A day late and a dollar short. The Not So Modern Drummer emailed issues go out on or near the end of every month. This November issue is going out on December 1. Why the delay? Thanksgiving, of course, then Friday and Saturday afterward I taught all day and I ran out of time and spizzerinctum. I had a great holiday with my family down in my hometown of Jackson MS. which is three hours south of Memphis TN. The highlight was teaching my grandson Jase our first snare drum lesson. He is playing a Christmas Concert with his junior high school band on December 5. We had a lot of fun for several hours playing on practice pad and he’s a great student. He’s a natural. He gets it! I think it’s in his blood.
My family is full of drummers. Both of my children, son Paul and daughter Jenny play drums. Jenny played in high school band and was the soloist in her indoor drum line. Paul was a pro drummer for a while. He toured the U.S, China, Japan and South Korea with a surf punk band called DaiKaiJu. My wife Georgetta’s sons, Russell and Evan are drummers. Russell doesn’t play anymore but Evan is into grind core music and has incredible speed on the double bass pedals. He has been in several bands. His main claim to fame is that he builds the steam bent single ply shells for our drum brand, Famous Drum Company. My cousin Dean Stewart plays drums and is a vintage drum nut.
I have declared this fall to stop playing gigs I don’t enjoy for one reason or another. Now that I am teaching private lessons full time I can afford to turn down the gigs that are just too hard on my body, or the gigs with bad music or bad conditions or too much travel. BUT after I declared that, my friend of fifty years, trombonist Wally Fowler, asked me to play with his jazz big band this month, so I’m playing twelve big band gigs across Arkansas and Tennessee in December. Good music, good players, no hauling drums (they have a kit in the trailer) and someone else is doing the driving and I get to play the music I studied at North Texas State University in the seventies.
Speaking of teaching full time, I have been recording instructional videos at Memphis Drum Shop’s recording studio and self promoting them shamelessly. I want to thank my longtime friend and owner of Memphis Drum Shop, Jim Pettit, for the opportunity to do this. (Jim calls me “my drum teacher”). “Five Minute Lessons with George Lawrence” videos are on You Tube and you can also find them on my artist page at https://memphisdrumshop.com/pages/george-lawrence. A new one is released every Saturday. The subjects of these videos are grooves, fills, rudiments, and sticking patterns that I teach my students. The skill level is from beginning to advanced. I’m doing this to attract private students in the Memphis area and remote students around the world. In the last two months students from Atlanta, Australia and Micronesia have signed up. I’m doing those via Face Time on computers. I also want to mention that the Delta Music Institute at Delta State University in Cleveland MS has asked me to teach drum set students as an adjunct instructor. I am also finished with my book I’ve been writing for at least a year – “ The Missing Rudiments – Expanding the American rudiment system with missing and long forgotten fundamental snare drum rudiments, plus the new drum set unison rudiments”. I sent the finished manuscript to my editor, Richard Best in Canada, last week. He is doing the music engraving and layout. I don’t know exactly when it will be available for purchase as a downloadable pdf file and printed book, but I told him I need it soon because some of my future video lessons will be about those missing rudiments. I am starting a waiting list for the book if you want to email me and get on the list. george@notsomoderndrummer.com
NSMD founder John Aldridge told me once that Not So Modern Drummer was his “calling card”. I’ve been publishing it for fifteen years now. I now have more time to write about my personal experiences as a lifelong career drummer. So, yeah, this is my calling card. In the future I’ll strive to share with you more of the things I’ve learned along the way. If I repeat myself and tell the same stories over and over, I have an excuse; I’m seventy years old!!!