One time I was playing at a special event early one Monday morning. This was sort of like a “corporate breakfast” kind of thing, where the band would play a little and someone would speak. All the musicians arrived at our bright-and-early call time around 7am, and we prepared for soundcheck. The schedule allowed for a quick soundcheck, followed by about an hour of rehearsal. Should be easy enough since we were only playing three songs. Or so we thought…

This was one of those times where from a technical standpoint….EVERYTHING started going wrong.

The keyboard player couldn’t get any signal out of his keyboard to front of house. The singer’s in-ears weren’t working at all. There was a horrible buzz in everyone’s in-ears that couldn’t be found or explained. No one was able to hear the click and tracks since signal wasn’t making it from the MD’s laptop either. The planned schedule came to a screeching halt, and before...

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...