 Hello and welcome to the drum history podcast. I'm your host Bart Vanderzee and today I'm joined by my friend Mr. Barry James. Barry, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Bart. Pleasure being with you again. Yeah. I mean, we've, uh, I should say you are one of George Lawrence Stone's, uh, last living students. Or would you say you are the last living student of Stone? Well, no, I've been corrected recently on that by another gentleman who studied with him a little later on. It's interesting that you should bring that up because just the other day I received an email from a gentleman who said, well, you studied with Mr. Stone up until 1961, but I studied with him in 1966. And I thought, wow, okay, let's get more of this. You know, I hadn't met anyone before. The fact of the matter is I studied with him while I was a college student at Boston University School of Music. And Mr. Stone was on the faculty there. So I had a good four years with him from 1957 after high school until 1961. And he resided around 1963 and went back to home to Medford Mass. And apparently at that point in time, he started teaching in the public school systems, volunteering his time. And so he had a whole bunch of young students from about 1964 or five to 1966. He died in 1967. So he, um, he did have some students after me. So I'm not his last student. I just happen to be his last student that teaches his method and is still teaching his method 60 years later. So that's between actually being his last student and the last student. Well, actually has taken his method and carried it on. Cool. Okay. Well, thanks for that. It's good to have the clarification there because we did do an episode before which folks can check out. And I'll include a link to that in the description, but you talk a lot about stone and all that stuff. So people can check that out. But what we're here to talk about today, though, is you have two new books that will be coming out in February. And I'll let you kind of describe them. Number one would be counting exercises of stick control, which you worked on with Morello and kind of Joe Morello and thought of this idea and all that stuff. And then the second one, which again, you can explain more is future rudiments, which is basically stone and coming up with more rudiments than what we have. And now you'll give a lot more detail than that. But so tell us about these books, maybe starting with the first one about the counting exercises. Sure. And thanks for asking about those books because they're a liberal love to me and a word to Joe while he was living. And here's how the first book started. The stick control book, as you know, is the consider the Bible of drumming. It was written in 1935 by George Lawrence Stone and has become the book for building your technique. And professional drummers all over the world have used this book for many, many years. It's a book of technique and technique building that has a lot to do with repetition of motion. And that's how stick control came to be and became such a big, big selling book. I'm told by the Stone family that after over 80 years now, it's still selling about 22 to 24,000 copies a year. So you can see that it's one of the best selling drum books of all time as well. Joe Morello and I met at a clinic that Joe did here in Orlando. Danny Gottlieb and his wife Beth brought Joe in for a clinic and a master class. And I attended it with him. And on our way out, we were talking about our affection for our drum teacher, George Lawrence Stone. Joe had studied with him when he was 16 years old in the 1940s. And I studied with him, obviously, as a college student from age 17 to about 21. And one of the things that we noticed and Joe noted was that a lot of people don't know how to play the stick control book. The stick control book is a book of ours and L's, all the rights and less. George came up with all these various exercises and hand building exercises, but he never taught within the book how to count those exercises. And particularly in the back of the stick control book where we call them compound rhythms. Well, the compound exercises, the compound rhythms may have a set of eighth notes, four eighth notes. And then of course, 14 sixteenth notes or 30 second notes. Well, how do you count that? We don't know. And Mr. Stone never gave us a hint as to how to do it. So Joe and I were walking out of his clinic and Joe said to me, Eric, when you do a clinic or a master class, does anybody ever ask you how to play page 43 as an example in the stick control book? And I said, all the time. They don't know how to play it. And because there's no indication in the book how to play it, how to count it. He said, jokingly, we ought to write a book on how to play the book. Because you and I, only ones left, well, and Vic first at the time, the only ones left to study with Stone and know how to play the book. And I said, you want to? And he said, yes. And I said, let's do it. And so we exchanged phone numbers that night and I started bugging him about doing it. I think you forgot about our conversation. But I kept reminding him over and over again. And he finally said, well, you know, Joe was blind, of course. And so he said to me, I can't do any of the research because I just am not capable of doing it. And I said, I'll do it. I'll do the research and then we'll get together and we'll put a book together on how to count the exercises