The Drum Stool
The drum stool sits on the hardwood floor, pushed up against the wall, its full weight born by the rubber grips on the feet of its three legs. Each leg is made of two 18” metal bars that run parallel to each other, connected at the end so they fit together into the rubber foot. Where they connect, a single metal bar extends inward to the stool’s center support pole. The bars from all three legs connect to a sliding ring that wraps around the pole, making the tripod of legs collapsible. At the top of each leg, the two bars are bolted from either side into a black pipe that serves as the base to the shaft used to adjust the seat’s height. Screwed into the shaft is an oversized wing-nut that resembles one of those cheap drum keys they give away at music stores whenever the staff drum guy wants to look generous. Sitting atop this contraption of metal and moving parts is a generous cushion seat in the shape of a round pillow, much thicker and taller than typical the drum stool throne. Its top is a soft, black cloth, its side a pseudo-leather, silver, with a subtle sparkle pattern. Printed on the silver, in black, is a logo for Pork Pie Percussion. Beneath the logo is the tagline, “Made by an American.”
I bought the drum stool more than a decade ago, at the same time I purchased my first all-new drum set. I’d owned several before, but this was my first brand new kit, and it was the set I always wanted: a black Pearl kit with a gorgeous and resonant sound that could punch a club audience in the gut or be as gentle as a breeze in the recording studio. The kit, including all its hardware, a rack mounting system, and cymbals, cost over $2,300, and I went into debt with my father for the hundredth time in my zeal to bring it home. In the three years that followed, I practiced, started a band, played shows at bars all around Phoenix and Tempe, recorded a dozen or so of our songs, got a tiny bit of airplay on a local music radio show, grew to resent my bandmates for wanting to write music for an audience a decade younger than we were ourselves and avoid the music we wrote and played best, became disgusted with the constant pursuit of rock stardom, and quit the band. When I later sold the kit, the drum stool and a deep purple beech wood Yamaha snare drum were the only parts I kept.
The stool sits in front of the window. The drum set sits next to it, stacked, its hardware tucked away in a corner of the room. Since leaving the band seven years ago, my drum set has been torn down, stacked in a corner, set up, stacked again, moved, stored in a garage, sold, replaced, set up, torn down, and stacked one more time. Its current home is against the wall between the two windows in the small back room of my house that I use as a home office. The drums, which have bright white shells, white textured heads, and white rims, sit one on top of the other, from bass drum to floor tom to snare drum to rack tom. When they are set up, they’re really quite beautiful — a striking display of white on white that makes the kit look bigger than it is. Stacked in a tower in my office, a thin layer of dust shows what the drums now mean.
I rediscovered my passion for making music about two years ago. Every few days now, I move the stool to the center of the room, position my large, stand-mounted Remo practice pad in front of it, and pull out my old drumsticks. With these artifacts from my former life, I practice taiko songs.
