playing a gig at a local place here in Rockland ME. On this particular gig, I opted to … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-brhythm","4":"post-1203","6":"format-standard","7":"category-music-and-drumming"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/billyrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/billyrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/billyrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billyrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billyrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1203"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/billyrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1208,"href":"https:\/\/billyrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203\/revisions\/1208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/billyrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billyrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billyrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}