How I got started playing the drums.
When I was seven, I became infatuated with the drums. Being fortunate to occasionally attend my father’s band practices as a child, I grew to love the sound of the drums like the beating of my own heart. The way each drum resonated within my body made me want to become a drummer so badly. And thankfully, having a musician for a dad, my dream was beyond possible. It was encouraged.
Music was life since I was in the womb. Headphones on my mom’s stomach, I kicked to the sounds of Led Zeppelin. From the time I was able to form sentences, I was asked by my dad during our car rides, “Caitlin, what do you hear?” Sitting in my car seat, closing my eyes, and paying attention to the song on the radio, I’d answer, “Drums, guitar, bass, saxophone, piano…” He taught me how to listen.
A few years later, I became an older sister to my two sisters, Carly and Cori. My mom worked nights in the ICU, so it was just us three girls home with our dad, as he learned how to be the greatest father in the world. There were too many guitars in our house to count. It was his main instrument, and he had been playing it since he was a teenager. Now a middle school general music teacher in our hometown, he knew how to teach music in a way that was fun and encouraging. On these nights with our mom at work, my dad would grab one of his many guitars and do sing-a-longs with us. He taught us the Blues, Funk, Pop, Rock, you name it. We danced and sang and had our own concerts in our pajamas in the living room until it was time for bed.
Years of singing along turned into summers attending my dad’s all-ages shows with his band, which reminded me once again, of the instrument that was calling to me. One summer when I was eight, I hopped off the bus on the last day of school and heard those familiar sounds booming from the basement of my house. Racing up the sidewalk that split our front lawn in two, I tossed my backpack to the side, I wouldn’t be needing it for the next several weeks. The booming got louder as I followed the sounds through the house until I reached the basement door. I felt it in my chest, as each drum resonated within my body. I turned the doorknob and ran down the creaky wooden steps to see my dad, playing a candy-apple red, sparkly drum set. It was the one he kept in his classroom at school. He turned with a smile, “Surprise! I thought since you really want to learn, I may as well bring it here for the summer rather than let it collect dust in my classroom.” It was like Christmas morning, my birthday, my dream come true! “Remember that beat I taught you how to play by tapping your hands on your legs?” He handed me a fresh pair of drumsticks. My mom was doing laundry across the unfinished basement, but she watched me with excitement as I immediately applied “Foot-Tap, Hand-Tap” (a simple 4/4 drum beat that my dad termed “Foot-Tap, Hand-Tap” early on as a way to teach myself and his students over the years) to the drums. It was seamless and meant to be. He picked up his guitar and I stopped. “Keep going! Let’s jam!” My dad began to strum the riff the “Kashmir” by Led Zeppelin and I continued to play the beat. My eyes lit up! I was playing! I was playing a song! My mom was stunned. My dad was confident. It’s like he knew it was in me all along. For the rest of the summer, I did nothing else but turn my family’s boombox to 99.1 PLR and bump the volume up as high as it would go. Using the listening skills that I was taught, I turned “Foot-Tap, Hand-Tap” into many more drum beats. I would later get my first teacher, and by the end of the summer, I would get up to play a song in my dad’s band.
