 Welcome to the Drum History Podcast. I'm your host Bart Van Der Zee and today I'm talking with Mr. Ron Donet about George Way drums. Ron, how are you? I'm great. How are you doing? Good. Good. I'm glad you're here, man. You're a legend in the industry, both with being the owner of George Way drums, but just your Donet classic drums as a brand is just innovative and I think everyone just loves and respects it. Well, I never know how to respond when someone says legend or anything like that. It always makes me feel a little slightly uncomfortable because I celebrate that when I'm gone. I still got a long way to go, but I do appreciate it. I really do. Absolutely. So we're talking today about George Way and I get messages from people fairly often saying, like, hey, I keep hearing you talk about George Way and they'll say who is he? And he's come up in episodes that people can check out, like such as an episode about Leedy early on with Rob Cook. He was involved in the Camco episode, which obviously we'll talk about. I know you mentioned that maybe you're not the guy who had to go with specific on where he was born and where he went to kindergarten and what kind of baby food he ate and stuff like that, but just broad strokes. Why don't you tell us who is George Way? Why should we care about him and what is his involvement in the drum world? Wow. That's a huge question and I really don't know where to start, but George is in a nutshell. I've got a number of names that I call him by. He's the godfather of the modern drum set. He is the Leonardo da Vinci of the mechanics and design of the modern drum set. He's important on so many levels. I'm just back from New Orleans where I was at Stan Moore's drum camp and someone asked about him and I said, there's not a person in this room, there's not a drummer alive today that doesn't owe George a debt of gratitude because whatever brand of drum you're playing today, I don't care what it is, you're using one of his ideas somewhere, somehow along the way. The one that comes to mind off the top of my head, the one that really stands out is the swivel nut. If I can explain that, it's the threaded insert that goes into a lug that sort of self-aligns. When I inherited or when Rob Cook passed along all of George's estate, included in there were just really important historical drawings of some of the stuff he did and there's a pencil on paper drawing in there. They did 1917, which he was drawing out versions of that particular idea. To the point where I looked at it and I went, the version that he drew is actually the one that we use now. He actually skipped through all of the lug styles where manufacturers used to use springs on the inside and felt. Generally speaking, now that swivel nut is held in place by a little rubber insert that sort of fits in and holds it in place. He drew that in 1917. He's an unbelievably innovative and way ahead of his time on a lot of this stuff. Way ahead of his time and no pun intended there with his name, but there are a bunch of things that are credit to him. He was really the first drum manufacturer to use, I believe what was then called pyroline, but we know it better as a marine pearl wrap. He was the first one to do it. He was the one that popularized it and we still have it going today. All of those wrap finishes, white marine pearl, that was George. Some of that information on that particular company that was making that pyroline was also included in those archives that I received. Let me ask you this. He famously has worked with multiple different drum companies. He was basically an employee of, I know it was companies such as Leedy, Slingerland, Leedy and Ludwig. Then he started his own company, which kind of then became Camco. Was Leedy the first company he actually was employed by to be a drum worker? Actually, and I'm going to rely on the history here. He actually started with George Stone. Of course, Stone has his own legacy. That's Boston, right? Yep. Cool. Yeah. They started working together making sound effects of the time. There's a famous picture of them with these little things that made sounds, pig squeals and those vaudevillian sound effects. Again, in broad big chunks, he eventually ended up in Edmonton, Canada, working at the Tantages Theatre there. That's where things really started happening for him. In addition to being the drummer for that particular entertainment scene, he worked with one of the, I believe he was a boilerman there who worked at the theatre. He started making snare drums, and it was actually in Edmonton, Canada, where he really started with what was known as the Advanced Drum Company. Over the last few years, I've discovered a few of these advanced snare drums, even a wooden one. There are a few archival pictures of him working at this Advanced Drum Company, but I have a couple of those snare drums. Even then, George was so far ahead of his time when everyone was using two plugs, he used one of his early renderings versions of a swivel lug. Now, it didn't swivel 360 degrees, but it was definitely self-aligning. It sort of moved at a 90-degree angle to the shell, and it was this amazingly simple lug design on a metal drum shell. It said, you know, the Advanced Drum Company, Edmonton, Alberta. It was there that he started attracting the attention of Ulysses Leedy, and Leedy made him an offer he couldn't refuse. George and Elsie, his wife whom he met while working in Edmonton, went to work for Leedy, and that's where it all began. I don't know if any of your listeners know this, and they probably won't, but they may have seen, at some point in time, there