and stick control. And he thought that was a great idea. Now people who have not been able to count it before will be able to count it and be able to get through the whole book. Because I've been finding out, particularly with surveys that I've been doing lately, that a lot of the drum teachers don't know how to recount the book. They make up stuff. University. University. I never heard Stone use those terms, you know. It was always some sort of count based on simple time signatures. Stone's idea was not to use a 12-8 signature or to use a 7-4 signature. It was a set of 4s and a set of 3s. 4 and 3 equals 7. Why not? We always play 4-4. We always play 3-4. But until recently, we probably haven't played a whole lot of 7-4 time. Likewise, Joe Morello did a tune with the Dave Ruber Quartet called Take 5. Big, big cellar for them, you know. It was written in 5-4 time. But Joe didn't count it in 5 because Joe Stone didn't teach them in 5. It wasn't 1-2-3-4-5. It was 1-2-3-4-5. 1-2-3-5. It was 1-2-3-1-2. 1-2-3-1-2. So it's a measure of 3 and a measure of 2. And you can hear the lilt. Another, you know, idea Stone came up with it. You got to play the lilt, which I never understood quite frankly. What the heck the lilt was. But it's exactly that. Instead of 1-2-3-4-5. 1-2-3-4-5. It was 1-2-3-1-2. 1-2-3-1. Big difference in the feeling of the song. So do-de-do-de-do. Do-de-do-de-do. Do-de-do-de-do. Do-de-do-de-do. And that's how Joe recorded the song. Playing a measure of 3 and a measure of 2. For me then. And it makes a big difference. And so, that's sort of the concept behind the idea of teaching people how to read Stone's idea on counting the stick control exercises. Yeah, I mean, I think too, what you're saying is like things without that guidance from the original writer of it that things can evolve and kind of go in a different direction. Which, you know, there's something to be said though about someone evolving and making what they want out of notes on a page which can be good, but also I think it's important to have someone like you who's basically like, okay, you know, this is what it's supposed to be counted as. Obviously that book in particular, people take pages and just do them with their feet and then their hands and they mix it and they get really creative with it. But it's a good resource to, I don't know, to really know what you're supposed to be doing, like actually. Yeah, and in Stone was of the nature to be able to say things like well, the reason I didn't give a count in the book is I wanted people to make up their own count. He actually admitted that on a few occasions and then he would admit to his students, well, I should have put the count in, you know, it would have made it so much easier for people to read the book. And I found mainly, frankly, through your last interview, I was able to gain a lot of professional drum teachers who don't know how to count the book. And when they found out that I was doing this book on counting they joined up and we've had a very good relationship now and I've taught many, many of them how to, even before this book is being published, how to count the book. And if you were to look at some of my early stick control books, you'll see that I had marked them all up with the counts on almost every page. So if the teachers don't know how to teach it, the students certainly don't know how to play it. Yeah, and when I was taking some lessons with you, which we can talk about that later, about how I basically failed you as a student and had to focus on... No, I know. But you would give me these counts that just made it so clear and it's just like, I don't know, sometimes there's something really... Like you kind of had a no-nonsense, like, yeah, this is how you count it. Like it wasn't kind of guessing, it was kind of denying that this is actually the way you do it. So what is the book... Maybe describe a little bit about what it looks like. Like, is it basically stick control but it has more information on each page or what does the actual layout of it look like? Well, what I did is I took each exercise that was different from the last exercise. So on page 5, 6, and 7 of the stick control book, they're all single-beat exercises. So I didn't want to take 72 single-beat exercises and show you how to count them all because they're all counted the same. So I just took exercise 1 and I said 1 in, 2 in, 3 in, 4 in. Very simple, right? Then we get to page 8, which is the triplets and a 1 in, 2 in, 3 triplet, 4 triplet. And same thing when we got to the rolls and the rolls and the triplets and the flam sections. And then after the flam section becomes the compound rhythms if you will, a 6, 8 rhythm, you'll have three of the six beats the first part of the measure and then you might put eight notes against it. How do you put three against eight? There's a simple way of counting that and that Stone had in mind and so that I would put that in. So it's not that I had to go through every exercise on every page because there were so many that were counted the same as the last one. So I took as each exercise changed in nature I would give them the count for that particular exercise. I would call it more a booklet than a book because it's only 30 pages long but it covers all the various exercises and stick control and how to count them. The count that was used by George Stone in teaching me the book and teaching Joe the book and that's