 Hello and welcome to the drum history podcast. I am your host Bart van der Zee and I am joined by my good friend, Mr. Mike Dawson. Mike, welcome to the podcast. Hey, thanks for having me. It's an unusual treat to be on the other side. Yes, it is, because I mean, you're a podcaster. We are on the same network. We're both on the drum click with lots of cool shows, which we can talk about that later and go into more detail about how cool it is to be on a network together. But it's cool for me because I listened to you all the time on the Modern Drummer podcast going back years and years with Mike Johnson. And it's just an awesome show and you guys did a great job. You had hundreds of episodes, 200 something, 50 something like that. Yeah, 250 technically, but the last four were like compilations. Yeah. To 246 is what we ended with. It's funny because I remember hearing those compilations. I remember I had moved since, but I remember walking my dog on the road and it got on the sidewalk by my old house and just listening to those compilations and being like, wow, it's ending. Like the show is coming to an end. It was weird because I think for a lot of us, I got to say kudos to you and Mike because I think it was like a part of people's lives. I know it was for me. I remember listening to it, walking into work every day and just loving it. So well done. You did a great job with that. Thank you. I guess it was 2014 when we started that sucker or 15, something like that. It's hard to believe. Yeah. It was just a lark. We just would talk to each other every week and he's like, why don't we record this? And then it became a thing and now we have an obligation. So he'd be in Ireland and we'd had to figure out how to record. It was, I was at the beach. We had to figure out how to record. There was a few where it was like, oh man, you guys are like one time I think you were in like a hotel room together at like NAMM or something. Yeah, we did do one at NAMM. Yeah. And it was like, this is weird. Like I've never done, I've done one or two in-person interviews. They're always done remotely. And I think when I did it in person, I did it in New Orleans in the back of Preservation Hall and I was like, this is weird. I'd like to be, I like to be on the computer because it's like, it's my home base. But no, it was awesome. I mean, you guys did a great job. But so now though, no longer with MD, you got, you are now the chief creative officer at Drum Factory Direct, which is just an awesome company. You seem very happy there. It seems like a great fit for you. Yeah, I mean, I don't know how far you want to go into it, but essentially they hired me to be a freelance writer. We're working on a new website. And it was really, really odd. He sent me some links. Like these are the kind of articles I want to start doing. And he had no idea that I was actually the lead editor on all these articles that he was sending me. That's funny. You know, these were all my ideas. So why don't we talk about something like a job here? You want me to join? So I was like, I was full-time, but 1099 because I was still in Jersey. And then they were like, if you can move to Pittsburgh, we'll put you on salary and make you part of the staff. So that was the impetus. And at that time, Broadway had just shut down. So I had no reason to be near New York City anymore. I wasn't subbing. There were no gigs. So my wife and I were like, why don't we sell this house, which has been a financial burden and go somewhere that's like half the price. Pittsburgh, let's do it. Yeah, man. Well, it's awesome to see you land there. And you're someone who, I mean, finding cool jobs in the drum ministry, I guess is not the easiest thing in the world, but you seem to like always, you're writing skills and stuff. I think people have been aware of your work. You've carved a cool place for yourself in the drum industry, which I think you kind of have to do anyway. So what we're here to talk about today though, is very recently, I believe it was September 12th. I'm looking at the press release, Roland acquired DW as an industry guy. What's your take on it? I was surprised. I'm not gonna say that I expected DW to sell anytime soon. Although it's pretty well known that high-end acoustic drum sales have been really slow, especially since the pandemic sit in. I mean, the pandemic almost killed everybody. So no pun intended. It almost destroyed every company in the world, but in the drum industry in particular. I mean, I think DW furloughed their entire staff and as so did almost everybody else. So we can't forget that like everyone has been struggling in a company with that much overhead and that many assets to manage. It's not surprising now that I think about it, but when I saw that press release was like, whoa, DW, the one, the company who's been trying to gobble up everybody. Now it's being gobbled up by an even bigger corporation. And it's not an acoustic company. So all that was kind of shocking. Then I started thinking, well, why would Roland buy DW? And I know there's been certain the hardware, obviously they want, why not incorporate the best hardware on the best electronic kits? I mean, V drums are awesome. They're premium. They're really great that you pay for them. I mean, you can spend, you can spend as much money as you want on a V drum set. You know what I mean? And I feel like you can see some that are $12,000 plus. But that being said, it is like a, well, and then DW also has DW drums and hardware, Pacific drums and percussion, which PDP is awesome. I mean, everyone, I think PDP, it was interesting to see PDP grow from when I was a kid. I remember getting, you know, I'd get my $25 PDP stand that I still have behind me. And the drums have gotten a lot more high quality over the years, but DW though, in their portfolio LP, Latin percussion and Gretz drums and Slingerland. So it's really not just a clean, we're buying DW, that's it. It's a lot of stuff. We're gonna see, I mean, just like when DW bought all those companies from KMC, very quickly they started dispersing those assets. I think we're gonna see Roland doesn't want LP. Why would they want LP? We'll see what happens. Yeah. Roland, do they want, I guess Gibraltar wasn't part of it anymore, but I remember DW had acquired Gibraltar and part of their acquisition of KMC, which was odd because you got DW hardware. Why would they want Gibraltar? Well, they didn't. They just had to take it and then they offed it later. So I think some of these bits, I mean, I'll air my concerns. I don't think Slingerland will ever come back. Which is sad. I mean, it's sad. We've talked about that a lot on the show and actually when Don came on, it was like, which Don was on not that long ago and it was sort of a thing where it was like, we talked about it, he said we're working on snares and I wonder, I know that he had to keep it close to his chest, but I'm like, how long has the Roland thing been happening where you kind of wonder like, how long do these things take? Because why would they have bought Slingerland if they knew this was going to be happening? And he was talking about making snares, but you know what I mean? Like when did this ball start rolling? Because this thing doesn't happen overnight. I mean, they still could, I guess, put out a Radio King snare and just make it a thing. But I don't, yeah, not knowing the details of who actually controls all that stuff. But I think Slingerland will be something we'll probably never see again. I hope I'm wrong because I love Slingerland. I have a bunch of kids in the studio back there. The other thing with like PDP. So what I had to see is does Roland want PDP shells for their V-drum kits or do they want DW shells? Why would they want DW shells for V-drum kits? Overkill. Maybe PDP is going to become the flagship drums. So I'm looking at like over the history of acquisitions which we'll go through. Inevitably what happens is someone buys and then goes for the bottom dollar. Yeah. So inevitably, Rogers gets sold and then they become cheap kits. Gretch, Blackhawk, you could get those out of Sears catalog at one point. So is DW going all of a sudden become a cheap kit? That's a, who knows? Maybe they'll just use the PDP processes and slap the DW logos on it. I mean, we just don't know what's going to happen, but it's all that's a concern. I think the high end custom shop. Now I do think with the Lombardi's and John Good retaining control, I guess of DW is similar to Gretch where Fred Gretch still controls the USA custom. Yeah. Let's hope that that's the terms of their agreement. So they still get to exist, but Roland gets to market DW on whatever the hell they want. Can you- Can you like actually, I've always been a little confused by that about like the process of like, so DW like the relationship between DW and Gretch, because when that happened, it was sort of like, well, wait, does, because I remember kind of hearing, well, they're just, DW is just doing the distribution of Gretch now or something like that. What happened with DW to Gretch? That goes back, I'm looking at this now here, my Gretch outline 2000 command music obtained the rights for import instruments from Gretch. So command music was now, you know, importing the renowns and all the stuff made in Taiwan, where Gretch retained the rights to USA custom and signature products and the machinery. So they didn't, they didn't sell the machines. Command bought just the rights of the brand for the import stuff. Got it. So when DW bought the stuff from KMC, all they got was the rights to the Gretch import and distribution. The family still owns the factory and all the USA custom shop stuff. One thing that's interesting that like, I guess, you know, Joe Schmo doesn't really realize is KMC command like cardinal percussion who I've been talking with who owns Wuhan and a bunch of stuff. Like there's these companies that you'll really never hear the brand name of like, like Maypex and Sonar are under