Ep. 04: Drumming Up Success: From Dillinger Four to Twin Cities Drum Collective

[00:00:00] Stephen: On today's episode, we have Lane Pederson. Lane is a man of many talents. He's a clinical psychologist, author, owner of the drum shop, Twin Cities Drum Collective, and an accomplished drummer with the iconic and influential Minneapolis punk band, Dillinger 4. I'm excited to talk to him today about not only his music career, but the fact that he did it all while getting his doctorate and becoming a successful psychologist. Please welcome Lane. [00:01:00] Hi. Lane: Thank you for having me, Steve. And I just, when you were saying that I wanted more than anything for you to just take that clip and send it to my children, maybe there'll be a day when they look up to me and go wow, dad is someone to be reckoned with. How old are your kids? 14 Stephen: and 16, I believe. Okay. Yeah. So at the height of not caring at all about your accomplishments. Lane: Totally. Stephen: When I reached out to you, it was because I knew you, or I actually didn't know you at all. I just knew Twin Cities Drum Collective. And I was like, let's get these guys. This is cool. We follow you online and youlet's talk drums. And then we had a little call quick and you're like, yeah, I'm in Dillinger 4. And I was like, what? Right, right. Because Dillinger 4 was a huge band in my coming of age Situationist Comedy, it was a huge record that I listened to in high school a lot [00:02:00] and loved your band so it's just cool to have you here. And I guess that's kind of where I want to start, because I think that's where a lot of people that know you are going to know you from outside of the drum shop, but walk people through your music journey, like where it started when Dillinger 4 got started, like other projects, whatever, just. Lane: I'm going to start with a memory actually. And, and I remembered this recently. I told it to my wife. How one little thing can create just a whole world of difference in, in something. Right. So I actually, I met Eric plays guitar, sings in D4. I met him at college and it was like the first day on the campus. And the only reason I met him was I was wearing a Sabian t shirt, right? young guy with a mullet. Wearing a Sabian t shirt and back then he had this super long hair look like he was in Nelson You remember the band Nelson? I don't know their brothers or whatever. They had that like long hair like that He looked like that he saw the Sabian shirt and he comes over and literally he doesn't say it like Hello, or what's your name? He goes like you want to be in a band and [00:03:00] so in a weird way that's how it started and and and I was just kind of reflecting I'm like If I would have worn a different shirt on that day, maybe D4 would never have existed. It probably wouldn't have. And I don't know, the world would have been better or worse or the same, probably the same. Stephen: I don't know. I think you guys have influenced a lot of other bands that followed, in the pop punk revolution that took off after the nineties. Lane: Yeah. You know, I mean, one of the things, especially early on is. We didn't like really pigeonhole ourselves. We play with, you know, crusty bands. We play with pop punk bands. We played with a. A lot of ska bands, have a lot of traumatic memories from being on seven band shows where five of them were ska bands. I'm not trying to disrespect ska, so there's the, there's a limit with everything. But that said, we play with bands who are out of, totally out of the genre. So I think that we made a lot of local connections certainly that way. Got some extra exposure, certainly that way, but yeah, you know, it's flattering at times when people [00:04:00] say your band was really important to me, is really important to me, really influenced me, whether it's another established band, sometimes more established band, or if it's just a person, to me, either way, it's I'm flattered by that. Sometimes it just seems, a little bit bizarre. I remember once Billy Joe from Green Day plays around on the drums some too. He said Oh, like, you know, I play along to that one song of yours where you play the drum fills, that sort of thing. And show me how you do those drum fills. And I'm like, what? Billy Joe's like, try to play along to the drums on a D four. So I was like, That's pretty cool. It's funny and it's cool. Yeah, absolutely. Stephen: Okay, so you meet Eric, the band starts. You guys are in college at this time. walk us through those early years of Dillinger 4 starting to get known, notoriety, like up to the time where you guys... Signed with like hopeless and right. I put not Lane: on, yeah, I'll try to give a brief history here, but the best I can recollect, you know, we actually started out, we're going to be a party band and we kicked around the idea of being [00:05:00] called the Ted Kennedy's right. Ha