why we said, Joe said so we read a book on how to play the book because nobody knows how to play the book. Yeah, it's like a nice companion to have for the most, you know, widely used kind of standardized book out there which the fact that there's still that book has been out for so long and is so prolific but I just think it's neat that you are still giving it juice and life and new stuff. And it's funny, I know you were talking a little bit about how Joe Morella would be you'd have to keep reminding him. You deserve a pat on the back for actually bringing it to life because I know you've been working on this stuff for a long time. Yeah, for bugging Joe to get me to help him because Joe had one thing that I didn't have he had an elephant's memory. He could remember things with studies when he was with Stone, you know, 60 years ago, 70 years ago. You know, and I was with him 10 years after Joe was and I had some, you know, Joe used to have to remind me in our conversations well, don't you remember this? Don't you remember that? I'd have to sheepishly say, no, I don't, you know. I didn't have that kind of memory. No, but it takes both sides. It takes his memory of that but it takes someone to actually put the pen to paper and get it written down. So yeah, kudos for that. We were a good team and we had a lot of fun while we were doing it too, you know. And let me back up just a little bit because here's what happened to our quest to get the exercises and stick control accomplished in a book form. That was our original intent and then both Joe and I around the same time remembered that while we were working on this, you know, the stick control count, we remembered that George Stone had written articles for the International Musician which is the AFM, the American Federation of Musicians newspaper. And he had done so when I found an article of his all the way from 1941 but he really started doing monthly columns in 1945 and 46 and for all those years, every month he would write a column based on usually questions from other drummers who would write them a question, what about this, what about and he cost stick control was out by that time and he had an international reputation Mr. Stone had. So when Joe and I realized that we had all this treasure trove of information on Mr. Stone's columns we decided to change a task a little bit and decided to write a book on Mr. Stone's columns and we called it drum lessons with George Lauren Stone as it turned out and we got the blessing of the Stone family to put it out and we got it published and it's been published now for a couple of years through Alfred and it can be had through Amazon and now Hudson has just taken it on and Helen has taken it on as an e-book so it's doing very well and that is really the companion to the Stone lessons because, you know, all these lessons were not necessarily on roles or on, you know on other rudiments they had to do a lot with rudimental drumming of that era and so we decided we would go to work and study so I went to New York and they let me into the archives and gave me some help in copying all those articles from Stone for all those years I got Joe a copy of it, took it back his wife helped me read through it and some of his students helped him read through it and we started we changed direction at that point in time and decided to, we would write about the lessons that we had with Stone from all different perspectives not only from a rudimental perspective but from all perspectives from the techniques that he used his handholds his level system that he was very famous for and so we wrote a book on the book and also on the columns that he wrote for the news and that's how our first book came about we sort of put aside the idea of the stick control and we decided to go with some lessons with George Lauren Stone and we recalled a lot of the lessons we had and we took a lot of the research that we had done right from those columns since then the Stone family has actually published all those columns in a book called Techniques of Percussion which happened to be the name of the columns and they're in a book that's about 400 pages long now and it includes all of the columns that Stone wrote for the magazine over many many years great treasure trove of historical data and I wish the book was a little bigger because the printers are a little on the small side but there's always ways of blowing that up a bit the Techniques of Percussion book was the first runner of our book Drum Lessons with George Stone well unfortunately Joe during this whole period of time even before Drum Lessons with Stone was finished and published, Joe passed away it was a very very sad moment for so many many drummers including myself of course so I sort of took Drum Lessons with Stone and I put it on the side a few years I didn't touch it, it was on the shelf and I did nothing with the stick control out book it was just half done and we changed directions so few years later some of my drummer friends and so forth said you got to finish those books you got to finish those books and I sent the unfinished book to Barbara Haynes George Stone's granddaughter who was very motivated really motivated me to get this thing done I did, we got Drum Lessons with Stone done and so now I'm sitting with a half finished stick control exercise book so just over the last year or so I finished that it's ready to go to print and we're going to