 Welcome to the drum history podcast. I'm your host Bart van der Zee and today I'm joined by Patrick Jones who's going to be teaching us all about US military drumming Patrick welcome to the show All right. Thank you for having me. Yeah, this is awesome So you were recommended by Mark Robertson who's turned out to be a really good friend of the show and He's actually sent me some books and stuff to learn more about like Civil War era drums and It's just been awesome. I didn't know anything about drum and fife or anything about that world So he kind of helped me get get into that. So a big shout out to Mark Robertson for connecting us, but yeah So you as I understand are a very authentic Restorer of very old drums You yourself do the fife and drum core and you're a fifth grade teacher in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Yes. Yes so I am actually drum right now with a fife and drum core called camp chase fife's and drums and They are a very historically minded fife and drum core and we'll get hired to play for different museums and different events of a historical nature For example the Henry Ford Museum over Memorial Day weekend. We've been going there. I think since 1985 As a group obviously that predates when I was born Well, we've been we've been going out there a long time and and our focus is mainly the Civil War period Fife and drum Music and we take a lot of that Material from the fife and drum manuals that were published and available during that time period Okay, so why don't you tell me because I again I've read a little bit about the book Mark sent me but Why don't you explain to everyone? What is fife and drum? I mean it literally down to what is a fife like give us the whole spiel on that So basically, you know and it condensed version you know a fife is simply a six-hole instrument that was the precursor to the flute and The rope tension drum Goes all the way back probably to Switzerland as the first appearing in the military and It was probably used there for the first time in conjunction With the fife in the military and then obviously as the fighting went on between the Swiss and the French and the British You know that tradition came across with the different settlers that first appeared here in the American colonies and the first time that we see in America the use of the the drums is in Plymouth in 1627 and Miles Standish was actually a drummer in Queen Anne's army very early in the 1600s and They would have the militia organizations formed in Each of the towns as a protective measure against Native Americans and attacks and things like that and what they would do is they would have a training day and along with the training day you would have a drummer and the drummer sometimes would be paid and Sometimes food you when you look back at different records of how they paid drummers then and the drummer would act as a signal for the men to march together to drill together and Even for town meetings. I'm you know drummers were used in the colonies In replace of you know bells when a when you know church bells would signal people to come for a meeting You would actually have drummers doing that same thing. So a drum was used Throughout the the colonies very early on even the term drumming up business That's a phrase that goes back to the drummers, you know marching around the town drumming to stir everybody to come to the meeting house or to come to the Center of the town for some announcement. Wow, that's so interesting. I remember seeing online and I forget where I saw it but how drums would be used by like fire departments to alert people of Fires I guess or to get the fire department together. I think it was something like that It would make sense to do that Anything that needed to be communicated Pre-having any electronic devices. Yeah, it's a lot easier and even when I talked to my you know fifth grade students about this when we Discussed the history, you know I tell them I say is it easier to go around yelling things for a thousand people or would you get a group of drummers together? And people would either come and yell at them to shut up and stop playing because it's annoying or they would come You know because something was wrong. That's so funny. What subject do you teach? I never asked that I teach history That makes sense. Okay. Yeah, it's I I kind of Started out I've been in the same district now for 14 years and I started out teaching English language arts and social studies Oh, great, and then they eventually ended up allowing us to be kind of consolidated into specific groups And I was lucky enough to teach history Perfect. I think you'll feel right at home talking to me from teaching fifth graders. I'm about that level there, so That's all right, yeah, okay, so um Now back to the topic and onward with US military drumming so we're in the colonies That's the first use of it there basically correct. That would be military. That would be gathering everyone Where exactly where does it go from there? And then also as we go maybe maybe talk about the gear like you did where rope tension and all this and maybe a little bit about the manufacturers and just take it away what you'll start to see in the Colonies is you'll start to see you know an uptick as we get into you know the French and Indian War and you know different wars of You know us and the colonies and things like that You're gonna start to see the output of military music manuals And that's where I think all of this gets really interesting Because if you take a look at a military unit They start to designate one Pfeiffer and one drummer for every company And usually there are 10 companies of Soldiers in a regiment so you would have something called the regimental field music So the whole idea behind having like a system of drumming Needed to be in paper or needed to be taught so that people were playing the same thing Yeah, and what you would start to see is you start to see this okay standardization of calls Because you could have this guy over here playing something this guy over here playing something He's gonna say well, this is what I play for dinner call Well, this is what we play for dinner call and then you put them all together and they try to perform together and it's absolute disaster and Washington actually writes about that he writes about the music in the continental arming, you know being abysmal and He said something needs to be done because it's terrible So they begin standardizing and you see the first writing of this in von Stuyben's tactical manual and there's a section called Beats for the drum or beats of the drum and it goes down and it lists specifically What are the beats? How are you gonna play it? And it gives a little piece of information about what the drummers supposed to do so that's the first time that we see here in the American colonies something in writing Standardized now. There's obviously people who had manuscripts a lot of things were you know taught by rote drumming obviously But that's really the first time. I think you see something standardized to say okay Here's how we're all gonna do it and that happens, you know during the revolutionary war Then after that we begin to see different manuals come out You have one Ashworth in 1812 and that one is adopted by the United States Army and I think a lot of people today have tendency to stay away From the older manuals of rudimental drumming because