ha. You know, so we started learning, covers like jawbreaker songs, fast forward, I don't know, 25, 26, 27 years. It's cool to play a show with jawbreaker. Right. Uh, which we did about a year ago or so, so, I mean, we started out learning songs like that. And then at one point we decided that, okay, you know, we're going to be like an actual band and write our own music. And there were three of us at the time, Eric and Patrick, obviously, and, and me, naming a band is like the hardest thing in the world, I think it's up there. Right. I mean, if we're going to be like really honest, how many bands, even that you like, do you go like, man, and their name is awesome. Right. I mean, it's not like a huge number. Right. You go like, no, I love this band and whatever, that's what their name is. Right. Thanks. You know, it's, it's like friends, right? Like, like, I didn't come in today and I go Stephen, that name is awesome, man. Yeah, exactly. Kid, that name is amazing. You can go I'm a big fan of Blaine too. that's a great name. It's good, fits you well. It's great. so it's like that with bands. So we're like, what are we going to name ourselves? Right. And we all lived [00:06:00] in St. Paul at the time. And of course, St. Paul has this like rich history with mobsters. Having spent time in St. Paul and the history is that I want to say like the mayor of St. Paul was brother in law to the chief of police or something, Lane: and they got together and made an agreement with the Chicago mobsters and that sort of thing. Like, Hey, you can come hang out in St. Paul. And as long as you aren't, doing like criminal stuff, like robbing our banks and stuff. Yeah. We'll just kind of, you know, pretend you're not here. so St. Paul became like this place for like John Dillinger, for example, spent some time in St. Paul. So there was a little bit of being fascinated by that history at that period of time. Patrick had a bass head called a Model T. And so we were like, Dillinger, four. And there were only three of us, but I guess we were forecasting that there would be a fourth, which... Eventually became Billy and that's where it began. And of course we had to pick the name under duress because we'd booked like the first show. And back then there was such a huge like punk scene in the twin cities, 20 plus bands, I'm sure. And house shows, [00:07:00] warehouse shows. That's really where we started playing is basement shows, and did that for a long time. I mean, our first national tour was basically playing a lot of basements. And of course. Parts of the country, there are no basements, houses, maybe a VFW and back then no cell phones, no navigation, you book shows through the mail, corresponding with letters, and then you had the Rand McNally map and you showed up and hope that it was for real. And it almost always was, right? It was just crazy. and then, we probably recorded two or three or more seven inch records before we ever did a full length. And I say that in a sense that, at least for us, I think Recording a seven inch, four songs, doing that a number of times. It's like a developmental period for a band, right. Before you'd like drop your first full length. So you have all of that experience, then it just evolved, from there because there really is a really strong national. Punk scene and it was super strong back then. Yeah. So there was a lot of networking that happens, right? And then eventually you get on the radar of [00:08:00] record labels that put out punk bands and you build it from there. By the time you guys Stephen: are starting to get starting to put out the first full length record, you've got record label support at this point. All the while this is happening. Are you still in school? Lane: Yeah, you know, I was, I was pretty much in school continuously until I, finished with my doctorate. yeah, I was in school the whole time, actually by the time I was getting near the end of getting my doctorate, now do keep in mind, like it's a lot of years, so it's not like an overnight thing, but by the time, I'm near the end of that process, we're already playing, bigger shows and. I remember leaving my internship for a few weeks to tour Japan with Green Day. But even before that, we toured Japan on our own a couple times. Could play pretty much anywhere in the country that we, we wanted to, you know, my early, like, not really employers, you're there for a practicum or an internship. They were interested that I had this sort of other life and so they were accommodating of it. And I, you know, I don't know whether I could have done it in a different band either in fairness, because the one thing that I think is unusual about [00:09:00] Dillinger for Is we always do things kind of on our own terms. A big part of that is that there was never ever a time in the history of our band where we were like, okay, now how are we going to hustle