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Pat Gesualdo: Drum Therapy
Zone: Warped Tour Review
2010-09-08
This year I decided to promote the DAD Program and my Modern Drummer Drum Therapy Column on the 2010 Warped Tour. We couldn't have done it without the help from Modern Drummer, Pro-Mark, Paiste, and Sony Music/Mustache Mania. All of them went above and beyond to help bring the DAD Program and Drum Therapy to special needs children in the towns and states along the tour. Much thanks also to my drum tech, Andrew Bosonac, and my tour manager, Owen, who were a huge help out on the road. They really kept everything running. Chris from the Warped Tour always went out of his way to make sure everything ran smoothly, and that the setup for the DAD/Modern Drummer/Sony tent was as easy as possible.
 Many of our brothers in drumming and their bands joined the effort too, and worked extremely hard to help put the entire project over the top. Bullet For My Valentine, Dillinger Escape Plan, Automatic Loveletter, and Eyes Set To Kill were also a huge help, and made sure our tour was as successful as possible.
We had a Modern Drummer, Pro-Mark, and Paiste giveaway of the day, which took place at each venue. Paiste made us custom DAD Posters that featured Paiste drummers Mike Ambrose from Set Your Goals, Sam Keir from the Riverboat Gamblers, Ryan Folden from After Midnight Project, Emmett Menke from Polar Bear Club, Brett Hartwell from the Frantic, and Justin Bawinkel from Flatfoot 56. They all came in to the DAD/Modern Drummer/Sony tent every day to sign with posters and help promote raffles of a Paiste 18" Alpha Rock crash, which was given away to a random winner at the end of the tour. The fans went wild over the Modern Drummer giveaway of the day too, which included the phenomenal giveaways from the 2010 Modern Drummer Festival. The fans loved the Pro-Mark giveaway of the day, which was a Pro-Mark hat, a pair of 5B nylon sticks, and the awesome Pro-Mark drum keys. Sony gave me free download cards, which featured twenty-six major bands and two songs from my new instrumental metal band Iceland. (You can go to myspace.com/patgesualdo to hear some of the new material.)
The weather was brutal for some of the dates. Phoenix was 117 degrees. How can you explain that? There’s no possible way, except to say that I stayed outside for literally three minutes and had a complete sunburn, as if I was out on the beach all day!
We got hit with the hurricane for the San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas shows. In Houston we were up to our ankles in mud, especially since the venue grounds there were made of dirt and sand. Our tent really got hammered at one of the other Texas shows, and the tent next to us actually blew right over out into the crowd.
This year’s Warped Tour featured many hardcore screamo bands. There’s nothing like being in between those three stages—and at full volume all the time.
All of the bands worked extremely hard. It was easy for them to get around since they rented tour buses from the Warped Tour. Two or three bands traveled together per bus. I have my own bus that I bring to many events. It has the DAD and Modern Drummer logos on it, plus a picture of my drumset with the lighting bolts around it.
Since I brought my own crew and was independent of the tour, we had the opportunity to go anywhere we wanted, whereas all the other bands renting the buses had to adhere to strict schedules, and could not venture anywhere or leave the venues until they were told they could.
The way the tour scheduled the shows made for some long hauls. Sometimes it was a ten-hour drive to get to the next show for the next day. That’s rough, even if you have a driver.
We saw some pretty cool things, like small sand tornadoes in the desert. Of course driving through the desert and looking at the beautiful mountains with the snow on top is always wonderful to see.
All in all, things were pretty good, and we brought the DAD program and Drum Therapy to even more special-needs children. That was the purpose of the tour, and thanks to Modern Drummer, Pro-Mark, Paiste, and Sony Music, we were able to accomplish a great goal that we set!
As always, please feel free to contact me at info@dadprogram.org with questions or for further information on becoming a certified Drum Therapist.
Pat Gesualdo is an award-winning drummer, author, and clinician who has performed and recorded for various Columbia, Warner Brothers, Atlantic, RCA, and Paramount Pictures artists and special projects. He was nominated to Who’s Who In America and was an associate voting member for the Grammy Awards. He is the author of The Art Of Drum Therapy. For more on Gesualdo and the D.A.D. program, go to www.dadprogram.org, www.myspace.com/dadprogram, www.zildjian.com, or www.myspace.com/patgesualdo.
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Jay Weinberg Of Madball
2010-09-03
Hey, fellow Modern Drummer readers! My name is Jay Weinberg, and I’m on a three-week European tour with the New York hardcore band Madball. With this run, we’ve begun the touring cycle in support of our new record, Empire, which will be released on October 12. In fact, you can check out a video documenting the recording process of the drums for the album at Modern Drummer’s website (Shameless plug, I know, sorry.)