was a collection of advertising materials that was called Leedy Drum Topics. Yeah. I've posted some pictures of it. That's very popular amongst the drum folks. Amazing stuff. It was basically a magazine that Leedy had put out. Now, here's where it gets really interesting, at least from my perspective, because with my companies, one of the things that's been a piece of the success of Danette Classic and George Way is that all of the graphic design stuff, all of the advertising, all of the photography, all of those catchy, silly little ads, those tongue-in-cheek things that I do from time to time, everything, that's all done in-house. And George was actually a magnificent graphic designer, and again, in with his archives, or all of the tools that a graphic designer would have used back in the day, and he was an artist. His skills were, just from my perspective, with working with computers and cameras, looking back at what he was doing, and I'm going, oh my God, I got a lot of parallels with this guy, and this is a big one. There were jars of paint lettering, books on calligraphy, and there were some beautiful original examples of his work. That genius went as far as all of his handwritten notes, everything was, it wasn't done in cursive, it was all printed. That's wild. What a Renaissance man, just a guy who can do everything. You said it right there. That's probably the best single word to describe him. He was a Renaissance man, and he covered just every base. Yeah, he was a drum designer that was forward-thinking and just had so many ideas, but the marketing concepts, the graphic design, and then you read those leading topics and what they were saying, and actually even some of the letters, and again, I keep referring to these archives that I got from Rob Cook, there are letters in there and exchanges between him and Leedy and him and many of the other people that he had worked with throughout his career, and he had an understanding of, I guess you would call it customer service, that just tied everything in. That's all about quality, the quality of the drum and customer service. Again, yeah, that's the word Renaissance man. His genius wasn't just limited to, hey, I can wrap a drum in Marine Pearl or I think it's Roth needs a parallel release instead of just unhinging it one side kind of thing. Well, and it seems like to me he's actually not to oversimplify, but he's seen drummers as people who are very passionate about their instrument, because we're very early on in the drum set in this point in time, if not in the advent of it being created. So he's like, we're doing right now, we're talking to people, people listening to this are obsessed with the drums like us, and they love it. And like the Leedy topics, like his publications are just to promote drums. I mean, it just gets people more jazzed up about drums. And I think we have him to thank for a lot of that kind of really instilling this love of drums with people. You know, and I'll tie this in with your listeners a little bit, especially the younger ones, but like you asked me at the beginning, why is he important? And what occurred to me was that, and again, something that it's common knowledge out there, but George came from a very wealthy family. And he made a decision very early in life that what he wanted to do was be a drummer. And if you read Rob's book, The Leedy Way, he tells the story in there of how his father rejected that, and wasn't particularly gentle in how he spoke to George about it. And George just turned his back on what could have been a very comfortable lifestyle and decided, no, I'm going to be a, you know, and he quite literally ran away enjoying the circus and never looked back. And when you think about it today, I go, how many times since that happened with George, has that story been told and retold and retold and lived and experienced by every drummer? Who at one point in time is like, you know, been up against it or discouraged and just made that decision and said, you know what, no, this is me. This is who I am. This is what I'm doing. I'm making the commitment to myself and I'm going ahead with it. Sorry mom, sorry dad. This is who I am. This is what I want to be. I've seen here on an article too, it's just so people know he was born in 1891 as George Harrison Bassett, I believe in San Francisco and it looks like his mother got divorced and remarried and that's when I guess his stepfather's last name was Wei. Is that correct? Yep. Okay, just that kind of, there's the very far background. So I'm also on wadrums.com, your website and you have a really good history on here and it's interesting too, like the first little invention thing I'm seeing is 1927, George introduced the Chinese sneeze symbol which is seen today as the modern China symbol, China type symbol. He's creating things even then obviously, he's making new products. Well, my understanding is he didn't actually make those, but he was responsible for, as far as I understand, introducing them and popularizing them. Of course you know that around that time, that Vaudeville and the music of the year were looking for, they didn't have the stuff that we have now, so they were going through the evolution of the drum kit and were using temple blocks and cowbells and symbols obviously and so that's where that China sort of comes into the picture. And China's go way back into for thousands of years to Chinese parades and all that stuff, but you do see a lot of these trap drummers and the Vaudevillian stuff with having a China. So I'm sure that's pretty cool that it became a staple of the drum set there, but cool, so