the same umbrella and things like that. Like that's kind of industry stuff. But like this, I mean, in a dream world, like, yes, Roland now owns all these companies, but do you think there's a chance that nothing will change and we'll just, we'll literally see no difference? DW will still keep going on. Is that even an option? Like, or will everything change? Yeah, I mean, again, I have to say I don't, I have no insider information, so I can't be held to my word on this, but having worked with Roland as a journalist and on that side of the industry, they really like to control their brands. They like to control their image. They like to control every word that is put out into the public about their products. I don't know how DW's marketing team could operate autonomously. I don't know how, I don't even know if they'll be able to retain a marketing department because it'd be so much, so many issues of, you have a marketing director who wants to do an ad campaign, but it has to go up through all the ranks at Roland to get approval. I mean, you're talking like, drums is a tiny bit of what Roland is gonna be doing, so there's gonna be sub managers and vice presidents. Yeah, I mean. Yeah, like red tape. Yeah, so that, I don't know how. I mean, I guess, we'll just have to see. I mean, again, I hope it's like the Gretch deal where DW USA just does what they do. Yes, but DW and Gretch are both American companies where it's a little bit easier, whereas now we're dealing with a Japanese company, which I mean, it should also be said, just to kind of keep it all fair and nice and stuff. Like Roland is awesome. The drums are awesome. Like very high quality equipment. No one's denying that, but it's just the like mixing of two companies that causes like a bit of a rub and again, dealing with a company with different like ethics and different like standards of practice, halfway around the world just has to be some growing pains. It's gonna be slow for them. I mean, if you think up until now, because DW might be the only family-owned drum company that's larger than like a boutique left. So if Don or Chris or John had an idea, they just did it. There was no one to say, hey, you can't do that because we have to go up the ranks. Now they're gonna have to go, now they're gonna have to run every idea past someone because there's no longer their money. You know, that's, we shall see again. I think their infrastructure is already established. I don't know how much more innovation they need to do. Yeah, I mean, but like this might change, like you don't call up Japan and go, hey, we're gonna like unearth a 10,000 year old log and we're gonna build into a drum. You know what I mean? Like they're very like, like they're known for like kind of crazy drums that are like made of insane woods where maybe that is something that goes away because you got to explain it. I don't, yeah, I don't think the private jet flights to remote areas of the world to grab a tree are gonna happen anymore. I'd be surprised if we see any more of that because that's like, you wanna spend how many thousands of dollars on 10 drum sets? I don't think so. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's interesting, DW has a background of like, I don't wanna say being controversial of like, like there's a, they're polarizing where some people are like, like, oh, the 90s ones are great. The collector's series from this era are great. Oh, those newer ones are crap. I love DW, I hate DW. They're not strangers to this kind of like, good slash bad slash being the topic of discussion amongst drummers, you know, that's kind of common for DW. Yeah, I think that once they started going super high end and race car finishes and all, because they think about when they really became popular. It was the early 90s and it was when punk rock became mainstream. And that was their artists when they got Alison Chains and they got Pearl Jam. I mean, it was bands who were still in a van and trailer at the time, it's kind of more like the CNC vibe of today, you know? That's what they were. And for them, when they got so big and they started transitioning to now, we're gonna price out our original consumers. I can see why there was a bit of like, what happened to DW? It's just where they went. It's where they chose to go. But 1992, 93, 94, it was the new hot indie rock thing. Yes, always on TV. Everyone wanted it. Yeah, everyone wanted it. Always behind you. Always see the DW logo, which as a kid growing up in that time, it was like, yeah, I want that. But I can't afford it because it was $3,000, $4,000. But we shall see. And I mean, looking at the press release, I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but just kind of looking at a couple of key things right off the bat, it does say the combination of expertise and reach of Roland in the drum workshop will unleash the next generation of breakthrough acoustic and electronic drums and percussion products, accelerate product development and push the boundaries of innovative drummers, innovation for drummers. And it also says that Chris Lombardi and Don Lombardi and John Good will continue to serve in their existing capacities at the company, focusing on creating products that inspire drummers everywhere. Makes me think a little bit of WFL2, the chief staying on when Ludwig got sold and working there for a little bit and just not liking it. I mean, I feel like it's hard to stay on your company, your baby when someone else comes in and kind of starts to tell you what to do. So hopefully they stick around for a long time. I'm sure they have a contract for a couple of years or something like that, but... Yeah, we can always see. But yeah, there's other sides of it too. Like I remember this might probably not widely known, but DW's been working on drum mixing software for years. They, at the NAMM show several times, they were all about like, you got to check out it. They call it, it's available, but it's like no one talks about it. It's called DW Drum Enhancer. Oh wow, like a plug-in. Like slate kind of like enhancer, like a drum-a-gong. It's a drum mixing plug-in. So you buy this for a hundred bucks and they've got presets, modern kick, vintage kick, heavy kick, modern tom. So it's like, it's easy way to mix your drum recording. Okay. And it's got, I mean, they spent a lot of time and money making the interface look really slick. So it looks like a piece of hardware. There was definitely an NAMM show and that was like all they wanted to show me was check out this, you got to mess with this. Interesting. And then it kind of went silent. So Roland obviously knew this existed and they either wanted to absorb it or kill it. Who knows? Because Roland's been notoriously anti-software too for a long time. They wouldn't let you put your samples into their kits for a long time. That was not, they were proud of the sounds that came with their modules. It would be insulting to ask to put your own sounds in it. That was kind of the way I was presented with that. And they made a shift because now you can do that with all their modules and here's this tool, which will be a transition from acoustic drums. You can play your drums. You can mix them in the box and have the interface with some sort of Roland product. I mean, that seems like a logical, I don't know if it's worth how many millions of dollars. No, there's a lot of things like that. I mean, there's like the plug-in world is super competitive. I mean, you're up against waves, slate. I mean, there's hundreds, thousands of companies who are doing that and it's just like everything. It's really competitive. But I mean, we shall see. I mentioned it to you. Well, actually, let me give a couple of shout outs real quick. I was looking for his name when we first started talking. So this entire idea for this episode, Jacob Osborn on Instagram sent me a message and said, please do an episode on bigger companies, acquiring drum companies and the history of that. So thank you to Jacob for suggesting this. I should have said it earlier, but I was looking for exactly how to, you know, the correct name and everything. So thanks, Jacob. And then my friend, Brian Lancer said, and this is an interesting just like topic. He said, it makes a lot of sense as the synth market becomes more and more software-based, moving into acoustic instrument, the acoustic instrument market seems pretty logical and it jumps off of what they're saying in the press release where it says that they are getting into the V-drum acoustic design. We've seen that recently. I've never used those. I'm assuming you've probably tried stuff like that in your roles of like, you know, it's an e-drum, but it's got an actual drum shell. What's the benefit of that? What's the like, I mean, do you get, is it like a hybrid, like you can play both ways? What's the deal with that? No, it's just appearance. It just feels like an acoustic kit. It looks like an acoustic kit. You remember on the Super Bowl halftime, Trevor Lawrence Jr. was playing one of these kits. It looks like a real kit, but it's not. It's got, you know, it's got the mesh heads and everything, but it feels more like a real kit. I remember I was talking with a friend of mine at a competitor role and I won't name, but it was a different company. And he was like, what do you think we should do with our stuff? And I said, you've got to get, you've got to get rid of these terrible racks and just make it a drum set. Just give me toms and cymbal stands in Ohio. Just make it a drum set. I don't need this awful rack with all these terrible little arms and stuff. Which he later explained to me that it's just so much cheaper to include a rack versus all the stands. But that's what the VAD concept for me was like it's an, it's, it feels like a drum set. It looks like a drum set. It's the same size as a drum set. Everything is just familiar. It's just electronic. So you'll be able to get a DW kit. I'm assuming swap the heads out with the mesh heads