Who Was That Guy?

There used to be a music store in St. Paul--Torp's Music--and I was thinking today about a visit I made there many years ago. I'm quite sure the store doesn't even exist anymore, and while I could drive right to it I can no longer remember the name of the street it was on, even though I drove car and bus on it thousands of times; it's just off of University Avenue by the capitol building. This is the store where, a few years subsequent to this particular visit, I bought my beloved Sonor drum kit. I still have the snapshot mental image of that kit stacked forlornly on the shelves, gently used and a bit odd-looking with its wood finish. I made note of it for a couple years before I finally bought it. It was fairly expensive, I think--it needed a loan, as I recall--and a unique example in my experience; I've never seen another like it since. I can remember being attracted to its gorgeous wood finish at a time when most drums were covered with some kind of plastic or composite laminate, often in some cheesy metal-flake sparkle; and I remember loving that it was some exotic European brand in a sea of American drums.

Anyway, on this particular day I was not buying drums, but was in for my weekly drool session, maybe to buy sticks or heads or to look at cymbals or whatever. I had got to know the main drum dude pretty well, though I can only remember his first name now--Jim. But on this day the store was a bit aflutter at some quasi-luminary in the drum shop. He was a guy I'd never heard of, and haven't since. In fact, I'm not entirely sure I even have his name right. Woody Damarone. An African-American guy of about 30, he exuded a somebody-ness, and certainly waded among the staff like a VIP. Apparently he was in town with some big-name artist on tour, and here he had shown up at Torp's (perhaps to exercise his sponsorship obligations or perks).

Whatever, I was among a small group of people standing around listening to him talk and play a bit on this and that, and he eventually expounded on a particular rhythm he had invented or adapted, something he called "The Wood Stroke." It was a clavé beat, something like a bossa-nova, but taking longer to cycle--four bars in this case. He claimed to be at work with a publisher on an exercise book for drummers based on this beat, a methodology for spreading the rhythm around the drum set in pursuit of greater limb independence and dexterity. The Wood Stroke. After playing a quite impressive solo as a demonstration of just what could be germinated from a simple clavé beat, the crowd dispersed, but I hung around to listen a bit more, and he talked to me some. He even found a pencil and paper and wrote down his Wood Stroke in notation for me and autographed it (in what now strikes me as an act of either delusional hubris or great magnanimity, depending on whether the book was ever published or not. Personally, I cannot fathom volunteering to autograph anything for anyone except perhaps a speeding ticket).

Off and on for the next 20 years I would occasionally run across this sheet of signed note paper, stuck in some music book or another, when I would rummage thru my stuff during one of my many moves. Right now I have no idea of its whereabouts, though I feel pretty sure I didn't throw it away. Regardless, I'm a long way from reading complicated rhythmic notation, and anyway I don't know that I ever figured out the rhythm from what he wrote down.

But I remember the rhythm. Or, I remember the same version of it now that I've remembered for 25 years. Maybe I learned it wrong; hell, maybe what I remember as the Wood Stroke is in fact some exercise from symphonic band practice book or god knows what. But I don't think so. And a couple times over the years my memory of this beat has cropped up, but without my giving a thought to where I learned it, or to that episode a couple decades ago where one musician taught it to my 19-year-old self, in another town, another state, in what seems another life altogether.

But it's not, see? Lately, unwittingly, I find I've been using the rhythm as Woody intended, as a kind of rhythmic passacaglia that underpins extended soloing. And it's fabulous! Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but my sense of creativity requires some framework within which experimentation can take place, or maybe some kind of baseline from which one can deviate. And so I start with a quiet statement of the Wood Stroke on my new snare drum (well, quiet to the extent that anything is quiet with a drum set), and work my way up to including all four limbs in what turns out to be almost limitless combinations.

Anyway, I feel like I'm giving some silly circle of life lecture. But I've been playing my drums a lot with the arrival of my new snare drum, more than I've played in years--decades, even. And these are years where really formative things happened while my drumming skills lay dormant--divorces and dating and marriages and career and job changes and houses built and bought and sold; a lot of stuff. And now I find that habits and skills and things long dormant are resurfacing as I blow out the cobwebs. I was never on the top rung of accomplishment as a drummer or a musician, but I teetered on the edge of making it my life's work for a while, and I feel I could have made the grade had I opted for that. But life went off in another direction for me.

And what makes this moving to me now is that exactly at these moments I reconnect with that person I used to be, with that life I used to live, with those years which, looking back now, seem to belong to somebody else. It's good to be reminded that as a musician none of us is self-made; most certainly I am not. I am a compendium of a zillion other people's ideas, shaped and focused through the filter that is me. That's my contribution, the extent of what I bring to the party. But it's enough to keep me on my toes, and to keep me connected to this larger stream of creative people, like Woody Damarone, who bequeathed a bit of themselves to me along the way.
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1/22/07

After Jeffy's comment, I looked around a bit and I think Mr. Dennard is, indeed, the man. I can't be sure, but he checks off more boxes than my 25-year-old memory of what I thought his name was. Anyway, this is what Drummerworld has to say about him:

Kenwood Dennard was born in Brooklyn, New York in March of 1956. His parents were both professional singers. Kenwood began playing piano at age 3 and drums at age 8. He started private studies on piano at age 5 and on drums at age 9. In 1968 Kenwood attended David Mannes School where he studied ear training, theory, and piano. In 1971 he furthered his classical studies at the Manhattan School of Music Prep. Department, where he began studying percussion with Jim Price.

Kenwood finished High School at age 17 and was accepted into Berklee College of Music in Boston in the same year. There he majored in composition. His principal instrument was drums, which he studied with Gary Chaffee and Alan Dawson. Kenwood attended the accelerated program in order to make time to study theory with Nadja Boulanger during the summer of 1975 in Fontainebleu, France. Kenwood graduated Magna Cum Laude from Berklee in 1976. Thus he completed his formal training, but has continued to study with master musicians throughout the world.

No mention of his "Wood Stroke," or of his penchant for showin' some luv to pudgy wannabes from the Tundra.