to get to the next step? how are we going to take this to the next level? I mean, I knew lots of bands in the punk world and otherwise, where that was a thing. Like, how are we going to be the biggest band that we can be. Yeah. And I, frankly, I think it probably fried a lot of bands, because they're touring constantly. They're in each other's space constantly. they just, you burn yourself out, doing that. Even when you're established band, touring is like really, it's rigorous And back then, you know, you're sleeping on people's floors almost every night, trying to figure out a place to crash and if you got a couch, you were super lucky. You weren't making much money. So our early tours, you know, our payout for the day would be five bucks. If five, 5 to spend today. So you get like a 1 whopper as you get a dollar out of that, you know, and maybe you'd get like a gas station burrito. So you spent 2 on [00:10:00] food. And then you get like a six pack of the cheapest beer that you could buy. A lot of these shows were parties too, you know, and people would fill in the blanks, you know. You made it work, right? You sort of had two different Stephen: career paths that were happening, Like, how did you balance that? Was there ever, like, conflict between, like... I mean, you say that Dillinger 4 wanted to do things on their own terms, but there's four people. You know, was everybody always on the same Lane: page? Yeah, I mean, we're pretty on the same page. Because my band wasn't like, we're going to be constantly touring. We're constantly striving for the next thing. We got to make it to the next level. It meant that there was space in my life to be able to focus on getting my doctorate too. There was space for other things. certainly if D4 had been, you know what, like a lot of bands, we knew if they were like, you know what, we're going to be out on the road for nine months out of the year, I wouldn't be able to do it. Right. You know, so it was a fact that my band is who my band is. That allowed me to. To have other pursuits too. And I think it's why we're still together after, 30 years is, look, I think we're hugely lucky. I mean, we've got a fan base that I don't [00:11:00] know what we'd have to do to have them abandon us. I'm grateful for, them. Right. They're there. So we can. We can go and we can play a show, we can fly and play this festival or get this offer to go and open up for, this great band somewhere and go do that for a night or two or three and then not do it for a while. To me, that's the luckiest thing in the world is like show up to the State Fair and play the grandstand with Hold Steady and Bob Mould. Yeah. And then go home and sleep in your bed that night and, not have to focus on your band for a while. You have other things to do. we're all older. Eric and I and Patrick have kids, Billy has, you know, his study thing. You can like actually have that balance, right? Yeah. Super lucky. Stephen: I think that's, that's such an important point and also kind of rare because I feel like so many bands break up for one, they, they just can't stay together for that long. And they get burned out, whether it was because of touring or because. Some people want to go as far as they can with it and other people are only like well I want to have space for these other things [00:12:00] right and just the importance of Finding people like obviously you got to find talented members in your band you need to find people that want the same things as you Lane: yeah And are willing to compromise and don't look at Oh, if we can't play that show, it's devastating, we turned down a lot of things that people would kill to do, like, you know, when Warped Tour was like a really huge thing, there were multiple years in a row, they'd ask us to do it and we just, we had a standard, which was, we don't really want to play a show we wouldn't go to ourselves and, playing at three in the afternoon, outdoors in the sun, it seemed like, yeah, You know, I don't think any of us have ever been to a Wharf Tour, right? no offense to the Wharf Tour or anything. It's that's a good pathway for lots of people. Sure. But for us, you know, we're like, well, we wouldn't want to go to that show. So we just turn it down. And people are like, what? You turn on the Wharf Tour? Or turn down this? Or turn down that? but look, you know, you turn down whatever you think is like the big show. And, and life goes on. It's okay. Yeah. But also to the point of like the right members. I think certainly [00:13:00] like members who work together musically and understand each other musically and kind of can figure out the language that they use with one another to construct songs and do that piece but, but it's also hugely I think about personalities because you need confident people to go on stage. Confidence is like a really great thing, but confidence is different