he's with Leedy, then what happens from there? Does he make a switch soon? Ultimately, he went on to work for basically every drum company. The chronology went, he was offered positions with Rogers, Slingerland, Ludwig and Ludwig, pretty much any drum company at the time, but the bulk of his career was spent with Leedy. Okay, and Leedy if I'm not mistaken remembering from Rob's episode was at that point like the biggest drum manufacturer in the world and they would create all these, they were huge and the factory was like a city block long and they were just massive and like many companies they went the way of being sold to someone and then became Leedy and Ludwig and all that stuff, but okay, because he's obviously very closely tied to Leedy. And not all of it was good. I know that at one point he had gone to work for Rogers and I think at that point was really being underappreciated and I was looking back, plugging in after reading some of his letters that he had written about how disenchanted he was with it that he was caught up in some fairly quick moving changes as things were later in his career and my takeaway from it was that he was unhappy there because he felt that all of the drum manufacturers or many of them at the time had really lost, it was I guess what I call the beginning of the commoditization of the drums. You know, where it was like, yeah, we don't care about, you know, don't worry about the quality, let's just kind of get the stuff out of here and don't worry about the customer service thing, you know, we'll just get the sales rep to deal with that. And it was, I guess it was this moving away that really when you think about it, it hasn't stopped evolving since then and I think, you know, as history repeats itself, it really does is you, I think what he was going through then is pretty much, you know, part of, it's almost synonymous, if you will, with what's happening now with big box stores and online sales and, you know, Amazon and that kind of thing where, you know, oh, hey, there's a brand exit to kit that Walmart for, you know, that kind of thing. But to be optimistic, there's people like you and there's the, without naming other brands because I'm going to forget people, there's a lot of boutique brands out there who are creating beautiful drums. So, you know, there's always that side of it as well, but I do think that the big boys have gone to, you know, you have your Taiwan made drums or they're made in China or something like that. So it is more commoditized now. Well, I'm going to stop you there because, and I do have to mention this, I, Taiwan and to a greater and or lesser extent, China are, they're a big part of the industry. And in my experience, especially with Taiwan, it's not a bad thing. And I think that the stigma of, you know, made in Taiwan, having been traveled there three times, visited the factories and seen how things work. I've been to factories where they are as passionate about it, if not more so than people on this side of the water. They care what they're doing, you know, state of the art machinery and production. So that's lesser of the angle that I was taking on that. It was more about the manufacturing and more about the sale. Got it. If that makes any sense. Yeah, no, I'm actually, I'm very glad you just said that though, because I think there is a stigma around it. And from a guy who's traveled there and has seen the industry, that's very good to know that that actually is just very passionate people. So I appreciate you kind of shining that light on that. Yeah. I guess what George was talking about was the buying experience, as opposed to, you know, manufacturing thing. And you have to keep in mind, and I run into this all the time, and a guy's going, well, George wouldn't have done this. And George wouldn't have done that. And it's been a really good lesson for me going, yeah, but I'm picking up where George left off. And I'm not trying to bury myself in a time capsule and ignore the progressions of the company where it would have been. Had George not lost it, as he did, and had, you know, gone on to be successful. Yeah. So I go, well, things change. And the way things are made changed. And it is what it is now. And I make no apologies for that. And you know what? Quite frankly, neither does anybody else. And the only time that I've seen that happen, it bothers me because I find it disingenuous. Yeah. He kept moving forward. And that'd be almost out of character for the company to be frozen in time in 1955 or wherever, like it needs to move forward. That's what George was all about. Right. Well, I mean, let me give you an example here. One of the famous books that Rob put out was George's Little Black Book. And it's interesting just from a historic perspective because anybody who gets into this business understands that sourcing is a big thing, you know. And some of those sources are very closely guarded. Back when George started, there was no internet. I mean, it would be word of mouth or a phone book or a shot in the dark, you know, just trying to find somebody to make this or do this or what industry can provide the wing nut that I need. And so he created this book. It's like basically a handheld, handwritten internet of all of his suppliers. And you look at it now and it's a lot easier now than it was back then. And jeez, you know, the only guy that I can think of who's done anything remotely close to what George did is Don Lombardi, whom I have the, you know, he's a dear friend and I have the greatest respect for him. But even look back where he picked up with, you know, taking over, you