they're very different than what our modern notation looks like today And what I mean by that is if you take a look at some of these older manuals, they will not write in any time signature They will simply write as the beat that you're playing or by rudiment So at the beginning they'll have the list of rudiments They'll show you what they look like which are not the same as us They sometimes write them on different lines so the left hand is on one line the right hand will be on the other That's interesting. Yeah, and then what they do is they put those together in Groupings for a beating or even for a tune very hard to do that though without having the fife melody to understand How it's supposed to go together. Yeah, so when you start looking at these different, you know music manuals You have to do a lot of cross referencing You have to do a lot of analyzing what the fife is doing for the harmony to see how that fits along with the drum, but there's some very simple roles with with this rudimental drumming and the most Probably widely known one is most of everything starts with a seven stroke role and the seven stroke role is to be beat on the upbeat of The note before you would end or start marching with your left foot So that's kind of like a widely known. It's kind of a joke that people use like oh How does that beating go and it's like I had starts with a seven well They all start with a seven pretty much That's kind of a widely known joke in the fife and drum world to tell people man I love that there's jokes in the fife and drum world, you know, I know I don't know if I should be ashamed of that Yeah, one or the other yeah, but you start to see you know, you start to see this standardization Which is very neat because then as wars Begin to happen people begin to capitalize on that like anything else And they start to print manuals and they start to steal even from each other You know some of the the ways that they write things and you'll see that happen You know throughout history with people stealing something sure they'll steal a tune and they'll call it a different name So because of the copyright infringement, it'll be exactly the same, but they'll call it something else Yeah, and I think what really begins to to get interesting with with the teaching of this is by the time the civil war comes around Is you started to have these schools of music where they were taking younger boys And they were teaching them how to play Life drum and bugle and probably the most well known there was two of them mainly in the United States It was Governor's Island, New York and the Newport barracks in Kentucky and in Governor's Island, New York There was a really fascinating diary written By a drummer boy who was taken there When he was about 12 years old or so and his name is Augustus Myers And he chronicles the daily life of who in his instructors were what they had to do there What they were required to do and it's really fascinating to see that from a musical standpoint that this was not like You know, oh, here's a young boy We're just gonna give him a drum and he's goes off to war they had a duty to perform and They had to know that duty in order to be a part of the whole military Existence because when it comes down to it the fife and drum was the communication aspect for daily life For soldiers, they heard the fife and drum every single day when to get up when to assemble when to take roll calls When to eat supper? Yeah, everything was regulated by the fife and drum. Hmm. Let me ask you a question real quick How do so let's say I'm just a foot soldier I'm not a drummer. I'm not a musician. I have no background on this at all. How do I learn? What I'm listening to how do I know this means go to dinner? How do I know this means? Let's get ready for battle Because you would hear it every single day Okay, so they'd say maybe they train you and say hey This is what this means and then you hear it all constant So they all practice listening they all they all knew if they were they knew exactly you probably and from some diaries They knew exactly what Reveley was because if you get an entire 10 fighters 10 drummers You have the full complement playing at 5 a.m. Yeah, and they would play the first thing They would play as a Reveley sequence which was about eight or ten tunes and the whole idea Was to get these guys out of bed and that's all that they you know That's all they did so they would either get up out of bed and there's different newspaper Sketches that you will see of drummers and fighters having things thrown at them by the soldiers and you know Trying to get them to stop playing but that was their that was their job. Yeah to get them out of bed. Hmm That's so neat. I think another important thing to remember too is this isn't like, you know Alfred printing a bunch of drum books like even the manufacturer and I've heard someone talk about like how it was like Like what do you call it where they'd have to print them on the slabs and then like Printing blocks printing blocks. Yeah, it's just fascinating. Like that's not an easy prize. Everything was harder It was you know when you take a look at some of these fife and drum manuals and think about the amount of time it would take to produce something like that and then You know, you got to look at a lot of different facets when you take a look at the manuals The person who was printing it was not a musician a printer by trade does not know really anything about musical notation So, you know, some people will look at the manuals and say, oh, well that one has mistakes Well, they all have mistakes. Yeah, because you have think, you know, if you think about setting that type exactly so It is really difficult to do. So of course, there's gonna be mistakes Of course, there's gonna be you know phrases and things in there that are you know Don't really work but we have to kind of say well if you look at these four other manuals and see how it has come from the you know Previously written manuals, then it makes most sense that they meant this. Yeah, so there's some conjecture with it But you can you know base it on a lot of historical fact as well. Hmm. Yeah, that's so interesting There's just so many little little side pockets. You can go down with this, but um, okay So carry on here. So we were in the early 1800s then Yeah, so when you start to see the war of 1812 happen we have Ashworth's manual and What you start to see then is you after that you start to see some some differences in the styles of music and One very particular style of music you see is happening up in the New England area Specifically in Massachusetts you start to see a manual come out called the Massachusetts collection of martial music and That's by Romero and Holton and when you start to see this style come out It's very unique in the way that it's played the way that it's performed and I think that's interesting because even within the fife and drum Community you see these different styles of music written and it's interesting because later on Even in different Fife and drum diaries Fife and drummers diaries they talk about rival drum course And they talk about how the playing styles of the Fife and drum course in New York were very different than their playing styles of Massachusetts and other places and They describe them as a 6-8 and he calls them the chunks of putting pieces of pie Style that you hear in Massachusetts