do it as an e-book through Kindle to start off with and I'm going to have some copies advanced copies for people who want to have a solid print copy rather than an e-book and I'll have those available within the next few weeks so that's really what happened we did a change in direction there you know sometimes you got a pivot and it sounds like it all worked out so far and then later on as we're going to this a little later I found that in one of Mr. Stone's articles somebody had asked them the question, well Mr. Stone and like I say most of his columns were based on questions answering questions from other drummers from all over the world and somebody had sent him a note and said Mr. Stone right now there are 26 rudiments as there were in that day and he said can you imagine a time where there might be more than 26 rudiments and under what circumstances might that be well that sparked Mr. Stone's creative body of work and he started saying yeah I think so and he explained in his next column he said yes and I think there can be and there will be when a couple of things happened one genres of music change so that instead of four measure phrases there might be 10 measure phrases or 13 and a half measure phrases and so therefore the fills that the drummers play now may be longer and if they're longer they're going to have to have longer fills and longer fills will mean some sort of other type of rudiment or other type of exercise to help fill that gap in the music and so not only that did he make that mention in his column but he started, I was a student of his at the time, and he started writing these what he called future rudiments out and he would give them to his students at that time and say take this home and work on it and see what you think and it would be a flam plus a drag which today is called a cheese and cheese tap a cheese dittle can be a lot of those different things and so he, but stone started at all off in around the 19, I want to say 59, 60 doing these things and he called them future rudiments and he'd write out a sheet and then he'd give them to his students and say play these and I got many of them from him over the period of years and he gave me a lot of them as handouts later well I found these things you know sort of in an old storage box and I pulled them out and we started your friend in mind, Jason Edwards started looking at them and saying how can we use these as another tribute to stone, another book by stone and something that he really dug his chest into, you know, dug his hands into writing all these new rudiments out which were new at the time he called them future rudiments so that's the next book the last of the book perhaps of the stone book and it should be out around the same time as the control book is out, you know. Yeah, that's awesome and you mentioned Jason and we just got to say right off the bat that that's Jason Edwards of ProLogix which great guy you guys started doing lessons I believe after you are on the podcast and you guys have become great friends which I love hearing and every time I see Jason we start talking about you and it's just this kind of small, it's a cool connection there but so then is it fair to say this future rudiments is sort of a smaller kind of shorter book as well or is this one a pretty, yeah, I think it's good. Right now we're looking at maybe 36 or 38 rudiments that he considered, stone considered future rudiments and so again it's, we take a couple of different looks at the sticking for those and we're putting them in the same style of stick control that is a four measure phrase that can be used and expanded upon or added to or deducted from and yeah so it is more like a booklet in the 30, 35 pages range. That's great, I think that's a good number and I just think it's an interesting way to think about things for him you know like as a teacher. Yeah and that was stone all the way, he was so creative and he always came, he always wanted to come up with new ideas you know and and he, his one of his drum teachers was a gentleman by the name of Frank Dodge and I'm not going to get into this yet because this could become a book as well but he had the Frank Dodge drum charge where Mr. Dodge came up with some ideas as to taking eight notes as an example or four eighth notes and eight sixteenth notes and changing the sticking and changing the accents on them and building an exercise so he has a small book stone has a small book I'll call the Frank Dodge drum shots and I've been speaking with the stone family a little bit about the possibility of rewriting that book you know what I'd like to do and it's sort of my bucket list and we've talked about this before I'm 82 now so I want to get things done and would it be to you know sort of re-establish the stone books in a more modern era? Dodge Pablo Galarro has done a great job in editing the stick control book and the accents and rebounds books and there are still a few books left that stone had his hands into and as I say it's the future rudiments and the stick control count and then the Frank Dodge book would be another one if we decide to go there by the way what we were doing Joe and I were doing the drum lessons with George Stone the publisher wanted to limit the pages on it to under a hundred pages and so we ended up with 92 pages but that gave us 30 lessons with George Lawrence Stone but I got 46 lessons with George Lawrence Stone finished and with