with triggers. And now you've got, you can maybe just have your second tom be a trigger tom or your fourth tom be a trigger tom or just the kick drum or just the snare. Just depending, there's a couple of artists. I can't remember who that they would make the drummer play an electronic snare drum because they didn't want the acoustic snare in the vocal mic, you know, that kind of stuff or the cymbals. And with the cymbals in the vocal mic, so electronic pads for cymbals. So I see a lot of, a lot of integration that it won't, it won't look like you're playing electronic drums on stage. Do you need the most expensive drum shells in the world or could it be Pacific? That's what I'm saying. It's going to be the PDP factory. I can almost guarantee with the DW logos on it. I don't know why they would go for the VLT and the X shells and all this stuff if it's going to have mesh heads on it. So I think there'll be some sort of PDP incorporation. Again, I'm just predicting. I don't know what the heck is actually happening, but I feel like there's going to be a PDP usage more for Roland versus a DW high end. Yeah. Cause just cheaper, cheaper drums would make them real drums, full size shells that you can easily convert. That would be the thing for me. Can I easily convert my acoustic drum set to a high end Roland kit? That would be amazing. Like both, having the option to do both not stuck to one. I mean, and also thinking too about the enormous roster of drummers who play DW they're going to keep making those drums for those people to keep the like the brand and the reputation alive. And it makes me think I should probably reach out to someone like there's a phone number on here for someone at Roland. Like I should probably try to get them on. Yeah. Good luck in the info. I know. I was going to say like, we'll see. I'll stick with you. Parallel, remember Orange County drums of percussion? Of course, yeah. They guitar center bought them, you remember. I do. And immediately did what I was feared that anyone who buys a company does they just make it cheaper and not as good. Yeah. But they kept for a while they kept their high end factory open to make Travis Barker's kits. Exactly. Yeah. And that ended up becoming, I mean, Jeremy Berman was OCDP's primary builder and now with Q drums. So once that high end custom shop shut down he started Q drums. But I mean, that was a smaller operation. It's not obviously not as giant as DW, but that was one of the first things I thought about. Here's guitar center buying the coolest boutique company in the world. Yes. And immediately made it not cool. Yeah. Immediately. There's a whole like from like two months ago or whatever, there's a whole OCDP episode which was awesome, which people have been really loving that goes into detail about that, which very, I didn't even think about that. A lot of parallels there where the Venice series or whatever, where it turns into that. And I think Bill Dettemore built those for guitar center or at least did the finishing. So we shall see. I hope it goes well. You got to just be happy for Don Lombardi. I mean, he built this company with John Good from the ground up. And it's kind of a payday, I guess, which there's nothing wrong with that for all your hard work. So. I mean, that's the evolution of business, right? You always have the innovator, but an innovator doesn't train another innovator. An innovator trains, has someone who runs the business. Well, when the innovator is done innovating, all that's left is the business and the person running the business is going to go for the best opportunity available at all times. So I think it's just natural. I mean, it's just, unfortunately, it's just a lifespan of a business. You get so big to where you're now running a business, you're not innovating and being creative anymore. What is there left to do but to sell? You watch like Shark Tank or The Prophet or whatever, which had SJC on it. It's like, all they talk about is like, well, what's your exit strategy? When are you going to sell? And it's like, I always hear that. I'm kind of like, well, what if you just want to have the business and keep the business? And it's like, well, now I guess the plan is to sell it and buy a yacht and sail away. Yeah. I mean, it'll eventually decline. That's what happened throughout history. The drone companies just eventually declined to someone said, well, now's a good, I mean, my previous employer, it was like, how long could it go along before someone had to come in and buy it? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it's just inevitable. It is. And that's a great segue now to maybe talk about some like historical acquisitions of drum companies. So you've got a bit of an outline put together. Maybe we just go through a few and talk about parallels to what's happening now. So yeah, whatever you want to start with, just let's hear a few. Yeah, I think before I go, because this was like historical, I wanted to go with the big four. Like, how did, you know, what happened with Ludwig and Rogers and Slingolin and Gretch? Because there was a lot of peer, I'm thinking when I first started playing drums in the late 80s, it was the dark ages of American drum making. Like Ludwig was garbage. I'm sorry, no one wanted to play. Aside from Alex Van Halen, like I didn't see anyone playing Ludwig. Rogers didn't exist. Slingolin did not exist except for like some random high school would have an old Slingolin kit. Gretch was not even a company to my awareness. It was, they had Phil Collins, but I'd sold no drummers. Everyone was playing Yamaha and Tama and Pearl. That was it. So so much drama happened leading up to that point to where it just became like, well, what are these companies? So, but I'm thinking about when I first entered the industry, a lot happened too. Like 2000, I got into the industry in 2004. And almost immediately, DaDario bought Evans and then DaDario bought ProMark. Almost immediately. And at the time it was exact same story. Oh, it's a big business. They're gonna absorb this family businesses and they're gonna destroy it and it's gonna be garbage. And, you know, but I think that's one of the better success stories. Cause Evans didn't have a great reputation at that time for quality control. And DaDario cleaned that all up. It took a while for them to figure out what the brand was gonna be with various logo redesigns and marketing efforts that some people were like a 360. What does that mean? All that kind of stuff. It took a while. But like, I mean, you're right. Everything you're saying is right. But you kind of have to like get past like the haters in the moment and just look at the big picture with this. Cause now you look at it and you go, oh, that's cool. 360, it makes sense. Whatever. Even though I don't know really what it, but like it's like you gotta get past like the like hump of like everyone being like, this is crazy. It's going, you know, it's going down. Now you don't really think about it though about the parent company buying it and being worried about it. It's like, it's Evans and ProMark, you know, whatever. Yeah. And they bought real field practice pads. I mean, they went, they got, and pure sound snare wires. Oh yeah. So those were all independent companies and I knew all the owners of the original companies when I first started. So, you know, they bought Evans. That was the first major thing. Like, oh, wow, what's gonna happen? Immediately, because they started automating stuff and just making the manufacturing way more consistent. So I mean, again, it took a couple of years for the marketing to kind of settle until I guess they had, they were trying to prove themselves for a while or whatever, but I think they found a nice stride with Evans. I love the heads. I use them and they're great. I don't even think about the fact that it's a guitar string company that owns them anymore. ProMark was a little bit different story where it was, it was, that was clearly the family wanted to get out of the business and it took a while for that to kind of settle. Like, I feel like they forgot about ProMark for a while. It's like, you remember you own a drumstick company too, right? Like, when you're gonna clean that up, but now it's killing. Again, I use ProMark sticks almost exclusively. So again, they cleaned up manufacturing. It all was a success story. Pure sound wires. That was a one-man operation for a long time. And they took that and they got rid of some of the stuff that was like really ancillary, like vintage Thomas style and all. They got rid of all that stuff, but pure sound snare wires, if you ask 100 drummers, what's the best snare wires, 80 of them are gonna say pure sound. It's sort of like the Kleenex of like snare wires or where like, it's the like brand that everyone thinks of, you know? Yeah. And then they bought Riofield practice pads. Again, it was a small one-person operation and they bought it and streamlined it and you can get a great practice pad at a great price pretty much anywhere. Well, with those examples, you kind of think for like the small one-man shops, it's like, well, good for you. You just, you sold your company that you started. The name still goes on. It's still, it didn't just get acquired to be shut down, which companies do. So as long as it keeps going and it's, you know, cool, that's like good for them. Yeah. So I can't complain about that all, but at the time I remember it was every, we would have monthly meetings at the magazine like, oh gosh, what's today are you gonna do? Cause it also, it took all their marketing dollars and put it into one pool. Yeah. And as a company that sold advertising, that was like, well, we just, we just lost three customers. Cause it came down to one. That's interesting. Yeah, we get, we also get the benefit of your background with the advertising and the magazine world, which that's a whole thing of no one's say, I mean, the world changes. You know what I mean? Like things