“We as a band need to practice messing up.”

This was the statement my friend and I landed on over coffee the other day. He’s the worship leader at my church, and we were talking about ways for us to grow musically as a worship band.

The best bands are not the best because they never mess up. They’re the best because they know how to handle and hide mistakes. Sometimes we fear mistakes so much that our primary goal is avoiding them, rather than learning how to recover from them. You can try and try and try to never mess up, but it’s going to happen. The key in no longer fearing the mistakes is knowing how you’ll handle them. So we were brainstorming ways to actually practice doing this in rehearsal.

Believe it or not, Sunday rolled around and we didn’t have to intentionally practice messing up in order for a good old-fashioned, accidental mess-up to happen.

Now I want you to think about something for a moment… What’s the...

A recent survey response I received from one of you guys blew my mind… But it made me realize something interesting.

A few weeks ago I emailed out to you a survey asking you questions about what your struggles and goals are on the drums. Someone’s response read like this:

SURVEY QUESTION: If you could accomplish anything in your drumming in 2021, what would it be? (Your biggest drumming dream!)

RESPONSE: Play live

SURVEY QUESTION: What is your biggest fear that you worry about all the time as you’re learning drums?

RESPONSE: Playing live

Wait a second… you mean the biggest, most exciting, ultimate dream… is also the greatest fear? For a minute I thought this was crazy. Then I looked back at my own life.

In middle school my biggest dream was to play drums in a rock band. I got to high school and had the opportunity to literally play drums in a rock band… and I was terrified. Thankfully I faced my fears and did it....

Back in February I was on a gig that I was really excited about. This was basically a weekend event gig where we played a few different sessions throughout the weekend, pulling from a master setlist of 10-15 songs. Everything about this gig was perfect, and I knew everything was going to be great. The bandleader was a good friend I loved, and I was super excited about the keyboard player who would be joining us. He was one of those guys who just makes any group sound and groove better. That’s a rare thing with keys players, and this guy’s ability was definitely something to be excited about. This was shaping up to be a great gig, then something happened.

I got sick.

Now this was weeks before the COVID lockdowns began, so this took place in the “olden days” when we were still allowed to show up to work sick. ;) It’s interesting to think how this kind of thing will be forever different now! Anyways, I came down with a bad cold just two days before this...

I was on a gig recently where I played something completely wrong. This was no small mistake. This was one of those scenarios where the drummer just launches into something else and the band’s left staring and wondering. BUT…there was still a silver lining, which is why this story is worth telling. ;)

This was the second show I’d played with this particular band, and we were covering numerous pop songs and even a hiphop tune or two. One such hiphop track was “Poison.” If you were ever into old-school 90s hiphop you probably remember this one. It’s one of those drum-machine-style tracks where the intro or the turn is a drum loop. Songs like this likely inspired Bruno Mars’ “Finesse,” where the song kicks off with a solo drum beat.

Rarely on gigs like this are there opportunities for drum solos. It really just depends on the band and whether they like to put their drummer on the spot and hope he can throw...