as opposed to our get out the way old Dan Tucker is style, which is written in 2-4 So they talk about the way the soldiers March. What is that? What does that mean chunks of pie? So chunks of putting in pieces of pie. I Apparently and this has been a long time another friend of mine who I talked to very frequently about this who's you know, and he's just a wealth of information his name's Peter Emmerich and That refers to a tune and that tune I believe is in six eight times signature Ah, and anybody knows obviously six eight times in your two four sounds very very different Yes, and when you're marching to it it almost gives you kind of a you know for lack of a better term six eight almost gives you a sort of swag sure when you're marching to it and You know this this drummer was talking about these different styles that their drum core was used to playing as a opposed to the other drum core and old Dan Tucker is a pretty popular tune. It was a very popular minstrel tune I think written by a guy named Dan Decatur Emmett who was the author of another fife and drum manual See there's so many little rabbit holes. You can go down with this stuff It's it's almost, you know, we joke around about that often like how far do you down the rabbit hole? Do you want to go? Yeah? There's just so many things but it's when you're talking about something like fife and drum and you're talking about tunes You're talking about rudiment. It's almost hard not to bring it all together Because there's so many facets that influenced it You know even you know the irish and the irish immigration you see a lot of jigs and you see a lot of irish Music, yeah, because that was the influence then so you're gonna see, you know different types of things that happened in You know the civil war drum fife manuals that are kind of a sign of the times popular music Obviously like any other time period American history. Yeah, gotcha. But but it but by the time the civil war, you know rolled around um Civil war is basically your height Your apex of fife and drum in military because after the civil war It starts to lose its its flavor and you start to see the bugle take over more So I think that you know if you're studying fife and drumming and in that style of rudimental traditional drumming I think its height would definitely be the civil war because I think more manuals were printed between 1861 and 1865 than Any other time period And there's so many, you know, there's so many different manuals and some of them are very similar Some of them are almost identical and some of them are so different That you would have to look at it and say, okay, when was this printed? Who was this distributed to? And which groups of you know armies were using specific manuals and that's really hard to determine sometimes Yeah, really. Do they um, I'm sure they do. I'm sure they're in like a museum They must still some of them must still exist, right? Like yeah, I have a few original manuals from from that time. I know there's certain ones that are You know identified to a certain person and that makes it really interesting because you know that whoever Whoever that person served with that unit was using specifically that manual. So you get a real good sense of what they were playing um And and the you know when it goes back to it. It was a very literate society, but you still had, you know musical Notation and reading is a lot different than just reading words So you probably still had a lot of rope, you know teaching and um, you know, that still went on But you had by this time, you know, you're starting to see a real good strong system of principal musicians drum majors You have professional musicians now in the military um, you have brass bands And they are also now coming in and they're usually professional musicians with the regimental brass bands So you you see a lot of professionals now entering the scene as opposed to we need people just to play duty calls Now bouncing off of what you just said, it would be like a musician who is a professional, let's say very Good drummer, but he wants to serve his country Or he gets drafted or whatever happened there Um, but you would go in and say, hey, here's my special skill that I have Let me be a musician instead of being like nowadays you'd say I'm Really good with computers. Let me be in the intelligence department. You could say like, hey, I'm a drummer Let me go in and be that in the in the um in the you know Fife and drum core. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. They had, you know, there were there were town brass bands, you know predating the civil war from the 1850s and a lot of these town brass bands were, you know in mass Um, mustard in with different companies and regiments and early on it was um, allowed that every regiment could have a brass band and even some of the officers Paid out of their own pocket to make sure that their brass band had the best instruments And had the best equipment because they wanted them to look good And you know, not to just be there for you know, musical Entertainment, but also it was kind of like, you know competitive in nature Or one officer's regimental brass band to be known as the best in the entire army And they would of course be able to serenade the generals They would be able to perform concerts and they did things like that but whole brass bands were actually allowed to Um, mustard in and they were paid very well They were paid more than the average soldier because they were specialized Now what happens though is it got a little bit too expensive. So by 1862, I believe the war department Said no more regimental bands. We can't we can't afford that anymore. So now it's going to have to be You know turned into Just brigade bands. So instead of having 10 Regimental bands, you're now only allowed one brigade band for your 10 regiments Gotcha And and you start to see those and the nice thing about that, you know with the the civil war is you have tons of photographic evidence of this And I think that's one of the the really nice things When you take a look at the civil war is there's so much photographic evidence Of all of these things. There's a lot of diaries that are of you know, readily available The library of congress has an amazing resource You can go on you can take a look at band books um original band books that they have um They've scanned in high definition and you're able to take a look at the music that was played And uh some regimental brass bands that are now like recreated brass bands use that exact same arrangement Of music, which is really cool because you're taking something That hasn't been heard on original instruments and a lot of these brass bands today even have all original instruments So you're hearing original music played on original instruments And a style that would have you know only been seen in the 1860s and the 1850s. That's so cool. So um This Right here where we're talking about 1861 to 1865 the civil war. This is the Big big big moment for these guys, right? Like this is the heyday. So Let's spend some time here because um first my question is is we're talking about both sides the union army and the confederate army, correct? They're both using these okay now In the like the the the the battle is on and I would speak to it as if not everyone is from the united states and knows the You know the things that we may know especially you as a you