many of them we didn't use in the first book it could be a book too we'll note Wow man you are always working I think that's a great thing because you are still obviously a teacher I love it and I love these guys I can tell you that from your podcast the last one we did I ended up with something like 16 professional drummers studying with me from all over the world I got a young man from Shanghai that is still studying with me now and so your podcast is getting around man well that's great that's great to hear and I wanted to say that too at some point in this that thank you to everyone who did take some lessons with Barry after being on the podcast because I mean obviously as you can tell Barry's a real deal obviously excellent teacher but he's about as close of a connection to this stuff as you can get and he's a working drummer I mean who doesn't like especially during the pandemic some students here and there but yeah that makes me also want to say that so our lessons that we had were just an absolute joy it's been a little while and so to kind of explain that because last time we left off with that previous episode we were taking lessons but having a I heard you took some time off to make babies yeah that's a good way to put it so pregnant wife moved houses it's just been crazy kitchen renovation but I will say I wanted to tell you I play the piano like every day now and that has been very helpful and you can kind of think from a drummer's perspective when you do that of like you know you're you're the dynamics and your timing and your rhythm and I think it's great for drummers to play piano too so I've been having fun with that I think a second instrument for drummers should be piano and that not only leads to playing piano and composing and arranging but it also leads to playing mallet percussion vibraphone remember and vibraphone and in the telephone you know so you get that as you've already got the hands having played drums so you can lay those on mallets and use your piano knowledge to stop playing tunes and start improvising and stop playing chord changes you know you take someone like Mario the cutist from alternative mode he plays four mallets as if he had four hands on each on each arm you know and he was just sensational and so many others Beth Gottlieb as an example they just play you know so where you take your five fingers on each hand and play piano you can just do the same thing with mallets whether it be two mallets or four mallets and all of a sudden you've got a whole new branch of availability for you and by the way if you were in Orlando and you were playing gigs here you know through the union contract if you if you doubled on an instrument you get double pay that's not bad that's not bad at all it's just fun to do something different obviously I play the drums a lot still but something different and I would just attest to people either working with you or let's just say any teacher in general there's something different about having someone correcting you and having someone course correct what you're doing and just watching out for you and you would even just over the zoom say oh you're lifting like turn your hand a little or kind of you know you're doing this like I would always push I would always do way too much like forcing like really force out things and but working it was kind of relax it work on the bounces and it was I'm sure we'll pick it up again soon after baby number two arrives this episode is brought to you by dream symbols I want to talk a little bit about the dream symbols recycling program the recycling program is simple bring your broken or unwanted symbols all brands accepted into your local dream dealer and you can earn $1 for every inch of symbol you bring in towards the purchase of a new dream symbol for example bring in two 20 inch symbols for recycling receive $40 off the price of a new dream symbol it's that easy they in turn take the symbols recycled and use them to create new products like the re effects crop circles and the naughty saucers check them out online at dream symbols dot com and follow them on social media at dream symbols I think maybe there might be some other folks who haven't heard that first episode and who might want to take lessons with you so maybe you kind of explain a little bit about you know what you get when you come to bury and learning those stone techniques for maybe some new people yeah that's great thanks for asking that I have I have two different courses that I teach for a professional drug teacher as an example who just wants to get into the four corner stones of the stone system the relaxation method you know the hand hold the level system and so forth I have a four week course that we just you know to have a lesson a week and then at the end of that they can make up their mind if they want to go any further because I will go further with them we'll take everything in the stick control book and I will show them the proper way to play it and of course with this new book they'll have account right there for them like an appendix to the stick control book they'll lay it next to their stick control book when they want to know how to count the compound rhythm they will just open the book and look at the rhythm and then open the appendix and look at the the way they count it and it will be a very simplistic matter the so that's that and then I also have a 12 week course just three