know, basically where Kamco left off. Yeah. Again, there was no internet then. He was facing the same kind of thing, so. Sure. So yeah. So let's back up a little bit here. And so I'm on your, like I said, I'm on the history on your website here. It says he was downsized during World War II from Leedy because everything changed. Leedy probably switched over to making whatever, you know, things for the war. Now, because he infamously as we know, he created the George Way Drum Company. Do you want to tell us a little bit about how the actual creation of the George Way Drum Company started from being an employee of all the companies? How did he start his own company? Well, again, big strokes and some gaps in this, but there was a couple of curves in George's career timeline that I'm aware of. And one was where he actually moved to Los Angeles to start a retail drum shop, which ran for, I don't know how long it was there for. It's funny, I was just there and talking with Kerry Crutchfield runs the Hollywood custom advantage drum show. And he said that this is where George's shop used to be. That address doesn't even exist anymore. There's a building that sort of spanned the, those particular street addresses, but it was on, I believe it was on Koenga. But anyway, it wasn't very successful and for whatever reason. And I think it was after that that George moved back and that was where he decided to, again, start manufacturing drums, but this time under his own brand. And that's kind of really important to remember. I mean that he started out as a drum manufacturer. That was the first thing between the instruments and the sound effects he was making with Stone to starting the advanced drum company. So it wasn't anything new to him. No, and it's cool. I'm seeing on the history here. It says that he purchased the George Way drum company. He purchased the factory formerly operated by Kahn's Ledy and Ludwig division in Elkhart, Indiana. So that's pretty cool that he kind of moved in there and there's just so much history. Like this guy is just, he's involved in, he's at the center of everything and it's all revolving around these old companies. Yeah. Well, Elkhart, I often say that's the crucible of modern drum manufacturing and so much seemed to come out of that area. So it seemed appropriate that he set up shop there. When I take a step back and I look at where he was going and if it wouldn't have been for one of his manufacturing partners, I can see where his company would have went on to become, and I'm going to hazard a guess here, something on par with where Ludwig is today. Now, what happened there? What went wrong? Well, I can tell you one thing. It's an example of something that I've seen happen a few times since there and there are some history repeating itself, but George was working. One of his suppliers was a manufacturing, metal manufacturing company known as Kamco and Kamco was owned and operated by this fella. A shrewd dude, businessman named John Roshan. And essentially what happened was Roshan had invested some money. In order to raise money, George had sort of taken the company semi-public and had doled out shares to a number of people he'd asked for money to sort of get this thing going. Roshan was one of them. And one day, Roshan went to George and told him that he had heard that there was going to be a hostile takeover, that someone was going around trying to buy up all of the, as many outstanding shares in the company as possible in an effort to take it over. And he suggested to George that what you should do is if we can do this, if we can consolidate all of those outstanding shares, if you can go to the people that invested in you and supported you and ask them to sell their shares to me, we can probably avoid this takeover. And so George did that. And basically as soon as John got controlling interest in the company, he held a board meeting and called George and Elsie and said, okay, well, I got controlling interest in this thing now and here's what we're going to do. And just in one fell swoop changed the entire culture of what George was doing. And I can just see what was happening or George and Elsie looking at each other going. And I guess during this meeting at one point, George said, well, people are going to think we're crazy. I mean, if you're going to do this, like, you know, we may as well not be a part of this. And Rashawn jumped on that and said, George, I'm glad you feel that way. Let's make your last day Friday. And they went, whoa, they apparently they went home for lunch. And while they were having lunch at home, Rashawn recalled the meeting and said, okay, you know what? Actually, let's make their last day today and send a courier or someone to his house while they were still having lunch and said, yeah, actually, you don't even have to come back. And so, yeah, George was, you know, he got screwed out of his company. And that was fairly late in his career. And that is where, you know, camp code runs as we now know them started. So, I mean, they've always, that's always put a bit of a taint on the camp code brand for me. But, you know, I guess the good news is George and Elsie, I think it was at that point that he went back to work for, I think that might have been when he went to work for Rogers. And there were some legalities in why he didn't just, you know, start the George Wade drum company again. But ultimately what he did was something similar to what Ludwig did when they lost control of the Ludwig name and they started WFL. So he started, he started GHW. And although he wasn't making drums, he was, you know, again, basically