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...

One summer during college, some fellow music-major friends and I put together a band to play at a festival in a neighboring town. This was a big July 4th celebration out on a ball field right off Main Street, and there were going to be fireworks. This was slated to be a big deal, and we rehearsed for months leading up to this Saturday night.

I arrived early and set up my kit on the outdoor stage. (Yes, it’s the same kit you see in my basement today!). I had recently made a drum head upgrade to prepare for this very day, because I had previously had some pretty old beat-up heads on the kit. My shiny Zildjian A’s were also ready to go, and the kit looked beautiful.

The only weak point of the setup was my hardware. I was still using some cheap hardware that had come with the kit. It had held up fine for practicing at home, though, so I didn’t worry too much about it. I especially didn’t worry about my bass drum pedal, which was a pretty decent pedal I...

When I was in high school, I played a battle of the bands at a friend’s school. What never occurred to me until the middle of the show was that I had forgotten the most essential piece of gear that a drummer could have. Not the snare, not the bass drum pedal...not even the cymbals. More important than that.

We loaded in that Friday night, hauling in the black and gold Gretsch drumset from the church where my friend and I both played. This was a pretty nice kit, and though more suited for jazz, it held up just fine for Sunday mornings (and the occasional battle of the bands at a nearby high school). In addition to the sleek drumset, we had a whole stack of the ZBT “rock” cymbals ready to go. I could always count on those cymbals to make enough noise. But as a precaution, we also borrowed the large, folding drum shield from the church as well. Hopefully that would win the battle with the ZBT rocks.

Myself, my friend (who played bass in the high school worship...