months and then I'm not trying to make a living out of a one particular drummer because a lot of these people that are studying with me are professional drummers already and professional performers already and that would be an insult if I started teaching them how to hold the stick but I can show them what to do with the sticks once you've got them in your hand and I can show them both the power stroke and the rebound stroke that Stone was famous for so we could do all of that and the 12 week course goes a little further we go into stick control and accents and rebounds which is a really important book that nobody seems to be into right now and then if we go beyond that there was another drummer that studied with Stone before he went into the military and became a star and that's the Boston drummer and Berkeley instructor Alan Dawson well Alan studied with George Stone before he went into the Navy and into the Navy band and I was because I was only studying with Mr. Stone during the school year you know because that he was like I say part of the faculty at the college I ended up meeting Alan Dawson and getting some lessons in the summer times with him and so and he was very high on Mr. Stone and of course he's done the rudimental ritual and so forth and Alan unfortunately passed away too but he is he is a genius Alan Dawson was the genius of a drummer and the methods that he taught at Berkeley are still being taught by the teachers at Berkeley today and so we would I would then take you into Alan Dawson's rudimental ritual and how he worked Stone into that the Stone methods into that so we can we can go for four week course or we could go for 12 week course and it depends on how far you want to go I'm available at Barry James drummer at gmail.com or you could call me at 321 297 3042 and I love to talk to drummers when they call me we end up on the phone for about six hours my wife goes crazy but I just talk with drummers and I get so much out of talking with them and I get motivated by talking with them yeah absolutely and that was part of like our lessons was it just reminded me of some of the things I've heard about with the episodes I've done about Freddie Gruber and Joe Morello and all these guys was that these lessons would go on for hours and even when we did our lessons you and I could just talk and talk and I would and it would be two hours in and I I'd look over and like my wife would be there holding like that baby number one like get off the lesson but it was it was so awesome and I also do going back to Jason Edwards he is a phenomenal drummer and the fact that you guys he's still coming to you for lessons because there's so much to learn from you and you guys have obviously become friends but for someone at his level to come to someone at your level it just speaks a lot I hope that makes sense just there's always room to grow even no matter how you know experienced you are Jason something else I'm trying to wean him off the molar system a little bit but I don't have to because he's so good at both methods now and maybe I shouldn't be telling this story out of school because it's not Jason and I have both been talking about the possibility of doing a book that features both the molar system and the stone system in one book and the beach so that's down the road a little bit and by the way anybody who's looking for a practice pad those practice pads that Jason makes are incredible I play I don't know the name of it but it's green the first time I threw a stick down on it I had to hurry up to catch it because it moved back to me so fast it's the fastest rebound I've ever seen in a stick in a pad before and it's very true to life too it's very natural it feels like a drum head so his pads are just awesome playing tools anybody who really wants to get ahead and play with a very fast rebound a la stone they should try Jason's pads out because they are sensational I've never had a pad in my life as good as the prologic pads Jason's been on here but prologics really are very awesome they sent me a bunch of them a four pack of different materials and it's great so Barry you told people where to find you Barry James drummer at gmail.com and I'll put that down in the description so Barry you've got a lot of books in the works you've done this before you know how to make the process work are there any tips you would give to educators or people about making a book come to life you know what would you say I know it's a long process it's a labor of love but what would you kind of guidance would you give people who maybe want to write a book well there are so many outlets now to write a book and you can self publish and I've known some good friends of mine who are very good drummers as well and they put out some books and they ask me the same question how do I get a publisher well drum lessons with George Lawrence Stone was basically through the Stone family they liked what we had done and the family got behind me so that was sort of a lucky break right there I had been shopping this to publish that book to publishers for a few years without much results and so many drummers have the same but I've noticed through Danny Gottlieb and other people who have self published books they do very well with them and they get their names out there and they get gigs by it and they get students from that from that exercise so you've got Kindle ebooks and you've got Book Baby and you've