change. Yeah, that was a big one. And then I made some notes about command cause command is a weird, a weird kind of story. Command Music, KMC Music is part of a bigger company called Command Corporation. Command Corporation designed, designs Aerosmith, Aerosmith, Aerospace Materials, airplanes. Not Aerosmith. Not Aerosmith, Aerospace. Oh, cool. And the owner of, the founder owner of Command, Charles, he's a guitarist. So he wanted to take some of this material that they were developing at Command to create a synthetic guitar, which became Ovation Guitars. So Command Music's first brand was Ovation, which is, you might've seen when all these brands were being sold off throughout the past, whenever that was, 10 years, Ovation was always stuck in there because it was part of the original deal. I mean, so that company has started making guitars. Who bought KMC? Fender. And at the time, KMC had already had the rights to Gretch, to Toca, to LP, to Gibraltar, to Cat Percussion. Jesus. So KMC had gobbled up all these other companies under their umbrella and then sold it to Fender, a guitar company. So here we are, a guitar company, similar to a keyboard company. Yeah, totally. Owning a huge portion of our market share, which all of that eventually got sold to DW, which all of that eventually got sold to Roland. So it's the same chunk that went from a company that makes airplanes to a company that makes Stratocasters. This episode is brought to you by Pocket Percussion in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. Pocket Percussion and Piste Symbols are proud to present Rich Sconella on October 1st, 2022 at 2 p.m. Rich Sconella is one of the most sought-after touring, performing and teaching drummers today. He has played with some of the most iconic superstars in the music industry such as Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga, Tonic and many more. Head to Pocket Percussion on October 1st, 2022 at 2 p.m. for lots of shop and gear talk, an awesome clinic by Rich and all kinds of piste symbols that'll be at Pocket Percussion. Learn more at pocket-percussion.com and check them out on social media at Pocket Percussion. Man, I mean, I think the key word is like portfolio because these are big companies with business, I mean, it's business-minded people who are trying to grow their portfolio to make more money, which like you can't knock on. It obviously takes a little bit of the like heart out of it being a single, you know, a person making, you know, a small group of people making guitars. We're way, I mean, Fender's a huge conglomerate kind of company. So I don't know, was that a negative thing or was that a positive thing that you think? All those sales, did, I mean, obviously we saw growing pains here and there, but I don't think it really was that bad in the long run. Yeah, I mean, I think it's, I guess it's like the stock market, you know, you've got to have a long view for this, but you know, this was 2008 when Fender bought all this stuff and then immediately, so think of all those brands, Gretch, Toka, LP, Kat, Ovation, Gibraltar. Toka and LP were competitors of each other. Yeah. And now they're owned by the same company because I believe KMC created Toka to compete with LP. And then they bought LP. So now you've got the two percussion manufacturers for all intents and purposes under the same corporation. Well, one of them has to go, how much do you see Toka percussion anymore? It's, you know, unfortunately, because they were doing some cool stuff more with like African drums and Brazilian instruments. Yeah. Not so much African Cuban. So that was one thing that was, at the time we were like, well, again, that's two advertisers that got shoved into one. That's the entire percussion market is now controlled by one marketing budget. Yeah. Gretch, at that time, 2008, they weren't hot, man. Gretch was not hot because they immediately focused on import stuff. Well, they had the Catalina. It wasn't great. That was probably right around that time. Yeah, I mean, that stuff was cool, but it wasn't, it was, I didn't know like any top pros that were like, man, I can't wait to play Gretch. That took a while. Sure. That took a while. Yeah. So that was weird. Gretch kind of got put in this weird because they didn't own Gretch USA. They only owned the international stuff. So all the advertising was for the import stuff. The advertising though is like the face of the company of what reaches, at that point, I was 17 or 18. I was teaching at Sam Ash. I bought a cheap Catalina Mod kit because I was like, this is $400? Of course I'm gonna buy it. But like that's the face of what reaches to the mass market. So you saying the stuff about advertising actually is really important because it's like what they're focusing on to be displayed to the public is what we see through magazines and advertising and all that stuff. So that's interesting. What does that do for the brand image while all of a sudden now Gretch is the cheap stuff? They went from being the super high end stuff in the 650, 60s, 70s, 80s to like the cheap stuff. Like that's your beginning kit. Get a Gretch Catalina, that's your beginner kit and then you can get a DW someday. But I think now I will say, because Gretch is awesome and friends with Lucas and stuff at Gretch, like they're awesome drums that are, I think they're back to being very high quality, not that they weren't offering that stuff but just now it is more of a like quality first kind of product. Yeah, it was, I mean, Fender had no reason to care about the USA factory because they didn't own it. So why would they put any money into it? They only own the import stuff. Interesting. So when they finally sold the DW, it was surely before that, because I remember taking Mark Giuliana, Mike Johnston, Zach Danziger over to the Gretch booth to meet their team. So that was 2013, 14, right before that they got sold to DW. So that was like the beginning of, oh, Gretch is coming back. Everyone wants to play Gretch now. Which Mike, I mean, Mike Johnston has been a Gretch guy for a long time now, but great. I think that's another side of it as things changed from the world and we're just talking about everything change, like changes in general, but like Mike, for example, going, like now I think instead of magazines, we see the face of the drum world as social media and people who have a large following and who are drummers. And you see Mike Johnston playing Gretch and Mark Giuliana and these guys, Ash Sohn, that's more of the face of like, what is reaching the youth of America and the world is through that. So different marketing technique now. Yeah. Well, that was once DW started putting some money into the USA because that factory was valuable to them. They wanted those drum shells. So that factor, so you saw, like all of a sudden USA custom was the thing. Up until then USA custom, what the heck was it? I didn't know what it was. It was just renowned, Gretch renowned. That was the high end thing. So that was that co-command fender thing was super troubling for us on the inside of the industry because it was so much of the market share controlled by a company that did not give a crap about acoustic drums, quite frankly. I don't think Roland's going to be the same scenario, but it was a little bit concerning. But then finally everything kind of, and then like I said, when they sold the DW, they didn't need Gibraltar. So I believe they got rid of that to someone else. How Leonard took over some of the distribution for some of these brands. So it kind of redistributed and made it more make sense a little bit better. But that was a weird one. And that goes back almost my entire career is the KMC Fender. There was some Guitar Center stuff involved and all these big companies kind of sharing and property for a while was odd. I mean, even Guitar Center, you just keep going deeper and deeper. I remember working at Guitar Center and people being like, like Mitt Romney now known as Guitar Center. And I was like, what? Like is Mitt Romney my boss? And they're like, he owns a shampoo company too. And I'm like, all right, I quit. So it's just like, there's a lot behind the scenes of like what we don't know. But honestly, to people on the street on the everyday thing, you buy a nice drum set as long as it sounds good, who cares? I mean, I think that's why Pearl and Tama and Yamaha killed it in the 80s and 90s because they knew the only thing that mattered for a teenager or a young adult was the quality of the hardware. How are these things gonna hold up? The shells were fine, but if I took an old Ludwig kit out to a punk rock show, it wasn't gonna stay, it wasn't the bass drum is gonna slide around. The cymbal stands were gonna be impossible to adjust. It's super heavy. So Pearl and Tama and Yamaha said, let's put incredible hardware on decent shells. And they just annihilated everybody. Well, that was the old like, Rogers dominating everything with Swivomatic. And it's like, you think that people would catch on with like, okay, I remember having a Ludwig like late 80s, early 90s kit that was a rocker. And it was like, obviously that's a cheaper kit. But I was like, God, these stands are giant and they're so heavy. And even like the metal like wing nuts snapped. So it was just like, I'd have to get pliers to tighten it. And I'd have to tighten it so much and then they would just slowly fall. And I still have some of my Pearl stands from the 90s. And the Yamaha stuff is, you buy it once, you're never gonna have to replace it. You're just never gonna have to. So I mean, gosh, now I'm thinking about where do we go from here? Like part of what I wanted to discuss was all these great American companies, they all went through the same arc of the founders who had some sort of like linchpin product that was their main go-to. And then something happened where they would like blow up and get super big. And then eventually that's when people will start gobbling it up. Either they got really