know history teacher but um What was it like for for one of these drummers? I'm talking like how old was was he I'm assuming it was all he at that point Yes, yes, okay supposed to be supposed to be in the in the military at that time Um, basically, you know, there there's definitely a large misconception of what these You know bands and drum cores and musicians did When the battle, you know when battle actually Occurred yeah, um the one thing that I you know, I tell my students this and I I do a lot of interpretive You know demonstrations and I explain to people that if you have thousands of guns going off You have cannons You're never going to hear a drum beating really anything on a battlefield. It's kind of absurd And what really they were used for during the battle is they were used by the surgeons And they were used by the medical staff to go get wounded. Um, so they were definitely exposed There's a lot of stories meddle of honor recipients even of you know going after men who were wounded and pulling them Back and uh, you know, you talk about age. It's really all over the place the term drummer boy I don't know is is so accurate during this time because you see age ranges all over the place you see 17 18 19 you see in their 30s and their 20s And the way that I talk to you know a lot of people to try to explain that is You know most 10 11 12 year olds are not going to be able to handle the rigors of campaign And what I mean by that is if you are marching 17 miles a day 15 miles a day You're enduring the freezing cold. You're enduring the heat your carrying items You just can't do that at that young of an age for the most part No, so you're going to need you know people who are able to endure that and they're going to you know Have to be able to sustain those type of uh element situations So when you take a look at again, which is great that we have the photographic evidence We have the muster records. We have the roles of the men their ages now some of them did lie But when you take a look at those You can see that you know, you're you're talking more into their upper teens and 20s For the for I think a majority of them the whole idea of like the Johnny Clems who were 10 years old and shooting people It's far and few between. It's you know, not not as likely But you know during the battle definitely they were they were not always playing There are a lot of accounts though them playing men into battle for morale And uh that happens, you know numerous times, you know at famous battles like Gettysburg You know they talk about that with the iron brigade marching on to a scottish piece Um called the camels are coming just before they you know Engaged on the first day. So there's there's a lot of different uh pieces where we know that they they played specific tunes in the wilderness in virginia for example as um, they were marching down the fife and drum corps was playing and Everybody was actually laughing and general grand had come out of Todd's tavern said, you know What's the fuss about and he goes well, you know, why don't you know general what they're playing? He goes no and they said well the tune is ain't I glad to get out of the wilderness And he said well, I only know two tunes one of them's yankee doodle and the other one isn't so there's There's certain times that we know which are really cool exactly what a band or a fife and drum corps was playing at an exact moment Uh in history. Wow You know, we have you know the music to that which is I think very cool Can you back up real quick and explain a little bit about what you meant about surgeons would use them? So how would that work like like they would take a drummer with them to go out and get Retrieve soldiers or Basically, they would most likely ground their drums and their musical instruments somewhere And then the the surgeon in charge would be their boss And he would say okay, you know go out there and they would just get wounded men From the battlefield and bring them back to wherever the field hospital Happened to be and by field hospital. I mean a barn I'm talking about somebody's outdoor of their house anywhere that they were set up because These were you know situations and that could go down a whole nother rabbit hole the ambulance core and everything But these were situations where you know, they needed immediate triage of men and it was things were happening very quickly And it had to be right there right then so the musicians were detailed to go out and get the wounded men Bring them back and hopefully, you know have them be worked on in a timely manner Which sometimes we know wasn't so timely But that was that was their their job during the battles. Okay, so then that takes me to another question of our Were drummers like like they didn't have A gun they were not like trained for battle They were more almost like you said like like in the medical field of just like people who have a service They have a purpose to serve but would they have guns would they have knives would they protect themselves at all? They were not issued Any sort of equipment or weapon they they had a musician sword. They were issued and that was pretty uh, you know Pretty absurd to even think that would do anything was more ceremonious You know it was a musician sword to make them look good and a lot of them threw them Probably away because they were cumbersome or put them on the wagon trains to not be used But that was all they had and Usually I think and they were exposed to fire I mean so there was no doubt that they definitely sometimes were exposed and not that you know Anybody would be aiming at them particularly because these armies are firing, you know hundreds of yards away from each other But yeah, there's definitely evidence that they were killed on the battlefields You know by strain musket balls just the same because they were exposing themselves in the same way or even I know there was an ohio drummer at Gettysburg who actually crawled out and pulled He was a meadow of honor recipient crawled out and pulled one of his screaming comrades to safety On his back and actually put him on his back and crawled and pulled him back to the union lines Wow In between the union and confederates, you know firing at each other So there were definitely acts of bravery. I think that people would be surprised about you know seeing These these musicians who really were not combat soldiers Taking active roles when the need arose Which you know, I think really says something for the the type of people that You know, they were during the 1860s, you know that duty, you know, they're comrade, you know, comradeship that they had I think is something that is very difficult to see in modern day Sometimes, you know day-to-day life of what, you know, these these guys were enduring on a daily basis Man and again, so this goes back to my question of this is on both sides So it would be the same because because again, I guess your neighbors on one day in 1860 and then your enemies in 1861 so it's not like They're different countries. I mean it's the same No, you exactly and I mean, you know, the the north was obviously much more supplied Then the south which is a kind of a cool segue when we get into I can start talking a little bit about drum making. Oh, yeah, you read my mind I was gonna say let's let's hear too. Yeah So when you start to take a look at manufacturing of musical instruments, that's a