Taye Collective Artist Program

Kind of fun -- I'm featured (for now anyway) on Taye Drums new "Taye Collective Artist Program." It's not an endorsement, but rather a way for Taye to feature everyday players who use their instruments. I play a Taye GoKit for jazz gigs, rehearsals and quick jobs. It really is a terrific instrument: half-depth shells, birch/basswood construction for enhanced tone and low-end, easy in-and-out with the whole kit fitting in three manageable gigbags. It looks to some like a toy, but it really sounds amazingly full. In fact, I've even recorded with it. Check out excerpts from "Claudette."

Wall art for drummers

I'm a big fan of mid-century modern art. (Not surprisingly, that's also my favorite period of music, the era of classic Miles and Brubeck and other "cool" greats.) As a long-time graphic designer (in addition to my PR career, music career and other pursuits) I recently started designing art inspired by both the visual style and sounds of that era.

The art is now available as posters, canvases or framed prints here.

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First Thoughts on First Day of First NAMM

As a musician, I've known about NAMM for years, but until this year, I never had an opportunity to attend. With many, many thanks to REMO for making me their guest, I'm here in my hotel room at the Hilton in Anaheim, nursing ridiculously sore feet from a day of way more musical information, sights and sounds than I can process. For my fellow drummers curious what the industry themes, trends and offerings are this year, and for other musicians curious about the NAMM experience in general, I offer the following, somewhat stream of conciousness thoughts on what I've seen so far, along with a feed of my TwitPic photos at the end of this post.

First, some misc. kudos and credits ...

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