big and it became interesting for investors or they got big and then dropped way down and someone came in to save them from bankruptcy. It's the same arc. I don't know which story DW is on whether they're peaked and Roland saw the inevitable drop or Roland sees that there's even further to go with it. That's, I mean, throughout the history of Ludwig, original goal was to build a functional base drum pedal. Yes. That was it. 1909. And then it turned into snare drums and timpani. They started making drums for the military. They were within what, 16, 15 years, they were the biggest company in the world. And then GCcon comes in and gobbles them up, right? So they were already the biggest thing. Con says we want that. And then everything goes crazy from there. I think with all of these stories of drum acquisitions and buying and selling, the acquirer, the buyer kind of seems like the bad guy. Like just rightfully so or wrongfully so. It's like these companies are just tossed around and it damages the brand for sure, I guess, at that time. Now we look back historically and go, you just don't think about it like that but in the moment, it's sort of like, well, like Ludwig and Ludwig and then Leedy and Ludwig and then just Ludwig, it's like, it's confusing. And I'm sure then people that might just say, you know what, screw it, I'm gonna buy a Slangerland or something like that. Yeah. And there was WFL at the same time as Ludwig. I mean that. So if I were to live through that, I would have thought, well, WFL is the real stuff because that's the guy who actually made the kits that everyone loves. What is Ludwig now? So, and again, it's a business. Like you wouldn't, Khan wouldn't have come in to buy Ludwig unless they saw a way to make more money. And how do you make more money? You make the drums cheaper and you charge more for them. How do you make them cheaper? You cut costs in some way. So there's no one's gonna buy, no one's gonna buy DW and say, man, we gotta make these drums more expensive. We've gotta make them so expensive and so outrageous. Yeah, we're gonna find even older wood. Yeah, we're gonna make this the most ridiculous. I mean, that's not, that's terrible business. And that's, there's not one story here that I'm looking at where someone acquired someone to make it more innovative is to make more money. That's, and that's just business. That's just capitalism. I mean, you can't, however you feel about that, that's just the way it is. Yeah, so the Ludwig story is weird. And then, they sold to Selmer, which was already, but it's like they got sold to themselves. It's such a strange story. They went back to Ludwig and then they got sold to Selmer, which was part of the original sell back and whenever that was. So their history's been strange. And a company like Selmer, they're bread and butter is like saxophones and stuff. So Con Selmer, I mean, it's not Con Selmer, Ludwig. So like we're such a small industry that we forget, like the drum set is not a very profitable product to make. So you can't expect these corporations to put all of their effort into the least profitable thing. They're going to make all their money on plastic saxophones and cheap trumpets. Thank God they still have Ludwig, you know? Otherwise who would take on all that overhead? And they've certainly had a revitalization. I'm looking at it now when they moved to North Carolina in 1984. That was kind of like the dark days of Ludwig, you know, that initial move. You know, I remember playing some of that. We got an accent kit. Maybe it was a rocker kit. I don't remember. The community college where I was in the big band in high school, they got one of those kits and it was fine, but it was like, oh, I would never buy this. This wasn't good advertising for the quality when I could get a pearl kit that would last a lifetime at the same price. They were getting pulverized by Japanese brands. So what do you expect? It's like, you can't, you know, they're not selling enough to make it matter. But I do think you're right. We're Ludwig really now. I mean, a lot of the brands, it feels like they're, I don't wanna say they're back. They've been back for 20, whatever, years or whatever. But like, it seems like the legacy and sticking through all those ups and downs has paid off. They definitely came through on top. What about some examples of brands where it was acquired and then it just fizzled? I'm thinking Slingerland, it just dies. Gibson dies and it just, you know, like... I think Rogers was probably the biggest depressing story because they were such the high-end DW of their time, drums, and then CBS purchased them and then, gosh, they sold... When was this? Island music? In the 80s, I mean, all they did was make cheap stuff. So then Rogers just became the bottom dollar. R360s or whatever. Yeah, so crazy. I mean, that timeline, I guess, I mean, they were originally started in the 19th century. 1859, 1849, if I'm not mistaken, which is crazy because you always think Ludwig is so old and then I remember thinking like, or Gretch, 1883. But it was like, no, Rogers is like the earliest in what is it, Farmingdale, New Jersey? Is that right? Yeah, they were making drumheads at the time. So CBS bought them in 1966. That's when they went to Fullerton, California and they were being made in the same factory as Fender guitar. Because CBS bought Fender again. Because I think of Wayne's World where they say, oh, it's pre-Fender, it's pre-CBS corporate buyout. Shave the nut off. But yeah, take the buzz off the low E. But then in 1983, Fender was bought out by people who worked at Fender to become what is now the Fender, whatever they're called now Fender Corporation. And they discontinued the drums. So that was in 1983. So the people who, again, Fender seems to keep popping up in the drum industry in some odd ways. And then, so by that point, that was when it was just a brand. There were no drums. That's when this company Island Music started making cheap import drums and called them Rogers. What a heartbreaking story. And then Brookmay's Music in Texas followed up the names so they could put that on kits that they were importing and sell them in their stores. Those were made by Peace Drums, which Peace makes fine instruments, but they're not making high-end Rogers of the day quality stuff. I got about Peace. Yeah, yeah. So that was the late 90s. So not even that long ago. And then when Brookmay's Music went bankrupt, Yamaha acquired the Rogers name for a minute. And that might have been one of the first Namshos I went to, where all of a sudden over in the corner of the Yamaha booth, there was a Rogers kit. And it was obviously just some made in China import kit. Like, wow, okay. I guess that's where Rogers is now. I mean, it's not even, it's just more of a thought starter of like that name and logo has so much power to it for these companies where it's like a whole brand in itself. Like that's why DW acquires Slingerland and stuff like that. Cause there's so much potential that you could do with it. But I have high hopes for anyone who buys it, bringing back Slingerland, great. But it's always sort of like, it'll never be the same. You know what I mean? No. It's also, it's been dormant for so long to who cares is ultimately the question. And I know like the Rogers that are coming out now are absolutely amazing, beautiful drums. They're pretty true to form. I got the review one of the kits a while ago and I had it side by side with my actual Rogers kit from early seventies, I believe. And the 12 inch direct time was identical. You couldn't tell them apart. So the new stuff that Rogers is putting out now is amazing, but it's really expensive. And there's been so many years of no one even knowing what Rogers is. Like how do you cash in on the Cache A unless you're selling only to 65 year old drummers at this point, how many kits can you sell? Like it's a tough sell because of all that time when like no one cared, you know? And then all of a sudden Rogers, you can buy a Rogers kit in the Sears catalog or whatever, like how can you now say these are the best drums ever made? It's tough. So that I don't know why that was the trend for these corporations to buy these well-established brands and slap them on the cheapest stuff available. I mean, it's short-sighted. I don't know what the point of it is. But it like, it just would, it makes sense as a kind of money hungry like business guy of like, I'm gonna buy this. Oh, like that's a famous brand. Let's buy it, put it on this, we'll sell some if we destroy the reputation of the company. I mean, it seems like people like that, this made up person I'm thinking of doesn't care, you know? Like whatever, like they're like, oh, we messed up Rogers drums, but I made $10 million off cheap kits, whatever. And I remember Fender, there were drums that had Fender on the bass drum. Like they were like Fender labeled drums. I would see them pop up on like Craigslist and it was like, that had to be just like same shell that like, you know, a cheapo Rogers kit or cheapo, one of those weird later period Slingerland kits probably the same stuff with just a different label. Yeah, you know, what do they care? And there was a Gretch Black Hawk. My first drum set was a Gretch Black Hawk that my parents bought for $200 out of a Sears Christmas catalog. There you go. And I didn't, the Gretch wasn't even on the label. I didn't even know that that was a Gretch thing. It just said Black Hawk on the bass drum. So I had a Black Hawk drum set that, but that was a Gretch branded thing for $200. It was a nice kit. It last me a year and a half before everything fell apart, but still, I mean, but like to be the like, you know, devil's advocate, the good side of it, that got you into drums, but it didn't need to be Gretch. I mean, if it didn't say it on it, but that being said, like that's, but maybe like if your dad's a drummer, he goes, oh, this is Gretch. Oh, cool. Even though it's not actually that brand or