selling parts and components and symbols and things like that. And that was the, you know, the last stage of his career was basically being a distributor. And I think one of the last famous pictures of him, you know, was this huge array of products spread out all over the floor and, you know, him sitting in, you know, in the back corner, you know, was everything from symbols to snare wires to, you know, everything. And that's, and that was, that was the end of his career. Man, that's sad. I mean, and so one thing that I think he obviously has countless inventions and things like that. But I think the, just to kind of so everyone knows that, maybe everyone knows that the DW round lugs, which would have been the turret lug, which go back, that was a part of Camco, which go back further than that. That was the George Wade. I mean, so he invented things like that, right? I mean, he was just innovative in creating these, these things like that. So now you see him, you just, like you said, you see his spirit in everything. I certainly do. I certainly do. And it was interesting. You know, I had a conversation with Don Lombardi recently and we were talking about the lugs. And I had heard, there are a couple of stories. Don had heard that the design of that lug went on to become the turret lug was a, and based on an aluminum mouthpiece cap for a horn instrument. I had heard that one day George was on the phone at his desk and was absolutely, mindedly stacking milk pods on his desk and was looking at that stack and going, that would make a cool lug. Either way, it was actually, I believe, I'm going to take a chance here. I think it was 57, if I remember correctly. George, when working for Leedy drew up the first, the initial version, the, his original version of that lug, which wasn't called a turret lug at the time. And the difference was that the one that he had originally designed had a couple of tabs, one on the top and one on the bottom. So it wasn't actually like the round, you know, perfectly round. It was more of an art deco-based shape. Interesting. Yeah. Do you run into any issues using those round lugs on your drums with like, you know, patents or anything against DW? No. But of course, you know, listen, and a moment of complete honesty, I know that there's going to be lots of people listening to this part of it. But Don has been a dear friend. I've worked with him and DW and I adore him. He's been a mentor and I, and that's coming from a place of love and respect for what he has accomplished. It's amazing what he's done. You know, fantastic legacy. And they've made some beautiful products. And I've always been proud to have worked with them and created some fantastic drums together with them. But yeah, this was a sticking point. I was going to have to look at it because DW did have, and rightfully so, some IP, intellectual property rights to that particular round plug. And so being as versed as I have had to become, even though all I want to do is just make drums, I have to understand intellectual properties and patents and trademarks. And I had a good, good, honest look at it. And remembering, I'm coming from a place here of complete honesty in that my intention was to restore and preserve George's legacy and rebuild his company. And after racking my brains, you know, knowing that at some point the tuxedo lug thing was going to run its course. I was going to have to find a way to do a single-ended lug. And I did. I looked at, you know, can I make it single-ended tuxedo? Is that going to work? Can I do this? And I just, there was no way to do it and keep the aesthetic and keep the George in it. Yeah, sure. And so that's when I, you know, ended up looking at what Rob's book and the history and looking at some of those drawings. And I went, you know what? His original lug with the tabs was quite beautiful and striking, and it was different. Sure, there's definitely some similarities, but it's different. And I looked at it and I went, I don't think that there is any chance that anyone is going to ever be confused between a drum that has what I call the aristocrat lugs on it and a cloud badge that says George Way with a round lug drum that has a round badge that says D.W. If you, if anybody is that lacking in knowledge of instruments that they can't, you know, if you can't spot the difference, then I can't help you. But it's certainly not, I'm certainly not going to let it stop me from going ahead and doing what I wanted to do now. Yeah, their high level drum set. So if you're at that point, you can discern the two, obviously. Absolutely, absolutely. Now I had, again, coming from a place of friendship and respect, I had a conversation with Don and Don gets it. And ultimately we found a way of good compromise. And so without getting into the details of that, everybody's good. Cool. Don gets it. I'm not trying to be D.W. with George Way. I'm just trying to rebuild the company. I don't want these drums to look like or be, you know, ultimately compared to George's thing is George's thing. D.W. and Don's thing, they're completely different. And I'll say this because I've said this. I said this to Don. After receiving all of George's estate and some of the absolutely priceless historic treasures that are in there. And you asked me about that in a minute. Totally. I realized that I am just the caretaker of the brand. Yes, I bought it. Yes, I own the trademarks. But I'm not going to be making drums forever. I'm 57 at some point. I want to see that brand to keep moving forward and cheese. Wouldn't it be great someday to see that fantastic lineage of George Way, Campco