got several different publishing companies that allow you to self publish and I tell you you make more royalties self publishing than you will with a commercial publisher and I've also talked to Jeff Moore who was for many years the drum guru over at the University of Central Florida here and wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do with publishing the book the drum lessons book and talked to Jeff about it and Jeff looked at it this way he said you're not going to make a lot of money if you're dealing with a commercial publisher because they get the bulk of the money they have to print the book and they have to distribute the book and they are in their money too but what you do is you get your name out there and like he's a college professor he happens to be now the dean of music at UCF he's grown beyond the percussion department he's the dean of the entire music school over there and I spoke with Jeff and he said look I've written several books and I've had publishers do several books I've self published several books he said it's it's no more gratifying doing one or the other except for the fact that you get your name out there and it'll help you get gigs it'll help you get recognition from your peers and students and so forth so I would and I decided to go his way and say look I'm not going to make a bunch of money with this first book but I'm going to meet a lot of great people like Bart and it's just very you know I joke about myself I'm the Colonel Saunders of the drum industry you know I've waited until the end of my life to get notoriety and I have from all over the world I'm getting calls and questions and so forth and so it's very satisfying doing that so I would say the first thing is if you could get a commercial publisher and he will distribute your book and it'll be all in his catalogs and so forth go there if you can't self publish and then you market your own book and put it under your arm and like Jim Chapin used to do he'd take his book and put it under his arm and he'd go to PASIC and he'd go to some of the other conventions and he'd have it under his arm and he would sell it to people like the advanced techniques book and a lot of other books that a lot of other drummers have done they do it the same way and realize that what you're going to get out of it is probably even more important than a few dollars yeah absolutely I can I can speak to my brother wrote like a kids book where each page because he does more art stuff he's a bass player as well and he's been on the show but he did a every page is a different instrument from around the world he published it through Amazon but basically though what happens is like you're saying is you then get is like for him it's you got to go to whatever kids book fairs you got to really go out there so I don't think there's an easy from what I'm getting from it is there's no silver bullet like easy oh my book's published now I'm famous it's like then the work begins after you get your book absolutely and in the Amazon you're talking about they're self publishing houses called Kindle two books are going to be brought to life next month is with Kindle and also they give you more flexibility so that just like you say if you want to put some books under your arm and go out to the conventions and even to schools and sell the book you're capable you're able to do that you don't have to give them an exclusive as you would with a commercial publisher yeah but like you said too I'm sure it's probably pretty nice if what is it like Penguin Random House or whatever like if you're like a huge publisher comes to you with a big check I think we'll take that I got a big publisher that comes to me with small checks well the drum world is what it is yeah and it's just it's just a wonderful marvelous feeling to be recognized you know as a professional drummer or as a professional instructor and you can't ask for more than that in this life you know because if you just take a look at the number of drum books well look behind me that's why two bookshelves there's over a thousand drum books on those shelves and and a lot of them are going to be like the one before when I had my own studio in downtown Orlando I used to get publishers would send me free books because they wanted me to sell them to my students and the more I opened them and read them I said this one's like the one before and this one's like the one before so you know how many pictures of handholds can you pass out to your students but there's so much more to it the longer you're in the business the more you appreciate the beauty of the field that you're in you know and just how good it makes you feel as a human being to be able to rub shoulders with these great great players and these great thinkers yeah like you I rub the other guy knock yourself down a little bit but folks I want to tell you right now this guy's a good drummer and you know I'd hire him on a gig anytime so if you got a gig and you're up in his neighborhood call him well thank you Barry yeah yeah and that's where I've always been able to I've played my whole life but again you can play your whole life and be able to play pretty well but then it's there's always fundamental stuff to learn which is where and you can always get better so anyway I loved all of our lessons and hopefully I'm sure we'll start again soon but alright so as we get kind of close to the end here why don't you