than ego and ego is a thing where you go, I'm the most important. If I was behind the drums, my performance on the drums is the most important and everyone should think through that filter, right? Or where I want to eat is the most important. You want to be in the driver's seat and have everybody see you as being in the driver's seat. One ego can destroy a band. One ego has destroyed many bands. You get more than one ego. Forget about it. Yeah, that's yeah, that's a rarity I guess there probably are examples of people who have a lot of ego who make it for a period of time But it's the exception to the rule. Yeah, I've Stephen: [00:14:00] certainly heard of bands You know if there's enough success where it's like they're not friends with each other, right? I want to hang out but they can be in a band together. They can be professional and I guess that's one way to do it, too, but all the more if you actually enjoy Lane: the process, too. Right, you gotta enjoy the people, you're with, too, Back when we started, too, it was so different, because you'd be in a van. No one had iPhones. No one had internet. The internet wasn't around, No one even had a cell phone. You had whatever books were in the van, and so eventually you read every book that was in the van, whether it was yours or not, more than one time, because all you got is each other going down the road. You read a book that you've read four times, you look out the window, or you talk about stuff. And after a while, there's not necessarily that much to talk about because the only thing that maybe you experienced in a day that the other people didn't experience with you was the time that you were in the bathroom. Yeah. Might be why people talk about their bathroom habits because it's the only thing novel to share. Because we all saw what happened yesterday, we all ate at KFC, we don't need to talk about that. We [00:15:00] were all there, Stephen: So what's the status of Dillinger 4 Lane: now? we're all getting older, few of us are on blood pressure medication. I take a medication to prevent the gout. If you know anything about Dillinger 4, gout is a risk factor of being in Dillinger 4. There's no doubt about it. it's been tough over the years to maintain healthy weights, but we try. No, I mean, we're still active and playing and, you know, working on some new music after, you know, what some people might call a hiatus. It's been 15 years, approximately. It's a hiatus. So yeah, working on some new stuff when it's actually finished and when it's going to come out. Can I Stephen: expect to see you on TikTok then promoting the new Lane: record? I almost certainly no. I don't think so. I'm like, I want to get on tick tock for the drum shop in my daughter who is 16. she, I probably should. she goes, dad, you can't be on tick tock. You're going to be bullied. They're going to bully you. I don't want to see you bull. And I'm like, no, I'm okay. really? I'm the one who knocks on doors.[00:16:00] She didn't buy it though. Maybe my daughter thinks she's gonna bully me. I don't know. She could do that. Anyway, I don't know how it's gonna be promoted. I don't know anything about that. Well, the nice Stephen: thing about Dillinger 4 is there's, like you mentioned, the fan base. I know I'll check out that record. No one's gonna have to promote it for me. I'll find it. Lane: Right, it'd just be a curiosity, right? Yeah, definitely. At that point you go like, wow, how has their sound evolved? Yeah. How bad, how bad has this gotten? In all of this time, they must, they've been working on a massive. Let's listen to the worst Dillinger 4 record. It's our version of Chinese democracy, right, or whatever. That's when you know you're behind schedule. Well, my Stephen: expectations are extremely low, Lane: so. Then you're going to be pleased. That's good. That's a good life philosophy is Stephen: to start that. Yeah. Expect the worst. Right. Be pleasantly surprised that maybe one song was enjoyable. Exactly. Lane: Exactly. Stephen: That's cool. Okay, so Dillinger 4 is where it is now. You guys have made it where it's still [00:17:00] active, it's still together, you can work on new music, you don't have to work on music, you guys just played that huge show at the Grandstand with The Hold Steady and Bob Mould, I know you probably do random shows when you want to, sounds kind of like a dream come true, you get the band, you get to play when you want to. Yeah. Were you ever in other projects Lane: besides Dillinger Four? You know, I was in, I was in The Soviettes for, you know, five minutes. They're a great band. I think they needed a drummer and I was. And I think I might've even played on one of their seven inches. But you know, I wasn't a fully committed member in the sense that, you know, they'd say like, we want to practice. And they wanted to practice like all the time. and I say, you