and D.W. just put back together. Wow. That's a powerful thought that never even occurred to me. Wouldn't it be like I'm like going, and so you can draw your own conclusions there. But, you know, Don Lombardi gets it. Well, yeah. I mean, he's in acquiring Slingerland recently. He's obviously got an eye for the historical, the respect for history. Of course he does. So that's a thought, man. I've never thought about that. Yeah. And, you know, that's what I put it to him in that way. And, you know, when the time comes, that's what I'd like to see. That would be the ultimate thing, I think. It was just to be able to take those pages of history and take them back together in a book in a way that makes sense. I might write the wrong that was done to George there towards the end of the company. Wouldn't that be awesome? Yeah. Wouldn't that be awesome? I don't know if George is watching from some, you know, a cloudy vantage point or whether or not, but I just think that anybody who is a drummer and appreciates the instrument would, that would be so satisfying. And I'm one of those guys. So, you know, that's where I'm coming from on this. Man. Well, to kind of reading in the history here, to wrap up George, it said in 1962, George starts the GHW drum company seven years later on February 21st, 1969, George Harrison Way passes on. So he passed away then. And then I think another thing I want to note that people can Google this, and I've always wondered this, and I'm working on a British drum company episode, but there's a company called Heyman H-A-Y-M-A-N drums, and they use round lugs, and they look identical to George Way and D-W. And I think they're from the 70s, and I always wondered if there's any legality stuff there, because it's like, it's a drum company with round lugs, but it's British. So I don't know if it's because it's international patent stuff. What's up with that? But everyone should Google it, H-A-Y-M-A-N, and you'll see, like, whoa, those are... Yeah. The Heyman Lug always comes into that. Patent and trademark and IP law is mired in nuance and subtlety. And, you know, you can't trademark a shape. So just because your lug is round, I mean, you know, I think of it in this way. There isn't a manufacturer out there who's made a lug, brass lug on a lathe, that if it's on a lathe, it's gonna be round. And depending on how you look at it, you see a step in it. Okay, well, I'm not just gonna make it some, you know, I'm gonna put a step on the bottom and so Heyman or not, I mean, there are some similarities. The first thing that... The first similarity that's most obvious is, well, it's round. And there aren't a lot of... There weren't a lot of diecast lugs around that were around, but here's what I want your people to Google. Go and look up round brass lugs, and you will see so many variations. And I've done this myself that it's like, you know, let Heyman be only one example because there's a lot of them out there. Yeah, cool. Well, I just wanted to throw that out there just because, you know, it's a little rabbit hole to go down for people, but cool. Ron, why don't we kind of get towards the end of the episode here with how did you acquire all this? You were the owner. I mean, like you said, you've acquired it. You've gotten all the trademarks and all that stuff. What's that story? How did that happen? Some of my dealers had been asking me if I was ever going to do an entry level or mid-level drum, and I was reluctant to do it because I worked so hard to build the Danette brand up to be high-end. But I opened mine and I considered it and I went, well, what would a badge look like? And the first thing I did was I looked at that beautiful Art Deco cloud badge that George designed and I deleted the George way and put the net. And I looked at that and I was horrified. I went, that is sacrilege. That is not going to happen. I will not do that. But in researching the origins of the badge and everything I came across a name of this guy named Emmett McNeese, who happened to be the last owner of the trademark GHW. So I called this guy and he'd run a sheet music store in Elkhart and had a two-hour-long conversation with this fellow. He was very... He's since passed. He was a sweet guy, very old at the time when I talked to him. He gave me the history of the store and everything. And at the end of it, I said, well, Mr. McNeese, I would love to buy that trademark from you. I promise I'll do right by it and right by George's memory. And I'm not sure that you really cared about that, but he said, well, I'll tell you what, here's what I paid for it. You write me a check for this much and it's yours. And he had that check in his head before he hung up the phone. And so that was the GHW trademark that I acquired. But it still left in question where was George Way, that trademark. And again, having to do the research and getting involved in the nuances of intellectual property, that trademark had never been registered. And because there had been such a long time, it was basically an abandoned trademark. When I got hold of it, anybody could have taken it. So it was really like finding a lottery ticket on the ground, a winning one. And I've always said this, thank God it was me because I've seen a lot of heritage brands and I don't even have to name them, just dragged through the mud and basically trashed with all of their intellectual property and just left in tatters. The beaver tail lug, the Swingerland, that beautiful Art Deco design now just homogenized across the board. Really sad to see that being paired up with 5 cent stamped base drum claws and pearl style