very, you know, interesting thing as well Because if you, you know Go back a lot of years and you see people who were skilled at making Cabinets cabinet makers coopers woodworkers. They were able to make drums So when you start to take a look at the construction techniques of these These older rope tension drums there starts to be a Kind of a similar way of making them And you know, you really have some main components to the drum You have your drum shell, which is wooden And the most of the ones I would say that I've seen a large majority are going to be steam bent And it's it's hard to say how they were steam bending them then Whether they had a steamer set up and they you know, had a steam box and steam bent them or The wood was green obviously and you know, the moisture content and there's all those things to think about Um, whether they were soaking it in water or even boiling it But either way they had to do something to bring that moisture content up And then they would bend the shell and they would usually use some sort of hide glue to connect that seam that overlap that they would have the scarf joints and uh To further reinforce that you see a lot of use of either iron nails Decorative tacks and a lot of makers did have a specific tack design that they used You start to see very famously in Connecticut the brown family Have a very unique style of tack design where you would have a circular tack design around the vent hole then you would have a series of diamonds And literally you can take a look at a drum and I can immediately identify Oh, that has to be a brown drum Just because of the way the tack design is in the in the way that it's made Wow, very ornate and you know, it is it's it's fancy, you know It's it's that's the way it was meant to be it was they were drum makers too So they were you know, particularly I think They're they're around in the 18, you know early 1800s 1820s. I have a brown drum from 1825 And uh, it's it plays absolutely beautifully. It's it's very large as a as fuel drum goes It's earlier. So it has about an 18 inch diameter and a 16 inch shell So when you add on the hoops to it, you know, you're looking at another two to three inches or so So it's quite a large drum And so that you have the shell which is the main component then you have the hoops The counter hoops, which are usually painted some sort of color to protect the wood It's you see different shades of red, but red seems to be the predominant color You know, obviously they would use vermilion To paint those and then the heads are either calf skin sheepskin Goat skin and then you have the snares which were not called snares then they were guts Because they were made from sheep intestine And those obviously lay across the bottom and depending on the maker depending on the year You have either a snare strainer or a large amount of drums I've seen they just lay the guts right across the bottom and you just pull them to tighten them You know on the side and that's it. There is no metal snare strainer. There is nothing like that And there are no dampeners There's no cloth because you don't want anything to dampen the sound of those drums You want that sound to carry as far as possible So that modern idea of let's dampen the sound of a drum to get it as crisp as possible They wanted the exact opposite effect In the 1800s the 1700s because you want that sound to carry as far as you can So that everybody could hear what you were doing man, that's The drums were like you said they're they're giant. That's just that's fascinating. They had to be Heavy it had to be a heavy drum Right, you'd be surprised because the shells are only about a eighth of an inch thick Okay, and what's interesting about it is if you take a look at the type of trees that were growing in the 1800s What availability they had they had a the availability of a lot of old growth forests And I think what that allows to happen is it allows the the grain on the wood to achieve a A much tighter density So you could get a much stronger shell at a much thinner You know a much thinner Thickness And it's going to withstand a lot more tension than a younger Tree that makes sense. Wow, which is very you know, which is kind of odd to think And you know, it's really hard to find a piece of ash today You know a tree that's going to allow you to make a you know a 16 inch wide board That's a be it has to be an old tree. Yeah And they're just not in you know, they're just you just don't have them around like that anymore No, the world I feel like things have been a little picked over. I mean this was back when It wasn't like that so and one thing I think we could talk about a little bit too is um I started the show about two years ago. I really didn't realize until you know a couple episodes in you just do I'm doing research About how traditional grip Starts because of these guys marching and in order to walk They had to have the drum at an angle and therefore their left hand would be You know with the stick coming out traditional grip with its sideways What's interesting about that is Even in the fife and drum manuals you see a lot of the beginning They're called self instructors So supposedly a lot of these fife and drum manuals are meant to be I could go and purchase this And I can open it up and I could basically teach myself by reading this This fife instructor fife and drum instructor And one of the things that they talk about at the beginning of almost all of them is how to hold the sticks And the other thing they teach was just kind of funny to me It's how to hold the sticks and how to stand and I I always I always like that because it teaches you posture It teaches you how you should present yourself, you know as a player And then it goes even some of them go into detail. They actually have prints Of somebody standing showing you how the stick should look in your hands And it's very descriptive showing just the hands and how your grip should be And you know the interesting thing is is with these types of of drums You definitely need to practice Moving and playing because of the types of slings and the types of you know carriages that they had You know, they didn't stay still and your arms definitely don't remain in one place You know while you're playing which is You know takes you to a whole another thought of the playing style Whereas today I feel like you know, and I'm a dci person From a lot of years where it was a lot of wrist You know, we played a lot of things with the wrist and you allowed a lot of rebound off of a head because a kevlar head You could drop something on a kevlar head and it's going to shoot up 10 feet because it's so highly tensioned When you look at the playing style Um from this time period if you're pulling out a capskin head at five o'clock in the morning in its damp You might as well try playing on a pillow or a piece of paper So how do you achieve 10 minutes of the revelry sequence on a drumhead like that? Well, obviously you have to play differently And I think this very open style of playing With um, you know a lot more arm I think originate, you know really comes from um, you know that time period from the old rope tension drums Because that's how you had to play on them. The last thing you wanted to do was just play soft Yeah, so they're you know, I I always laugh. There is a um a review done of a Fife and drum manual from 1855 um named a guy named Klein haunts