guys practice. I'm just going to sit up in the living room. I'll be able to hear it. I don't think they felt like I was fully committed to the process, which was good because I, I left and then they got Danny and Danny was amazing and perfect for The Soviettes. So that, that was good. maybe about five minutes doing that. And, I'm trying to think, Oh, you know what, I played Ringo Starr in last year's production of The Last Waltz, Mark Joseph, who a lot of people know locally, you know, he's, he promotes a [00:18:00] lot of different things and, he's a big woo and a jam band stuff and his own stuff. And They do this production of The Last Waltz every January. The Fitzgerald theater is where it was last year, I think, you know, and so it's like, it's like this who's who of musicians, like real pros, like people like they do it for their living, right? You know, all star lineup. And he's like, yeah, can you be like Ringo Starr? Because of course, when you think you need someone to play Ringo Starr's part in The Last Waltz, by the way, if people don't know what The Last Waltz is, it's The Band's final concert. I think, I don't know. It was in San Francisco is a big thing. There's a documentary. about it, like Francis Ford Coppola or someone like him. I don't have all my directors straight, but someone of his stature made the documentary. And so the show is like a recreation of that concert. It's super cool. And I love the music of the band, but anyway, who can be Ringo? I know the punk rock drummer. We'll have him do it. so it was a gas. I'm sitting up there going like, yeah, I believe I'm up here with all these real musicians and here's the, I would say this about Ringo Starr. If someone says that Ringo Starr is not an [00:19:00] amazing drummer, they don't know shit. honestly, they don't. He was such a musical drummer. The parts he wrote are iconic. You know, I, I'm not going to get a rave a lot about Ringo Starr, but I'll say like he's first class drummer. Yeah. And the general public has like a low. Sort of opinion of Ringo, sadly, right? So I thought, so the good news is the public is going to have those low expectations about what Ringo star represents. And I played a very straight beat on this song anyway. So I'm like, maybe I'm the perfect Ringo. I don't know. Hey, you Stephen: don't have to convince me. I mean, I, I love Ringo and I guess kind of related to that. Like, you know, you're sort of self deprecating, you know, about your drumming, but obviously you're a great Lane: drummer. Oh, well, this is nice for you to say. Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. how did that evolve for you in terms of like, what was it just all like doing shows and playing or did you ever do the whole like lesson route study? Lane: No, I didn't really do the lesson route study, although I encourage people to do that now and I encourage people to do that live with a [00:20:00] teacher. nowadays there's so much great content out there, like Drumeo is a great example of that, God bless them that they're there, they do a lot, they put a lot of cool stuff out, I watch a lot of their stuff, I go, oh, that's cool, but that's different than sitting down with someone and having a lesson, which probably sounds ironic, because I just said, like, no, I didn't really have lessons, but. But here's the thing. I had a lesson with Gordy Knutson. I had a lesson with him back in 1994. That kept me busy for about 20 years, and I had a lesson with him a couple years ago. So I've had like two lessons. By the way, Gordy teaches down at the shop. I have a great roster of teachers down there. Gordy. Todd trainer from shellac. just amazing dudes. if you took one lesson from Gordy, like he, he'll open up so many doors for you. So for me, like a lot of it was having a pathway for consistency. Like every backbeat that I play is a rim shot and that idea that every backbeat has to sound like every other backbeat, like it just needs to be perfect like that. dialing in your time, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that perfect time. And in fact, in Dillinger four, there, there are [00:21:00] times when I purposefully go, I'm going to push this a little bit, pull back here a little bit. And I like having, music that can breathe that way live, especially. But you know, my time's good enough in the studio to play to a click track. You know, so helping with time and, you know, in that, that sort of way. So consistency, time, just even things like letting the natural world help you out by what do I mean by that? Like we have this thing called gravity, right? You know, when someone's high sticking something and coming down, you can do that and not really be using much energy if you just let gravity. That's like Gordy would say, that's like free energy, right? You know, it might look like you're like really smacking the drum hard or that sort