spurs and round Gibraltar lugs. It's like, oh my God, my design sense. It was meant to be though, it found you. You know what, I think it was. And there's been a few naysayers and critics. You always have to deal with those guys and I go, well, you know what, I got a clear conscience. I know where I lead with my heart and I love George Way. He's been a, never met him, but he's been a mentor to me through his work and I'm proud of a few things, but how I've rebuilt and worked entirely to restore that company to where he would have, where I think he would have liked it to have been completely happy with that. Yeah, I think you're doing a great service to it and I think, and you've got some great players. I've seen, I actually recorded him a while ago, young drummer Joseph Joe Mintz who was at the studio work at a while ago and he's a George Way artist and you've got some other people who are just very respectful and just love what you're doing. I mean, you're doing a great thing. I'm trying to and it's not easy in this market and having rolled this ball up the hill for the last 12 years, ironically, it's now outgrown me. It's become a little bit hard for me to manage how big it's become and grown and yet I still look at it and the potential for it to continue to growing because it's a unique brand and it's a unique product. Yeah. I hope I can find the energy to keep rolling it up the hill. Absolutely. Because to me it's like you see someone playing these or you see these and it's almost like an insider's club of people who know about George which now hopefully thanks to this we're going to get that message out there a lot more but it's just like the truest, it's just as pure as it gets with drum heritage and the stuff you're doing is beautiful. Everyone can check it out at waydrums.com w-a-y-drums.com and also, obviously, Ron is Danette Classic Drums himself which you can go to danette-d-u-n-n-e-t-t.com and obviously you're on social media and all that stuff and yeah, is there anything else anything cool you're working on right now you want to share with the audience? Oh, God. George, way wise, yeah, I mean this has been a transition year for George where, you know, it's the rebirth of the aristocrat lug and all that came with it so it's just working hard to get that out. I'm always working on something. Gosh, I've been working on a pedal for nine years now and I'm getting close to it. I kind of wonder if I could have bought a Tesla with all the money that I put into it but hopefully it's going to pay off and yeah, always got things that I'm working on as far as Danette goes George's, the only thing I have left to do to complete the George Way catalog and have it complete is the double tom holder and I'm working on that this year so hopefully by next year, you know, someone's going to be able to walk up to a sort of George Way drum to the dealer and go, you know, this is what a George Way kit would have looked like if his company would have kept going. Yeah. Well, that's awesome and before we end here, I want to give a shout out to Seamus from DrumGab because he, like I was telling you before, like a year ago, was telling me, he was like, you got to talk to Ron, you got to get him on, talking about George Way and so shout out to him for kind of giving me the idea and like I mentioned, other people along the way, I've probably had five people say to me like you should do George Way and also we want to hear from Ron. I'm going to put some questions in there and here's what I'm going to send a shout out to if anybody is truly interested in understanding your instrument and it's only going to make you a better drummer in the end and it's only going to make your experience playing the drums more fun. Rob Cook's book, The Leedy Way is just a fantastic, it's not just about George Way and Leedy but it really lays out this pageant, this lineage of the history of the drum and there's things in there that you're just going to be surprised to know. This stuff didn't just, it didn't invent itself. Somebody had to do it so I'd encourage you to go buy it. It'd probably be the best 20, 30 bucks you'll ever spend. Yeah, absolutely and Rob truly has become such a friend of this show where an episode rarely goes by where we don't talk about Rob and Tony before I just got a Christmas card from him today which is the coolest thing in the world. Getting a Christmas card from the Chicago drum show is amazing but if people want to hear a little bit more information about that and The Leedy Way before you read it and buy it Episode 6 is the history of Leedy Drums with Rob Cook here on Drum History so you can check that out and get a little taste of what it's going to be like. We're lucky to have a historian like Rob Cook and he's left us, his legacy is a beautiful one. He's left us, he's done all of our homework for us. He left us a beautiful archive of the three of Drums. And a humble and nice guy and anyone can, if I can do it if I can just start this and start to be included in the community then anyone can. Cool, well Ron I appreciate it very much and everyone finds Ron online and keeps up with him on social media and that's it. Ron, thanks for being on the show. Well, thank you so much for inviting me. I love talking about good stuff and this was truly an enjoyable conversation. Excellent. Alright Ron, talk to you later. Yep, bye for now. If you like this podcast find me on social media at Drum History and please share, rate and leave a review and let me know topics that you would like to learn about in the future. Until next time, keep on learning. This is a Gwynn Sound podcast.