whatever, but it's like, you got to look at two of like, there need to be like, I started with percussion plus, like there need to be cheap drum sets so people can get into it. Not everyone's buying a, you know, a pre buyout DW set as their first step. They're got them rolling joints. I know, I know. That was so funny to see pop up online being like $10,000 pre, pre buy, pre-roll and buy out DW kits, kudos to the people who made those. Yeah, but I think like, so let's go to that point. So there was the Black Hawk kit. That was my first kit. Well, there was no like next level Black Hawk kit. It was just that. So when that's broken, you've got to go to the next something else. Pearl had it down. So you get the export. It's a nice kit. It'll last you as long as you want it to last you. But if you're thinking about getting something up from there, you've got the masters or the session, not that much more expensive. They get you, oh, you can just get better finishes, or better sizes options in those series. Oh, now you're really ready for the Primo stuff. So they kind of hooked your brand loyalty. Some of the stuff that got done to these legacy brands, it didn't have that transition. There wasn't the decent quality starter kit that makes you fall in love with it, but then you need to upgrade or you feel like, whatever, I'm 18 years old now, I should probably get a real kit. Let me stick with that brand and just get the one that I know is better. There wasn't that. I mean, there wasn't a Rogers, even Ludwig at the time, it was just rockers. That's all that was available. You know, I didn't see any custom shop stuff at the time. No, and I think like you look back on like, like the blue and olive badges. It's like, to me, it's like, oh, that's like the 70s. But like there's, and then the 80s was, I guess, the white and black badge, which is kind of the rocker, but I'm always kind of like, well, what was the higher tier? I guess there were like more of a Keystone badge then and things like that. But Pearl did a great job with having the tiers. And I know you had an export series kit because I've heard you talk for 200 hours or whatever, historically, but which that's a weird thing with podcasting when you meet people and you say something and you're like, oh, I know. I've heard you say that. It's like, oh. There's a term for that now. Like a certain type of friendship where you know someone just based on your online. Yeah, I could see that. What is that called? I don't know. There's something that's become a bit of a psychological thing. People are getting concerned about, you're getting too attached to a personality that doesn't even know you exist. Like you're not friends with them. I have anyone listening. We are friends, Bart. Well, we have actually hung out and gone to dinner and stuff, but like if you're listening, I'm your friend. No, I do love, that's the beauty of podcasting is just talking to people and getting these like communication stuff. And I feel like that where I listened to podcasts that are not even remotely drum related. And I'm like, you know, you get connected to people, but you do find yourself repeating stories where you're like, someone's like, yeah, I know. And I'm like, oh God, sorry. Now I know how my wife feels with just repeating things, but that's a very good point though about things not being as effective as they once were. They sit on them too long sometimes. Or I think they're anticipating that. I don't know what to do with it or don't have the tooling. Like when Fender, so I guess that originally Rogers was being made in the same factory as Fender guitar. So there must have been some tooling there. Well, something, they got rid of the tooling or something. At some point, they must have. And then what are you left to do? Well, you got to just buy stuff that's already prefabricated. And, you know, cause it wasn't when Island Music bought them, they didn't get the manufacturing side of it. You know, so that was the same thing with like, well, Slingerland, there's a whole story about how the machinery went one place and the company went somewhere else. Bernie Stone got a bunch of the stuff and made stone custom drums and did the radio frequency, and that was an awesome episode. I get tons of comments about Bernie figuring out the radio frequency equation with his daughter solved it for him and stuff. But yeah, like, I wonder how it works as an employee of these companies. You know what I mean? Like you get bought and sold and you're just like someone maybe working on the line or maybe you're a little bit higher up and you're like the marketing director or whatever. Like what happens then with like, what do you do? I mean, I think we're always told in the same, I mean, obviously I don't wish ill for anyone, but the same story of nothing's gonna change. Well, nothing's gonna change until something changes. That's just, that's like a, you know, a silly phrase, but that's just the way it is. Of course, everyone's gonna tell you nothing's gonna change, but eventually something's gonna change. It's just who, who, what, when aware, what gets consolidated, what stays. I mean, that's just, that's the terrible part. Like with ProMark, you know, so my friends lost their job when they got sold. It was for better for the brand and better for the product and better for the company, but it was not better for those people that I cared dearly about. So yeah, that's just the ugly side of consolidation that we, you know, it's inevitable. I mean, we saw that with the magazine. Once it sold, it was like who was the first people to go. It was the top level people because you don't need people to run the business when someone else is coming in to run the business, you know? The smallness of our industry means I know almost everyone who works at all, every one of these companies and, you know, and there's maybe less than a handful of people in the industry that I sincerely don't ever wanna talk to. You know, less than, almost everyone. It's like, I wanna go out to dinner with them. I wanna hang out with them. I'm curious how their family is, you know, like, it's so small in that regard. Like, you know, I feel it's, yeah, I almost had to take care of each other. You know, like when I shifted gigs, I had dozens of writers that no longer had gigs. Yeah. That's a tough one. So I brought as many of them over with me to help me with the content creation for Junk Factor Direct as I could. And whenever I heard about other gigs, I would make sure I recommend them to, you know, it was like, it was heartbreaking. Not that we were, you know, paying anybody's mortgage, writing, being a freelance writer for a magazine. No, but it's a multiple different small, I mean, I freelance doing video and audio, and it's multiple small things add up to a salary basically. And you helped me. I had some possible stuff that could have been happening that we kind of talked about and gave advice and stuff. And these things, I think that's the community that we all know and like, and just helping each other, which that being said, corporate giants coming in buying companies doesn't quite gel with that community-based helping each other vibe. Not so much. Especially when it's an international corporation that has no reason to care about what 20 people in New York City are doing for a living. They really just don't have to care. No, it's just too, it's too, the bigger picture is just too big for them to care about that. And that, I mean, I'm assuming they'll also have more capital for buyouts for severances and things like that. Totally. But yeah, the multinational thing is what starts to scare me. Because again, I worked with Roland on the journalism side and it's like, who am I dealing with? Am I dealing with USA? Am I dealing with Europe? Am I dealing with UK? Am I dealing with Japan? Like what, where does this have to go for me to get approval to write this 200 word paragraph? Yeah, does this sort of thing happen with companies in Asia? Like are there many buyouts that, I mean, I'm not really aware of it happening much of over there companies being bought and sold. Not, I mean, I tried to look into that and there's been very little, I mean, the companies who started Tama and Pearl and Yamaha, they still control it. And maybe, I mean, the presidents and all that stuff have changed, but there hasn't been, I mean, aside from like Yamaha severing their ties with Sakai and shifting manufacturing all to China, that was a huge blow. In my opinion, it was not good for Yamaha drums for a while. It just felt really cold and they were getting rid of the company that was making their best products. So again, skeptical eyes, why'd you do that? You make it cheaper, less, you know, sometimes got to give. Yeah. But that's the only one I can think of where it also their newer companies, Pearl and Tama, they came along 50, 75 years later than Ludwig Rogers and- That's true. So they've got a while to go before they might hit that precipice of what's going to happen next. I guess what you said early on is important about, DW was kind of one of the last family, fully family owned legacy brands, which I guess DW's what, 50 years old or so, I think it said. Still pretty fresh. And they really, they'd really arrived, I think in the late 80s. Yeah. You know, once the 5000 pedal became standard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The double pedal, like when they got rid of that second, that double pedal had the second bracket on it. When they finally got rid of that and had it all integrated, like that was the only double pedal that you would ever want is that 5000 accelerator. Until the iron cobra comes along. And there you go, case in point. Nowadays, a lot of things are pretty quality. I mean, you know, who makes it where it comes from is only important when you're nerding out and you're looking really deep into it. I would love to be a beginning drummer right now because you can't fail. Yeah. Just pick