I joined Madball in mid-January, very shortly after the tour I had done with Bruce Springsteen & the E St. Band ended. We began touring two weeks after my audition, with the 2010 “Rebellion Tour” in Europe, as well as a handful of shows in the U.S. while we were home writing the new record. Empire was finished in early July, and we started this touring cycle about three weeks ago. After we get home this week, we’ll be doing a two-week Canadian tour, shortly followed by a three-week European trek with our NYHC brethren Sick Of It All. By that time, the record will be out, and we’ll be heading to even more foreign territories!
This tour has been great so far. Waking up in a different city, with new things to see and do every day, is one of my favorite things—and I sure get a lot of that out here! The shows have been excellent, and the crowds have been responding very well to the new material we’ve been playing. Most days on this tour have had a consistent schedule: Wake up (anywhere between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.), find the backstage, find out what the wireless Internet password is, have “breakfast” (yes, cereal at 5 p.m. counts as breakfast), do soundcheck, and then walk around town!
The sightseeing on this run has been top-notch. Many of the cities we’ve been playing have had amazing churches, memorial sites, and other sites where aesthetic beauty abounds. We had one day off on this tour, between a show in the Czech Republic and a show in Slovakia. We took the opportunity to stop in Poland to go to the concentration camp at Auschwitz—a very heavy and emotional experience to say the least—but a piece of history nonetheless; we were all really glad to have the chance to visit the site. I have no doubt everyone was seriously reflecting on it for the rest of the day that we spent in Krakow, Poland. The area in which we spent time was extremely gorgeous, by the way—one of my new favorite cities.
This touring cycle we’ve begun is great, because it’s chock full of great shows, with barely any days off. We’re able to make these trips worth it by playing almost every day for three weeks straight. In comparison to many other bands that tour seemingly thirty months out of the year, we’re all able to balance touring with our other duties that require time at home. I’m entering my junior year at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. All of the professors and deans (and my class of 2012 classmates!) at the school have really made my touring dreams a reality. Whether it has been with the E St. Band or Madball, they understand that these are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities—that are rooted in my passion for drumming—and have the potential to make this a thing I can do for a long time. With that said, there eventually comes a time when one misses their family, girlfriend, dogs, and friends at home—so these intense three-week runs with time at home/school in between are awesome!
Madball will be releasing video updates from the road (directed by yours truly!) on www.facebook.com/madballNYC every Thursday. Check out pre-order information for Empire on www.myspace.com/madball, and check out the tour dates to see when we’re hitting your town. See you in the pit!
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Ben Hansen of Street Beat
2010-09-01
Hey, MD readers! My name is Ben Hansen and I’m the founder and musical director of Street Beat, a high-energy urban drum and dance performing arts troupe merging African, Cuban, Latin, West African, and jazz concepts and utilizing junk, household items, and found objects for drums and percussion. We also feature modern “street” choreography, including break-dance, hip-hop, parkour, and tap.
Dancing and drumming are the most ancient art forms, and they are absolutely wedded together, two sides of the same thing. We are practicing this primal, tribal art and transplanting it to the modern urban landscape.
I was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, and started playing drums at the age of nine. I’ve studied with a lot of great teachers, learning many different musical styles and techniques, and also attended the Rhythmic Music Conservatory. I’ve been pounding on things almost since I came out of the womb. But Danes aren’t generally known for being boisterous and loud. They’re famous for being quiet…and melancholy. So, after disturbing the peace and taxing my neighbors’ patience for twenty-four years, I came to America, land of joyful noise.
I moved to Los Angeles in 2002, recording and performing with guys like Grammy winner Robert Reynolds of the Mavericks, guitarist Andy Walo from Junior Wells’ band, and Mitch Perry of Edgar Winter fame.
The genesis of Street Beat was initially as a student outreach project for the Los Angeles Unified School District, designed to teach kids self-reliance and teamwork through drumming. The challenge was that there was no money for drums at all. So how could I do this in a way that would still be fun and exciting for the students? And that’s how the teaching tool of Repurposed Percussion was born, based on the theory that one can make music with almost anything, which is exactly what we did.
The birth of Street Beat as a theatrical act commenced in 2007 when I expanded the troupe to its current ten-piece configuration and took it on the road, touring all over the U.S., including Alaska. We take our drumming cues from cultures worldwide and mix them all into a gumbo of our own. I believe art should inform, but it also ought to taste good. One critic described us as ‘an urbanized journey through percussion,’ which sounds about right, but we’re also a tribal journey through the urban age.
For more on Street Beat, go to www.streetbeattheshow.com or www.facebook.com/streetbeattheshow.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNsI1AQ9Q0Q
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