who was a marine corps drummer And there is a in the carlough. I think in the carlough barracks archives. There is a note where The review board listened to what he had to say about drumming and he was kind of He was basically convincing them that they should adopt his manual to be used in the united states army And one of the things he had requested is that there is nothing that shows dynamics And they had said they would take it under consideration But everybody on the board agreed that everything was to be played loud So it didn't matter about dynamics. I'm like that's every drummer's dream right there Just hit as hard as you can everything loud. Yeah Man, well that just speaks to that whole like like don't muffle it. Don't do anything We just need to hear this damn thing and make it as loud as possible. It's not um, don't be fancy. Just play loud Yeah, and I actually kind of like that even today when I go, you know And I hear a fife and drum corps just playing, you know up to their ears And I think that's that's awesome because if you know, you have your drums The correct way if you have a calf skin head on and you know It's not getting in that register of the fife And I think the problem that we see a lot of times now and even like camp chase We had used plastic heads for a little while and the problem we had is those plastic heads could tension up into the same Range as the fife which would then drown the fife sound out So we had then kind of transformed into um Or progressed into all calf skin heads same number of drummers We were all playing this, you know as loud as we could But it didn't affect the fife the fife's cut through a lot more Because we had the calf skin on and it wasn't in the same range. It was a much deeper sound. Yeah, sure So and that's you know, kind of going I think by the wayside calf skin is in the modern fife and drum world I see calf skin going by the wayside more and more which is um, You know kind of the way any hobby goes things move and they transform But you know me being a very traditionalist. I don't have a single drum in my house here that has a Plastic head on any of my rope drums It makes sense. I mean you're you're a purist. So yeah, I love it. I just love it. I think it's fascinating I think it has a whole different feel, you know, I can just this morning one of my buddies Text messaged me and said man. It's a great day to play on calf skin because it's sunny out. It's dry You know, it's there's no moisture in the air and there's just something about playing on that calf skin Um and the sound that it produces the warmth the tone the way it feels is very different I'm sure it's like that with a lot of guys who play on some of those old kits And they have some calf skin heads on them. It's very different sound very different feel Yeah, definitely now if anyone's listening and doesn't really know about the whole calf skin head This is mylar and plastic. I would direct you back to there's an episode on The history of drum heads. There's one on the history of remo And then there's also one on the history of painted drum heads, which was about Um a light ball being inside and heating up the head So if you're hearing all this and you kind of don't know what we're talking about check those out Now I wanted to ask you did the government come in and say to people you're making drums for the us army now Get to work go in there and do it. We'll pay you like did they Make people start building drums like change factories over or anything like that Nobody had to do that then. Um, the nice thing is is there were already military furnishers and manufacturers In the united states prior to the civil war. Yeah One of the probably largest firms out of philadelphia specifically was called horsemen And uh, william horseman had started the firm In the 18 I want to say 18 28 or so Um, and that firm produced military goods of a variety of natures. They produced flags Um, they had swords. They had any type of military furnishing that you could imagine Um, they produced and one of the things that they produced also were drums And they produced those prior to the civil war then Horsemen's sons both joined in they opened up a firm in new york as well And they produced drums in both places provided a lot of drums. There's actually Um Some schematics of the horsemen factory that I was able to find Through some digging and it shows the layout of their entire factory and on the the one building on the second floor It says drum maker shop. So they had a specific area where they were making drums Now a lot of other people, you know, we're able to jump in on that bandwagon You know, there was another musical firm Zimmerman They jumped in they had contracts at the beginning of the war for drums And then of course you need drumsticks and if you, you know, take a look at places like philadelphia There's a lot of woodturners. There's a lot of people who are basically set up To make drumsticks without a problem and you'll see thousands of Pairs of drumsticks being turned Out of cocoa wood as it was called And there's no descriptions on length size weight nothing the only thing they say on the quarter master records is You know a thousand or two thousand or three thousand pairs of cocoa drumsticks And so you see a lot of people Picking up the you know slack I guess for lack of a better word Anybody who was doing woodworking could most likely make a drum And there's tons of manufacturers in the philadelphia area You have contracts through the government of different companies to make drums you have private Sales of drums obviously and musical instruments So when you take a look I I recently really started taking a look at the philadelphia area Because that was one of the I think epicenters Of drum makers Even prior to the civil war in the 1820s You start to see a lot of carriage makers and coach makers. They're making drums as well there's a family In germantown area that was very well known henry fraily and then his two son-in-laws thomas bringhurst and I think as william salter they were making drums in the early 1820s Another guy in germantown william and he had contracts to sell drums to the army during the Mexican war and there's actually there was a receipt sold On some I forget which antique website, but it was a handwritten receipt from The government to william ent about the price of the drums how many he was going to make them What they were going to you know look like everything and that was pretty fascinating to have because that's early You know that's 1840s. Yeah, that's incredibly, but by the time you get to the civil war There's so many records being kept. It's you know, it's pretty easy to find The records for the different manufacturers So I would say and basically in the philadelphia region the big makers of drums musical instruments Mainly are going to be horsemen and then you have conrad and frederick soisman They're supposedly brothers One was a cooper and they come into a contract and they're Asked to make 2000 and 3000 drums There's another guy a couple blocks away urnist bought. He's in philadelphia making drums Clemen brothers, they're also in philadelphia and what's real interesting is when you start to take a look At the drums you can see That a lot of them are probably using the same artists to paint the eagle and blaze and mince on the front No, so some people try to identify There's a lot of different