anything. Pick whichever looks cool. Pick whichever is available. I mean, it's going to be good. It doesn't matter at this point. Yeah. Yeah, I have a Ludwig beginner, super like a junior kit for my son. And it's like, this thing's awesome. Like way better than the percussion plus kit that I had. I mean, I didn't even have a floor tom. I didn't have a hi hat. He's got everything. And I'm jealous of him now. So I think that's a cool. That's a good talk about that. I mean, I think now we should go to the more important topic, which is the drum click podcast network. The most important thing. The most important. But so you host the drum candy podcast, which is just awesome. Kind of your next move after the modern drummer podcast, which I think drum candy is awesome. I wear that T-shirt all the time. I was going to wear it today, but I had babies sped up on it. So I had to wash it. But now you're doing a great job with all that. And you and I have joined forces. So Ben Hilzinger and Chris from Big Fat Snare Drum have kind of put together the drum click, which is drum candy, drum history podcast, Sarah Hagen backstage, and then working drummer podcast with Matt and Zach. And we're, it's just really cool to be doing this together with you guys. Cause like we, we are like-minded people and we've joined forces. And one thing I will say about the network is nothing has changed. Like it's kind of funny with this, with this topic like, you know, we're like not that Big Fat Snare Drum is like a conglomerate huge company, but like really nothing has changed. Like it's, they just kind of provide some advertising. We read it, we send it in. That's about it. I mean, that is a change because I mean, full disclosure when, when Ben said, Hey, I want to start selling advertising. My first reaction was I can't do it. Like that's, that's not part of why I do this. I'm not doing this. This is so advertising. You know, back in the modern drummer days, I actually was able to refuse some things. It was like, cause some stuff, cause I don't ever want to sound like I'm lying or misrepresenting that. I felt like that's been part of my personal brand, which you'll never hear me say that ever again. It's the one time in the history of my life that I'll talk about my personal brand, but it's been integrity. So when he would sell, try to sell me an ad or advertising director, it was like, I know this product sucks, man. I can't, I can't go on this show and talk to my listeners who buy the things that we talk about about something that I know sucks. And I had to hold the line. And I got, you know, I got a lot of arguments about it cause several hundred bucks is several hundred bucks. I remember hearing you say that on the podcast, something along those lines, it speaks to your like, you know, you have your, your integrity, you know, to kind of say no to some things. Yeah. And I know, and for me, I'm in a unique situation where I have a full-time job. So, you know, this isn't freelance work for me. This is part of my full-time job, but it's still been, I mean, I was retired from podcasting and Ben called me up and he's like, I want to start a network and you have to be one of the shows. I'm like, I don't want it cause I got burnt so bad with it the way it ended in the old show. I was like, I don't know, dude. And first of all, who the hell wants to hear me talk? It was all about Johnston. The world is just the, I was the color commentator for him. Oh man. Now you guys were a good mix, but so Mike, Mike Johnston has drum with Mike and Eddie, which is also an awesome show. You guys have both helped me throughout the years. And I will say just to kind of like, a big breakthrough moment for me was getting featured as the pick of the week by Mike Johnston early on. I mean, I was, that was within like 10 or 12 episodes of me starting my show. And then I got like, the listenership went up like 1,500 downloads a month by getting mentioned. And I remember you were like kind of dryly. You're like, oh, is that the, oh yeah, he like posts old commercials on Instagram. Or something that was just kind of like sort of, sort of. You guys had a big effect on the industry. And I think you're, people do want to hear from you. And you are kind of like a well-respected dude who's a straight shooter. I think you and Mike, your personalities, Mike is hot buttered biscuits over here. And then you're more of like kind of the straight man. You know what I mean? Kind of putting it in both. Punk rock kid, you can't lie, you know? That's why I hated acting classes in schools. Like I can't do this, I'm fricking lying. I don't believe these words. I can't do this. Punk rock kid. Just can't read the line. It's eighth grade or something. Oh yeah, but the network has been great. I think in our situation to parallel with this whole consolidation, I mean, Chris and Ben are two of the most genuine, full of integrity people that I've ever met. So of course, I mean, they would never tell us to do anything that we weren't comfortable doing. And we've had these conversations that every time we talk about advertising, it's like, well, are you cool with this? I mean, no one really has to get everyone's approval. We could just be like, we're doing this or you're out of the network. I mean, as simple as that. We're like advertising like other small drum brands, smallish drum brands. So it's all very natural. It's small. I mean, the people who listen to podcasts who are drummers is so small. And that was something Johnson and I would talk about whenever we would kind of go over our numbers. It was like, man, if we talked about anything else, literally anything else, our numbers would be 10 times what they are. It's just such a small, because it's drummers and then it's drummers who like podcasts. History in my world. But I think like Johnston always said, our biggest competitor for drummers is soccer practice. Because you're fighting with all that stuff. But so as we kind of wrap up, why don't you talk about drum factory direct and kind of plug that a little bit and tell people what you guys do and where they should look to find the cool parts and all that stuff. Yeah, so I think I should probably back it up a bit. And like I said, they were kind of recruited me. They were looking for freelance writers. I had no idea who the company was. I'm sure at some point I had Googled a replacement lug and found the website. But we all joke about the website is so old. The website I think was launched in 2007 or something. So when I was interviewing with them, I had no idea that they were based in the United States even. I thought they were, it was like a Chinese website or something. Little did I know it was a family owned business. It was a father and wife and daughter and son. I mean, that's essentially, then there's three guys who work in the warehouse. There's just, that's it. Small family owned business. So I was joking. Like if I hadn't talked to you, I would never have even returned your email because I would have thought it was a Chinese company trying to recruit me to do something. So we still kind of joke about that because a new website's still in development. But they just kind of struck a perfect mix. So the founder Matt used to make high quality stave drums. Oh, cool. So he had a whole bunch. So he was getting all these drum parts and hoops and everything. It was called Global Drums. He heard his back really bad and couldn't make drums anymore. And he had all these parts. So he just started an eBay store and called a drum factory direct and it just took off. Like insane. I mean, he jokes all the time that mortgages are paid with tension rods around here. It's the small stuff. It's this, I mean, if we're going to use the stores, it's not drum sets. It's sticks and heads and tension rods and yeah. There is no drum sets. We do have some shell packs like blank shells. So a lot of our customers are hobbyist builders or boutique companies. Like most of the boutique companies in our industry buy like tension rods and things from us or hoops and stuff. So yeah, they found a niche of, we don't sell complete instruments. We have a couple snare drums and a few cymbals here and there. But it's just all the pieces that you could want if you need to replace or make your own drums. So they, and they had no marketing. They've never marketed, they've never done anything and they've been very successful. So they wanted, they brought me in to develop the creative department for them, which originally was rewriting all the website copy. I did two million words. Man, websites are a beast. Websites are like changing an image and adding some text will take like four hours. I mean, I was editing 10 to six every day. Editing or writing, cause I'd, like I said, I brought in some writers from modern drummer to help with a bulk of it, but I was writing or editing website copy 10 to six every day. And then I would come back down here from like 10 or 9 30 or 10 to 2 AM every day for six months because that was the first charge. We have to get this new copy rewritten. So I knew like, oh, this is gonna be the worst six months of my life. But on the other side of it, now I have creative freedom because that core contents done, now I get to do the fun stuff. So that's when we did the podcast and reworking YouTube stuff and took over all the social media stuff. So, you know, I got brought in a graphic designer that was the bass player in my punk band in high school. So he's done all the new graphic design. So it's a small family owned company, all e-commerce, you can pick stuff up at the door, but you can't come in and shop. They have an old church here in Pittsburgh that's just floor to ceiling with drum parts and accessories. It's pretty amazing. It's cool to find a job that uses if you have multiple different skills like writing and drum knowledge and social media and you know, you are well known in the industry through the podcast and all that stuff. It's just putting everything