Vintage Corner: Sticks, sticks, sticks.

For several reasons, I find that I've gotten a little more deeply into vintage drumsticks.

Pads are fun, but now that more people are paying attention to them they've gotten harder and more expensive to find. And since I have a small stack of pads I use regularly, I'm letting go of some of the rest.

And I'm paying more attention to vintage drum sticks, because a couple of drum-geeky friends have been highly informative and encouraging.

Here's what's new at Rancho Beth:

1. Ingrained Instruments CUSTOM sticks for Yours Truly.
After a delightful interview with the fellas at Ingrained last month, Brian invited me to collaborate on a stick with him, a lightweight but still substantial-feeling 2B with bigger tips that would make it a great pad stick. After a few back-and-forths, this is what he sent me, and it's a GREAT stick.

Best of all, Brian engraved my name on the butt ends -- and spelled it right! -- and that is just about the coolest thing that has ever happened to me in all my work testing and reviewing drum stuff. I smiled for a week at this.

2. In other news, I've lucked out on a few recent finds of vintage sticks that are rare, interesting and cool --
-- WFL drum company sticks, 2B and 3S. These are obtained from separate sources, and compliment my 1940s vintage WFL snare drum nicely.

The 2B has somewhat skinny tips for a 2B stick, but remember that there was little standardization across different brands, as each tried to make the "best" stick in a given size.

The 3S is a Burns Moore signature model, and just like the same signature model that would later be released under Ludwig Drum Company.

There's a good timeline/history of Ludwig Drums at Wikipedia which explains the ins and outs of the revolving ownership and control of the Ludwig name between the late 1920s and 1955. Worth your time to check out. But here's the shorthand in terms of what labels went on products in which decades:

1909 - late 1920s: Ludwig & Ludwig
1920s - 1937: Ludwig & Ludwig Drums (under ownership of Conn)
1937 - 1950s: WFL (William Ludwig's independent venture, in which he was not allowed to use his name because the trademark rights were owned by Conn. In the early 1950s, Conn consolidated their two drum companies into Leedy & Ludwig)
1955: Ludwig Drum Company (Conn got out of the drum business to focus on wind instruments, and William Ludwig was able to buy back the rights to use his last name again.)

If you can find sticks from all of the eras, you can make yourself a cool visible timeline of Ludwig history, which I've managed to do:

(Top to bottom: 3S sticks -- Ludwig Burns Moore, WFL Burns Moore, Leedy and Ludwig, Ludwig and Ludwig.)

For the time being, I'm focusing on sticks that I've either tried before and want to have again, or much older sticks that complete a historic group like this one.

I still love pads, especially older historic pads from before 1950. Getting into sticks from the same period will be a nice compliment to my historical interests.

Happy drumming.

Taking a step back for a little while.

My spring has turned out to be more interesting than I'd planned, especially with the community activist band I've been part of since 2018.
I've enjoyed my time with Unpresidented Brass Band, but since February 2020 the majority of the band has taken a more militant turn, preferring to play at protests and rallies where there's a higher likelihood that confrontations will happen.

I played my last gig with them last Tuesday. It was supposed to be a peaceful gathering at my alma mater (Portland State), with speakers and a few tunes from the band. Instead, it was crashed by Black Bloc kids who riled up the crowd and forced the rally to become a march. I went along, but as things progressed and the Black Bloc kids began upending trashcans and breaking windows of businesses and the courthouse, and then setting off an explosive device at ground level a hundred feet from me, it became clear that this was not what I wanted. I bailed out and took the bus home.

Conversations over the next several days helped me to realize that the band was going in a direction I didn't want to follow, so I officially quit a couple days ago. We're all still friendly, and I have offered to help refurbish any drums they might find this spring and summer.

What do I want in a community band experience? In short, less destruction and more community-building and engagement. I don't want to support aggro kids exercising their privilege while they break things. I want to partner with public schools whose arts finding has dried up; I want to give free concerts in parks and play at neighborhood street fairs, and at a Honk! festival again.

I was willing to overlook the fact that I was the only drummer there with rudimental chops while we played at the gentler events. But now that I've left, I also have to admit to myself that if I gather with other drummers again, I want to play with folks who will elevate my drumming and make me become a better player. That's not something I would say directly to the drummers in UBB, but there it is.

So we have parted ways as amicably as possible..

I will probably just chop alone for a while and ponder what my next steps as a drummer might be.
I'd like to find a group of drummers that really read and play, and who rehearse places that I can get to easily; but that is not super-likely in inner Northeast Portland. Portland, being a lefty kind of place (which is fine, my politics are fairly lefty too) that sees rudimental drumming as "militaristic" and not as an art form, is short on folks who really love playing this stuff. 

If I lived in New England, I'd find all sorts of drumming possibilities to feed my interest.
But not here.

So I'll chop alone and see what happens over the next few months.
Meanwhile, I'm starting a new job as a part-time music director at a synagogue, and that will keep me pretty busy. So for now, I'm drumming alone again, just to drum.

I am short on discretionary funds, so unless drum manufacturers want to give me product to test and review,  that piece will also quiet down for awhile.

Here's a few videos to keep you amused in the meantime.

Happy chopping!