#solodrummer

The Quarantine Concerts 3/25/2020

My contribution to ESS’s Quarantine Concerts. I was invited to play the day before the scheduled performance, so I didn’t have much time to get nervous about it. (Check out the rest of the sets here: lots of super rad stuff!!! https://ess.org/the-quarantine-concerts)

Rewind to sometime 2014; I started this blog, my tuberculosis nurse project. The idea was that even if I was stuck in my basement without many (any?) people to play music with irl, I could reach out via whatever means possible to collaborate remotely. I remembered visiting Mammoth Cave and learning about the sanatoriums (?) that doctors tried to build in the caves to provide a place for tuberculosis patients to recover; I remembered reading something (what? idk) about tuberculosis nurses venturing into people’s private homes to treat them. Reaching out from isolation has always been on my mind, and I think the name “tuberculosis nurse” actually came to me in a dream?

The idea was to record drum tracks and then I would post them here. If anyone heard it and felt inspired, maybe they would make a song with it? And guess what -- it worked! A few different projects with kind and generous friends developed, including the first recording I ever made and the first show I ever played as a drummer.

And so, in 2020 during this global pandemic, I was invited to play a set from my basement, my happiest place, and share my noises with the entire world. In addition to some improvisation, I chose to play songs from those two projects  for this set specifically because they emerged from the same impulse: to reduce isolation and increase community, even under unusual or dire circumstances.

The second of the two pieces I played during my solo set last night (Jan 8, 2020) at Tritriangle. Definitely more of a slow cooker than a pressure cooker. 

I am playing for the second time in 2020 at this event! (Click on the link above for more info about the event :)