together. But like they needed that, that face to get it out in the world. Cause now it's like, if you're not on social media and if you're not doing, you know, if you're not on YouTube, then you're like, I don't wanna say you don't exist, but you know what I mean? Like as a business, you have to have that face. You basically don't exist. Yeah, I mean, and everything like, like another big project for me was like taking new photos of all the products. And that was, I mean, I dabbled in product photography for modern drummer when like a random drum would come in and no photos exist. But to say like, you've got to do 9,000 products ASAP and they have to be consistent. Like trying to photograph a small chrome lug. Oh yeah. I wanted to quit many times. More frustrating than trying to play new breed for me was trying to photograph a one inch tube lug with round spheres on either side. I would do all these tests and sometimes I would do a whole day of photography and they'd be like, ah, these just aren't quite right. I'm like, and they would send me like, look at Harley Davidson's website. That's what we wanted to look like. I was like, you understand, they've probably spent a month on this one photo of a motorcycle. I've got 9,000 drum parts to shoot. Like, how? And that's a motorcycle. That's cool. That's a motorcycle. That's a motorcycle. And that's one of the biggest like motorcycle companies. That's one of the biggest companies in the world. It's like, okay. Yeah, they probably spent $20,000 to photograph that. So it, you know, I'm glad that the challenge was there and I mean, I took it. I've taken it. I do take it very seriously. It is serious, yeah. And I feel like I've gotten, I've gotten to a point where I can function to get a, you know, compared to what we have on the site now, it's like anything is better because some of them are like cell phone photos or scans of catalogs and stuff. So, so that's been like a whole new like that, that challenge, especially during a pandemic when I can't go anywhere. It's like just go to the warehouse and put some hoops on the floor and figure how to reflect light to make it make sense. It's been, and the crazy part is the ironic thing is the new website isn't launched. So none of that work. Yeah, it'll someday come to life, but websites are a beast and it takes forever and they're expensive. And I feel like when you finish a website, a counter, a timer begins to when you have to redo it and like add to it because it's like, gotta always stay updated and things like that. But that's awesome. I mean, I'll put the links to like, you know, Mike's podcast, drum factory direct, the drum click, all the stuff in the description so people can check it out. Yeah, anything else you wanna kind of promote as we finish up here? I mean, Mike's on social media, you can find him, Mike Dawson on Instagram and all that stuff. Yeah, I mean, for me, I'm really putting a bulk of my effort into the drum factory direct YouTube channel. Like all my personal YouTube channels dormant because I feel like it's just a crime that their channel isn't getting more access. If you're looking for it, because every podcast goes up there in video form, I also do separate segments with the interviews and the product, all that stuff is there. So, I mean, if there's one ask of you, please just subscribe to that channel because that's gonna be the moving forward, that's gonna be the hub for all of the content that I create or anyone that drum factory direct creates. Yeah, YouTube is a, I just listened, read slash listen to an audio book about the algorithm. I'm trying to get more into YouTube and it's an ocean. Like podcasts are like a lake or like a pond, YouTube is an ocean. I mean, it is huge and you gotta just stick at it, man. Everything's so much work, but I... But it's like the number two search engine in the world. Yes, especially for podcasts. Google and then YouTube. Yeah, I mean, it's, and I'm seeing so much garbage with the social media companies that I have no faith that they're effective in any way, shape, or form. And I've said that from the beginning, like I don't wanna have my brand or anyone's brand solely based on social media because they change one thing and you're screwed. Like I've made my Facebook profile public for the first time just to see what would happen. In the past two days, I've probably had 50 spam posts on my page. It just makes you wanna shut it down because now I'm just moderating the garbage because I made a picture of my drum set public. I mean... So like, I don't wanna be on Facebook anymore. And not good. With Facebook, I have decent about 9,000, but it's like, are likes or is it followers? I have about 9,000 followers on there. But it's like, I'll post a video on Instagram that'll get 20,000 views. And on Facebook, it'll get three likes and like 45 views. And I'm like, it's the same video. I guess I just have kind of lost interest in Facebook as a business thing. Yeah, I mean, Instagram as well. I feel like those were cool for a while and they hooked us all and they got us addicted to it. I mean, when I first got on Instagram, I was getting 50,000 views, 75,000 views. And now if I could break a thousand, it's like, oh, that one did well. So they hooked us. They made us all addicted and then they changed it. And now you gotta pay to boost all your stuff. So it's a lot. I mean, it will still always post to it for myself and for DFD. But I feel like YouTube is now like, that's where you gotta get serious. Put your real content there. There's money there. Stop chasing the vanity of social media. That's my advice to any drummer. It's like, create a quality YouTube channel. And I'm still trying to figure it out because it's a science to the thumbnails and all that. Thumbnail. Thumbnails take, I mean, this is a whole conversation. Thumbnails, I mean, once you finish doing a video, it's like, now I gotta put another 45 minutes into a thumbnail, but like, that was the key of that book was like, reach, connect with your audience, make a cool thumbnail, keywords, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that was about it. Yeah. It's not too different than when at modern general, we talked about cover heads, you know, like, it took a long, like that was the battle that we would have in meetings. Often the old timers versus the new school, like old timers, like what doesn't matter if the content's good, the content's good. And then the new school thought was, well, if you don't write a good cover head first, your stories are relevant. So if your story does not create a really captivating cover head, which has to have a number and a call to action and all that stuff, you might as well not even write that story. Which was infuriating, I was on both sides of it. I was like, that's infuriating because I have trust that people want to read quality content if it's not 10 ways to play a parrot at all or whatever, you know, get faster in five minutes. But that's the psychology of humans. Yeah, it's podcast too. We see that, we're interested in it. You have to have a good title. This one's gonna be called like, Mike Dawson hates rolling drums or something like that. No, but you do have to have something clickable that's like, but it'll be like, you gotta have something that's like, what makes people, there's so much content you need to have it be enough to draw you in. I'm guilty of it. I mean, I scroll on YouTube and Netflix and everything until you find something goes, oh, that looks cool. So yeah. Yeah, it's, I mean, I come from the old school of like, I like a record label. Therefore, I'm gonna buy everything they put out. I don't care. Like that's just old school when I'm old. So I think, you know, I have to acknowledge that that's not everyone. But I think a little bit of that will help. It's both, yeah. You know, you put out, like I'm trying to make everything that goes on the DFT's page, at least good quality, not necessarily click baity. So then, so when we flip over to do the click baity stuff, you're gonna trust me like, this one's silly. This was silly on purpose. Like I did my interview with Jefferson from Sugar Percussion. He's got this amazing photo of himself nude inside of drum shells. He's not nude, he's just shirtless but it looks like he's nude. I was like, I've got to use this for the thumbnail. It's clickable. It's like, sure, you know, kill my company, sure. I mean, so sometimes I go kind of silly just to see what'll happen. But, you know. But like that's YouTube where it's like, like I watch computer reviews or whatever. It's like the head, like the thumbnail is like, this will kill Apple. And then you watch it, they're like, Apple's fine. Like no duh, like you of course, it's just so clickable. But cool. Well, Mike, this is awesome, man. This is a nice long one. So everyone listen, I think we'll skip the bonus episode today and just get Mike out of here. But if you wanna hear a previous bonus episodes, go to Patreon and all that good stuff. And I mean, I'm really happy we had John and have gotten to hang out over the years and stuff. And hopefully, I think I'll be at PASIC. It's kind of the middle of the week, so it makes it hard, but I should be at PASIC. I'm there Thursday, Friday, I gotta leave Friday night to get back to for a gig on Saturday, unfortunately. Okay, okay. I'll be there. So I'll be missing Johnston's clinic. That'll be, I'll see him, like crossing ships. There's a new, there's a title. Mike Dawson hates Mike Johnston. Howl Johnston killed the MD podcast. There's your title. There's the title, yeah, in the thumbnail with Mike with like the X through him now. Mike's an awesome guy. He's helped me out a bunch of times too. We talk on the phone and stuff, somewhat, you know, every couple months, but awesome. Anyway, Mike, thank you for being here. Everyone, check out Drum Factory Direct. Keep up with the drum click and all that good stuff. So Mike, thank you for being here, my friend. Yeah, my pleasure, thanks.