ways to try to identify drums and their manufacturer if there's no label inside And one of them would be the eagle motif and you could kind of see Some of the tax designs they use and things like that but It's gets very difficult because they were all within a few blocks of each other and we're definitely contracting that artwork out to different places and They you know, they look the same you'll say this you'll see the same eagle motif on multiple makers made drums from different makers So you know that they were using it's just like today, you know You get an order from the government and then you turn around and say okay I can do this this and this but I can't do these three things So i'm going to contract it out to these other people to do for me Yeah, really and even the same goes for the larger companies Maybe they got a contract for a thousand drums But they can't make a thousand because they have to make something else So they're going to go to another manufacturer and say hey, I need two thousand or I need a thousand drum shells Can you send those to me and then they'll put them together then they pop their label inside? So it's real interesting. You know, it's easy I think earlier to tell who the drum maker was because that person really made the drum As you start to get into the civil war It becomes a little bit more difficult because you're wondering okay Who made the drum or who just put their label in it and sold it Yeah, that's that's similar to I know with like early like the You know 1920s drums. I was trying to figure out the brand of one that I found at an old antique shop and Apparently ledie was making a ton of them and just sort of or wallberg and ager where it was like Was was being kind of the white label like here take this and then put your put your information on it kind of thing just making shells so That's obviously the the brunt of our of our conversation is about the civil war but like Moving forward here for the sake of time post 1865 Obviously that you said like we said before is the heyday of of this type of musician Where does it go from there because it it has to sort of you know, things get modernized and the form of communication Yeah, I I think what ends up happening is what you start to see is, you know, the fife and drum as a military tool uh starts to just become obsolete and you start to see it now turn into ceremonious You know more ceremonial type of of activities you start to see More bands you start to see more public performances Um, you know the role of fife and drum as it was in the military pretty much You know ceases to exist and the bugle More or less starts to take over because the bugle can be heard very easily over the din of battle The bugle I think really takes over and then later on what you start to see after that is these combinations of now fife drum and bugle And the nice thing is is there's a wax cylinder preservation website that you can check out and they have recordings from about 1897 to 1903 1913 of these Fife drum and bugle cores now Playing in parades and they're on Edison wax cylinders So you can start to see this progression of where it's going to which then ultimately leads us to drum cores dci Where you have drum and bugle cores and you start to see even you know Boy Scout groups have fife drum bugle cores and you start to see this uh, I think this Whole ensemble idea coming together where you're making music for entertainment As opposed to serving a military function You know as the as they did it in the civil war and in previous Fife and drum terms in the military. So I think it all goes more towards Entertainment sure I would have to say because really there's no need for it anymore once you have Two-way radios once you have you know any other sort of communication device you really are not going to need any musical outlets Military wise to wake guys up. Well, you you read my mind. Would you would you say? so it sounds like bugles and radios Or whatever form of communication, but let's say bugles and radios were the killer of the like You know the drummer for a for really practical Need in in the uh in the military. Is that right? Yes. Yeah, I would think so But in the u.s. You know specifically looking at that once the radio came out once the I think bugle really caught on um Both of those kind of just totally put the fife and drum in an obsolete position For the role of of military purposes Communication wise because that's really this the role that fife and drum had in the military was to communicate information In camp life on a daily basis. Yeah, if you have radios if you have a bugle that's you know concerned Then the fife and drum you're really not going to need any Yeah, so you do start to see you know, spanish-american war and you start to see some other things that bugle definitely takes precedence and the fife and drum is There's some I have some fife and drum manuals from 1918 and but you really it's not used at all the same way Or as widespread as it was like I said earlier the civil war would be the heyday Of the fife and drum in military existence. I would think That's fascinating. I mean it's it's it's sort of sad But it's also like it's just the way of the world like things happen like that technology changes Everything changes like that. But I want to save some time for you to tell people about how you currently Are playing with this you're playing with the fife and drum core and and Like maybe there's a young drummer out there who doesn't know anything about this But they really want to get into it. So so talk a little bit about what's happening Modern wise and and I hope I'm not skipping anything. I imagine then like Vietnam and uh desert storm. There's not too many like, you know The guys with a snare drum marching along it's more against ceremonial. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No, you're you know, it's interesting today You know, everything is so accessible to us it's so readily accessible online and You know, the whole idea of rudimental drumming, you know, traditional rudimental drumming Is not as I think wide known maybe as as people would even think I know when I was younger I wanted what I called civil war drum lessons because I didn't even know what the word rudiment was at that time So, yeah, basically what I started to do is I you know found a teacher My parents did actually for me. They found a teacher who taught rudimental drumming And I just started with okay. What is an open roll sound like? And that's where it started from there, you know, really basic not even really doing anything with reading music But being able to hold the sticks correctly and play, you know, this this long rule as they call it So there's there's a lot of fife and drum cores up in the new england area new england is Really really probably I would say the epicenter for fife and drum in the united states um, connecticut massachusetts those places they have a lot of fife and drum musters as they're called and um They're really interesting to go to I being from pittsburgh I'd only gone actually to my first fife and drum muster last summer In deep river. That's fun. Um, and it was you know, it's interesting because there's over 100 fife and drum cores there There's you can go online. There's multiple facebook pages with groups that have fife and drum core You know information But the only one that that was closest to me was the camp chase