tell people when the books will be out where they can get them I'll obviously share more info as they are released but maybe kind of a timeframe and all that stuff yeah I think that the both the books the accounting stick control and the future requirements books should be out mid-February and they're going to be out through Kindle which is an Amazon company and they would be available as e-books there if you want an advance copy of that I have them or if you want them signed or if you want them you know to be a hardcover book rather than an e-book you can contact me at Barry James drummer com or call me at three two one two nine seven three zero four two and I'll make arrangements to send you one you know we'll just you can buy it direct from me rather than wait until Kindle comes out with their book first and other than that I expect that we'll probably run into each other at PASIC this coming year hopefully the health of everybody will stay we will good enough to be able to do a PASIC thing and they'll be there that's great yeah because like I said you're a salesman at that point you're now kind of standing with your booth and you're slinging books and I'll be walking around and if I ever go to a drum show and happen to have a booth like maybe at Chicago I would love to kind of put some there and we can represent what you are doing with because I usually have a booth with Vincent from Vitalizer Drums who does Speed King pedals and yeah I think people just need to see this stuff it's important sure and you know go around you know you can go around and you can visit with people too and if you got a book under your arm you can spend some time with them going through the book a little bit and it's just a lot of fun you meet so many great people you know yeah it is fun the next thing you know you're having a conversation with Steve Smith or Dave Wackler or somebody just like that oh I've known him all my life well the world this world is small and if you do good work and you work really hard I've found that like people like I've seen with other people is like they respect that a lot and those big drummers you named actually do buy books and listen to podcasts and watch drum videos so it's not like they're like you know punch in the clock at five and they go home and they're done with drums it's like no we're all obsessed with it so you get to meet a lot of cool people yeah it was a very interesting one day I opened Steve Smith's web page and he displayed some books and one of them was mine and I said wow that's very cool yeah that happened from Glenn from Wilco Glenn Kochi he was Glenn Kochi did the same thing yeah because he said he heard it on the podcast and then was like you know saying he's checking out the book that's just so cool yeah and these guys are big name drummers and you know extremely fine drummers so yeah it's just gives you a little jolt there to see that happening with your book and I just love it and I just love what you're doing you're doing such a great service for people and I'll talk to some of my students and I'll say jeez I'm gonna listen to a podcast last night and they'll say well I've listened to most of them now I said you have that's days and days worth of days and days what are you doing aren't you working I hope you listen to 135 podcasts all an hour I said holy cow I appreciate it if they're like me they like work around the house and just burn through them I listen to so many podcasts just painting a room or cleaning up or making dinner so I I appreciate everyone listening but yeah Barry alright so everyone I will put Barry's info his email and his phone number in the description but Barry hopefully we can see each other after the COVID stuff or at the next drum show but I just want to thank you for taking the time to be here and kind of catch up with everyone and say hi because it's been a while since you've been on the show and you're always welcome but I'm glad to have you as a real a friend you know we talk on the phone fairly often and just yeah thank you for being here I thank you Bart you're the best everyone out there be well hey guys before we totally finish this episode I wanted to add this on because when we got done Barry sent me an email and said hey accidentally forgot to thank a few people who were really key in bringing these two new books focused around George Lawrence Stone's teachings to life so Barry wanted to thank with the first book about counting the exercises and stick control he said it was edited by you of mass student Joseph Gervais he said he's done a fantastic job bringing to life the book about how to play the book as Joe Morello said the second book may be a surprise in the stone library but demonstrates just how far ahead of his time George Lawrence Stone was thank you to Jason Edwards and Jonathan Fazio for making sense of the mystery of Stone's future rudiments he said also special thanks to Barbara Haynes and the Stone family and to the whole drum history podcast community because he's really enjoyed getting to talk to a lot of you guys and I know I love talking to Barry and have really enjoyed his friendship over the last couple years so that's it and thank you for listening to this episode if you like this podcast find me on social media at drum history and please share rate and leave a review and let me know topics that you would like to learn about in the future until next time keep on learning