This is one of those short, simple, yet catastrophic stories I bet many of you can relate to. I was on a gig one time where soundcheck went smoothly, rehearsal went great…then the unthinkable happened just before showtime. The "psychological trauma" (spoken mostly in jest!) reminded me of something really important we always need to remember as drummers.

I was playing this particular night with some folks I always enjoyed playing with. We were set up in a fairly large venue on a big stage, and we were all using in-ear monitors. The front of the drum set was covered by the typical clear, heavy drum shield that prevents cymbal bleed into vocal mics. We were fairly spread out across the stage, and guitar amps were in iso-boxes offstage on either wing. Bass was running direct to the house, as were keys and all vocals. Maybe you can guess why I’m telling you all of this…

Rehearsal was a blast, and we played through all the songs for the night. We even...

Imagine you’re in the heat of the moment. You’re faced with a split-second seemingly "life-or-death" decision, and about 1500 people are watching you. Something’s gone wrong, and it’s suddenly up to you to solve the problem. However, there’s a huge risk involved, and you have no idea what might result from the action you’re about to take. You’ll either be a hero…or you’ll mess everything up and there will be no fixing it.

Yes, I know that sounds overly dramatic. But that’s the situation I was in on a gig one time, and that’s exactly how I felt.

I was playing one Sunday morning at a large church. The structure of the service that day was unique, and the band was just playing an opening song. After that, we were done for the service. This was a typical "rock" setup with drums, bass, guitars, keys, and lots of vocalists. There was also a large choir behind us, and there were backing tracks. LOTS of tracks. Our...

A really odd (and funny) occurrence at a gig caused me to play better and enjoy the music at a deeper level. What started out as a potentially huge technical problem ended up being... I’ll tell the story:

At this particular gig I was playing drums in a total enclosure. Picture an aquarium, terrarium, or any kind of airtight glass container you can think of that’s large enough to house a drum set and a drummer. This enclosure did it’s job VERY well. With the doors closed, sound could barely come in or out. Neither could oxygen, but that’s another story.

In case you didn’t guess based on the “caged-drums,” this takes place at a church. :) We kicked things off on this particular Sunday with the first song, which went pretty well. After the opening song, someone came up to give announcements. As I double-checked the next song on my Ableton Session on my laptop to my left, I was startled by a tap on my shoulder. It’s amazing...