fife and drums and that one was very historically minded and there's not a lot of You know historically minded fife and drum cores around there's not too many There's only a few most of them today are very on the more of the cutting edge of rudiments more of like the hybrid rudiments and playing things that are Written by people in their group arrangements in their group. There's very few groups that actually take What is in the fife and drum manual then presented in a historical perspective to the crowd? um And that's what the fife and drum core I do Or that i'm in actually does we do a lot of interpretation to explain how it was used This is what it sounded like here's the manuals we got it in and um, it's very easy to find We have a youtube channel. I have a youtube channel with some of that information um, I just done a presentation on rudiments through Military music manuals for the usa rd, which is united states association of rudimental drummers And uh, that's a group that just kind of focuses on rudimental drumming and its history and and how that all came to be So there's a lot of different. I think outlets even some museums like fort mchenry The fort mchenry national park and shrine they have a fife and drum core that does yearly performances And they do a lot of very traditional music from the fife and drum manuals from the war of 1812 and even some stuff from the civil war They do a nice job there. Uh, I'd mentioned my good friend of mine pete emrick old stirbridge village up in massachusetts They do different mustard days and they perform they're very authentic Um, but there's just not a lot people aren't I feel like is interested in the authenticity side Um, because it's not as flashy. It's not as showy. Yeah, but I think it has its own unique Place in everything. Yeah, of course in in my mind, of course, but i'm biased Yeah, well would uh civil war reenactments and things like that that would probably be, you know, some form of I'm sure there's some drummers there, right? There are I think there's some drummers there You know, the only the only issue that I ever have with some of the reenactments is a lot of times What you see in the reenactment world because people will ask me that they're like, are you your civil war reenactor? I'm like, no, not really. Yeah This in the reenactment world You see a lot of kids who are doing that just until they're old enough to to shoulder a musket And it's not, you know, that's like, oh, I want to come out Which I love the excitement and I love their you know passion for history But they're basically doing it because they're young and that's what younger kids did. They didn't have guns yet So you're not going to see a lot of you know For the most part, you're not going to see a lot of high level Fife and drum playing at a reenactment Um, yeah, I guess if you're in a reenactment, you you know, it's more fun to go charge someone in battle with People yeah people like that, you know people do that thing. That's that's their whole deal You know the fife and drum corps I'm in we we don't really do reenactments. Okay We normally go to historical sites and and we are, you know, there is entertainment but education So if we go to the Henry Ford Museum, we're playing but we're also educating the public on the history of fife and drum Or if we go to hail farm and village In Ohio, we do the same type of thing So what we normally try to do is we try to be entertaining But also it should be an educational experience as somebody walks away with wow That was a lot louder than I thought and that was cool. But man, I also learned a little bit So that's kind of you know, the whole educational side of it. Yeah, awesome Well on that note, why don't you tell people you mentioned a youtube page? Why don't you tell people where they can find you the groups you're playing with what you're doing? And all that good stuff. So if they want to connect with you they can Sure. I have a youtube channel. It's a pj drums 96 and I just have some videos of camp chase Playing on there and then camp chase fives and drums also has a facebook page Which is just camp chase fives and drums. There's a there's a fan page that's easy to find and then online We're camp chase fives and drums dot org Or if you can just type in camp chase fives and drums the search engine It should be able to bring it up and we have pictures on there It will have a link to that youtube channel that I have with all of our different performances. There's also some Historical images on there and then whenever we do have performances They'll be listed on there as well and you can come and and find us. We're usually in the Ohio area, Ohio, Michigan area kind of the more towards the midwest region That way Cool. We'll have to check you out being in Ohio. Are you guys more like northern Ohio? I would imagine, you know, it depends Uh, it depends on on basically whoever contacts us. Okay, you know, we don't mind traveling and our group is spread out everywhere So we have guys from chili coffee columbus Pittsburgh pa We have a couple guys from michigan. I know we have a gentleman from indiana So we're all spread out and you know, wherever we we go. We've done we've gone down to cleveland Yeah, and done some things. They have a irish festival down there a scottish festival. We played at that So we it was very interesting there because we were not the norm that they're used to seeing So when we started playing a lot of scottish and irish music that was popular during the civil war They knew all the tunes, but they had never heard it in that arrangement. Oh, that's cool. So we were we were hit there That's great. Well, I'm right in your circle there. So I'd love to see you guys I'm right on uh, so Cincinnati it's it's interesting because it borders obviously northern kentucky. So Mm-hmm. I mean, I'm we played at tall stacks a couple times But they haven't had it in a few years. That was one of our that was one of my most memorable gigs that I've ever played at Tall stacks. Yeah, it's such a neat thing right right on the river across from newport, kentucky So and that's right where the barracks were The newport barracks for field music school. Man, that's so cool. So Well, patrick, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on the show And also a big shout out to mark robertson again for um for connecting us and that's what it's all about is People reaching out and saying hey, this guy would be great and And and and he was right. You were a perfect guest on a topic that I uh was very interested in but didn't know much about So i'm I'm very grateful to have you on the show Hey, I appreciate the invite and you know mark robertson is a great guy Is a great friend of mine and uh, you know, I was real glad that he was able to to make this connection that we were able to to chat about some things that i'm passionate about and Share a little bit of my obsession with everybody else who tunes in yeah, and it's been a long time coming I mean we've been we've been it's been it's been my fault because i've been switching the rig up to be at home But uh, it's been this has been a few months in the making so i'm glad to have you on here Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate it. Thanks patrick. Bye. Bye. All right. Thanks. Bye 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 the future Until next time keep on learning This is a Gwyn sound podcast