Monday night, at my jazz gig at The Slipway, I was discussing an upcoming absence of mine, and inquiring with the guys in the band about a sub. Steve Grover’s name came up as a possibility as a sub, but guitar player Dave said “I think I heard he’s struggling with cancer.” That’s the first time I heard such a thing.<\/p>\n
In 1990, I was a Jazz and Contemporary Music major at the University of Maine, Augusta. The jazz program there was highly regarded at the time; it was where players went who couldn’t afford Berklee. I, of course, couldn’t afford Berklee, so UMA made a good choice. It was affordable, a fine school, and only an hour away from my parent’s house, so I could live at home. So I did. And Steve Grover was my drum instructor.<\/p>\n
So intense was that music instruction that the one hour weekly lesson actually counted as two credit hours. I learned\u00a0so much\u00a0<\/em>from Steve in that one semester, it’s unreal. So much of who I am as a jazz player came\u00a0directly\u00a0<\/em>from Steve. I took jazz band in high school, and studied drums privately, but not really JAZZ drumming. That all came from Steve. Steve taught me the hemiola<\/a>. Steve taught me independence<\/a>, and comping<\/a>. Steve beat alternating sticking into my head. He taught me how to count out loud by insisting that I do it–something I try to get MY students to do. And it was Steve that realized I’d been playing my right and left flams<\/a> backwards for years! He made me go back and re-learn them–something that was\u00a0very\u00a0<\/em>hard to do. All this stuff from Steve.<\/p>\n Wednesday night, two days after the initial news that Steve might be sick, I see a note from a mutual friend and trumpet player on Facebook. Steve’s in hospice. Hospice?! As I read down through the comments, I see “Steve’s taken a turn for the worse. He’s not in hospice. He’s in the hospital. He’s not expected to ever come out.”<\/p>\n Last night, just before 6pm, I was just about to start another gig, when I took a quick glance on Facebook. Steve died<\/a>. Rest in peace Steve. You made a difference in my playing, and you made a difference in me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Monday night, at my jazz gig at The Slipway, I was discussing an upcoming absence of mine, and inquiring with the guys in the band about a sub. Steve Grover’s name came up as a possibility as a sub, but guitar player Dave said “I think I heard he’s struggling with cancer.” That’s the first … [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-1259","6":"format-standard","7":"category-music-and-drumming"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/billyrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259","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=1259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/billyrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1260,"href":"https:\/\/billyrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259\/revisions\/1260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/billyrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billyrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billyrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}