Dan Briechle: Rethinking the Art of Drum Making

Posted on December 10, 2014 by Scott K Fish

Denver’s Dan Briechle Makes Some of the World’s Most Unique Drums
By Isa Jones Mon., Dec. 8 2014 at 6:07 AM

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A travel kit Briechle designed

Dan Briechle’s first drum set is small and old. His father made him take it a part and clean it every month…. [S]omething…inspired him, and by the time he was fourteen, he was buying old sets.., restoring them and selling them to collectors….

When he was out of his teen years, he started…building drum shells….

He developed a building technique called directional lamination, …basically…angling the inner pieces of the shells to create a wider range of tuning and allow snares and toms to be better tuned to each other. It naturally changes the pitch of the drum.

He’s been restoring for years now, working with two employees….. He only makes about three full sets and half a dozen snares a year.

He builds anything from travel sets to custom drums for audiophiles and recording studios. [H]is showroom on 13th Ave…will soon open as a shop…. The snares sell for up to four-thousand dollars, and the sets are twenty-five hundred, minimum.

[A]t Red Rocks Community College…he’s taught a class on drum making for the past three years. [M]aking drum shells is Briechle’s true passion.

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RIP Bunny Briggs: Tap Dancer Extraordinaire

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: Tap dancers and drummers have always been connected. Drum history is scattered with musicians who excelled at both art forms. Buddy Rich, Fred Astaire, Steve Gadd are but a few.

I had never heard of Bunny Briggs before Will Friedwald’s Wall Street Journal obituary. What an astounding dancer, artist. It’s impossible for me to imagine any drummer not appreciating Bunny Briggs. Wow!

Wall Street Journal
By WILL FRIEDWALD
Dec. 8, 2014 6:56 p.m. ET

In 1964, Duke Ellington approached Bunny Briggs, the great tap-dancer who died just before Thanksgiving at the age of 92, with an idea for a special project… [Ellington] described it as a “Concert of Sacred Music,” …a highly radical idea.

Fifty years ago, Ellington wanted to achieve the dual purpose of cleaning up [jazz]’s reputation and expressing his own ecumenical emotions. There was only one dancer…who could deliver that combination of reverence and joyful abandon.., who could fully represent the African-American vernacular dance form in the same way Ellington and his orchestra were representing jazz, who could simultaneously make religion fun and make fun into something undeniably spiritual.

Ellington, who introduces Briggs at the work’s premiere (…at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral on Sept. 16, 1965….) as “the most superleviathonic, rhythmaturgically-syncopated tapsthamaticianisamist,” could have never found a better dancer to portray David in his mythic offering to the Lord.

Briggs…dances without hesitation or pause for the entire nine minutes… improvising tirelessly without his energy and invention ever flagging.

In the mid- to late 1940s, the dancer—…born Bernard Briggs in Harlem in 1922 and nicknamed Bunny early on because of his impressive speed—became to tap-dancing roughly what Ella Fitzgerald was to scat singing.

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Carmine Appice on Tony Williams

Posted on December 5, 2014 by Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: This is from my 1977 interview with Carmine Appice, 37-years ago, at his mother’s home in Brooklyn, NY. Carmine’s comments about Tony Williams are among my few drum interview moments that keep coming to mind, usually eliciting a smile.

In 1977, Carmine was in Rod Stewart‘s band. I grew up listening to Vanilla Fudge – even sang some of their songs in high school garage bands. I remember being surprised at what Carmine says in this interview about Tony Williams. Carmine and I were both laughing. I think the humanity of, the drummer camaraderie, evident in Carmine’s remarks, made a lasting impression on me. 

Carmine admits he was “on an ego trip,” when he talks of seeing Tony Williams. But, like most great drummers on ego trips knocked down a few pegs by other great drummers, Carmine was ready, willing, and able to learn from Tony, and then talk and laugh about it in public.

carminenikon 114Carmine Appice: “The first time I saw Tony Williams was when he had Jack Bruce in Lifetime. He was the only drummer to ever floor me in 20-seconds. Totally blew my mind.

“When I was with the [Vanilla] Fudge I was on an ego trip. And I sat down in front of Tony and said to myself, ‘Alright. Let’s see what you can do.’ He played, like, 20-seconds and I said, ‘Are you kidding?’

“He had a four-piece kit with an 18-inch bass drum, and I didn’t know what or where he was coming from, or where he got his rhythms from.

“As I progressed, and started doing more clinics, and getting into it, I started realizing what was going on.”

–end–

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Joe Morello on Buddy Rich Part 3

Posted on December 3, 2014 by Scott K Fish
Joe Morello 1962

SKF NOTE: Revisiting the transcript of my 1979 interview with Joe Morello. Joe Morello said things about Buddy Rich which were new to me. Joe’s remarks were instructive and/or funny. I am posting the remarks separately, by subject. Here Joe talks about Buddy and two drummer albums.

Joe sat through our entire interview with a pair of drumsticks, sitting near a coffee table on which he had a practice pad. The coffee table was in front of the sofa seen in the photo of Joe accompanying this post. I was seated on that sofa during the interview.

In this post, where Morello demonstrates points about Buddy Rich’s playing, he did so playing on his practice pad.

Joe Morello on Buddy Rich Part 1  — Joe Morello on Buddy Rich Part 2 

Joe Morello: …Louie [Bellson] did an album with Buddy, and Buddy did one with Gene [Krupa], and Louie did one with Gene, but nobody wants to do one with me. I don’t know why. (Smiles).

But these records like Louie vs Buddy – they get so monotonous after awhile. If you don’t mine me saying that.

As much as I respect what they’re doing, just to listen to it…. I don’t even have that album. I’ve got one of them done years ago with Max [Roach] and Buddy. And Max played very well on a couple of them and then Buddy drew him into the trap. [Joe Morello plays a fast single stroke pattern]. And, of course, Max is not equipped for that. He doesn’t play that way!

It makes drums out to be a contest. It lacks musicality. Too much of that stuff. I mean, it’s nice to have two drummers that can play together. Y’know, you express yourself, but then it gets to be The Circus. You know?

Listen, I enjoy listening to it sometimes. I would be happy to do something like that with Louie or Buddy. Technically? It wouldn’t bother me at all.

–end–

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A Great Drum Photo is Still Worth 1,000 Words

Posted on December 2, 2014 by Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: I still enjoy looking at drum advertisements. Not all of them. But especially pre-internet ads. Short of seeing drummers live at clinics (rare), or in concert (rarer for minor age drummers), or on t.v. (rare) – photos in magazine drum ads provided hours of study when I was growing up.

Like this Buddy Rich ad for Rogers Drums. What a great still shot of how Buddy holds sticks and his hands. I guarantee many drummers tried tilting their snare drums after seeing this ad. And as I was looking at this ad a day or two ago, I noticed the flattened cardboard box wedged between Buddy’s snare rim and the side of his small tom-tom.

Plus, even as stand alone photos, many of these old drum ads – done by great photographers such as Chuck Stewart – are priceless. Yes, a picture is still worth a thousand words.

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