Saturday night we went to see Scotty’s Uncle Kelly play with his band, Bad Dog, at the St. Francis De Sales carnival. The SFDS carnival stage has seen some pretty classy acts over the years – about a decade ago my bleach blond, spikey haired, leather jacket wearing boyfriend (y’know, basically a parent’s nightmare) took me to see Billy Idol and Toto grace the very same platform.
Oh wait…that was Scott. Okay, so that picture was taken on Halloween ’99, but still…uncanny, right? (Ignore the pale girl with the bad wig in the photo, I have no idea who that is.)
So, right now, my husband is out in the garage making a drum throne from scratch. Oh, had I not mentioned that on the same day we discovered we were having a baby, Scott also decided to “claim his birthright” and took his very first drum lesson? Then, a couple of weeks after that, he “surprised” me by coming home with a set of his Grandfather’s drums. Which are now in my living room.
See, the Elder Shanny’s have been professional drummers for a couple of generations now. Scott’s Dad bucked the tradition and joined the brass section, but both of his uncles took up the family business, and his Grandpa retired only last year. (During Scott’s dance with his Mom at our wedding, his Grandfather stood next to me proudly tapping out the beat to their song on my arm whispering “look at that…the boy’s got time.”) At Christmas Eve dinner, it was decided that Scotty was going to start taking lessons from his newly retired Grandpa Dick, who rumor had it taught his boys by rapping on their knuckles with drum sticks when they missed a beat. (The dog bite injuries Scott endured early in his training may have spared him the same fate. So far Dick’s going easy on his knucks.)
So every saturday now, my hubby takes his practice pad and the “Modern Syncopated Rhthyms for Drummers” book Dick gave him from 1922 and heads over to hear amazing stories about touring during the Big Band Era (Miles Davis was a dick, we hear…) and learn how scatting can help him keep the beat. Then he comes home to treat the babe and I to a concert of his weekly lesson. The boy’s got time.