of thing, but you're just like, learn how to kind of use some of that flow. So there are things that when you sit down with someone, they can really help you out on that doesn't happen online or watching something. So yeah, you know, I'm, I'm primarily self taught, but I've had some help too. And obviously talked to lots of people and, and seen people who. I go, Oh, that's cool. That influences me. But I've maybe had like a [00:22:00] different take on things than a lot of drummers. I only wanted to be the best drummer in Dillinger 4. That's my only job is to be the best drummer in Dillinger 4. It really doesn't matter whether I can play a 3 4 waltz or bossa nova, you know, or sometimes when people come in and they want to buy a custom snare drum, let's say, we might talk about the throw off. Yeah. How are you going to turn your snares on and off? You know, the throw off. That's right. Cause you can have a, a less expensive throw off that is perfect or you can get like these throw offs that are like, should be on the space shuttle. They're so over engineered, right? And they get pretty expensive. I always ask people, I go, do you turn off your snares very often? Yeah. cause I've been in a band, I haven't ever turned off my snares, not in 30 years. If I'm buying a custom drum, it doesn't make sense for me to spend an extra 100 on like the most over engineered throw off in existence because I'm not going to touch it ever anyway. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, a lot of people do think, I need to specialize in this or specialize in that or be able to play anything. And if you have the [00:23:00] Talent and the time to have those sort of facilities. And that's your goal. I think you ought to do that all day long. I know so many amazing players who can play anything, but that was just never my goal. Exactly. You got to decide what you want out of it. Yeah. Yeah. I got to have time for other things, obviously, Stephen: Okay, so we've gone through a little bit of your background with Dillinger 4. Just touch briefly on some of the Doctorate stuff. At what point did Twin Cities Drum Collective start forming up? Like, when did that idea happen? Why did that happen? Lane: Why? There, there are days I wake up, I think, I do think to myself, why? So, you know, this, this town has had some great drum shops over the years. And I've always been a fan of real drum shop. I could walk into the best guitar center in the nation. I don't know where there's probably an LA or something and it just doesn't. Do anything for me, right? You know, it's just not my feel It doesn't mean that Guitar Center can't be a great place for people I mean some people liked to eat at Chi's before it disappeared, you know Stephen: There's a [00:24:00] convenience factor right to have two franchises, but there's something that To be said, just about any sort of small own local shop. Lane: Truth be told, I recently had a Chili's. I was on the road and I was absolutely 700 feet away from my hotel. I'm like, I guess I'm eating at Chili's tonight. And every time I walk into a Chili's, I'm like, it feels like I'm in an airport and I'm out of options. That's what going to Chili's means to me. and I would hope that's pretty, for drummers, that's what going to guitar center would be. I'm not trying to knock guitar center, but it should feel like, I'm out of options and I'm 50 feet away from a guitar center, but if you, but you have options, you have like twin cities, you don't need to do that, So I've always been a fan of drum shops and a number of years ago, maybe in 2016, to be precise, I talked with someone who had a drum shop. Long time, Tim Ellis had a drum shop in town for a long time, beloved drum shop. Yep. And he had a drum line, Ellis Drums. And I got to talking to him about reviving the Ellis drum line, the custom drum line. And, we came up with, with an idea how about, how that might happen. [00:25:00] Right. You know, at that time, like there was nothing, you know, Ellis had been completely done for. years and years. So I took the Ellis drums and I reverse engineered them, in terms of all the parts and that sort of thing that you would need to build the drums. I had to figure out where those things were going to be sourced from, you know, all of that institutional knowledge had been kind of long dormant or gone. And I started building the first drum sets as that line was, trying to be reinvigorated by me. And at some point my wife says, not in the house anymore. because I'm a mess anyway, it's, shit's everywhere. Tools are out rusting in the grass, right? You know, so, so I can't just like do something in a contained spot. Part of it's on the kitchen table and part of it's in the garage and it's awful, right? So she goes, not in the house. So I'm like, man, okay, I got to find a building to do this in. And so I, I didn't want to spend a lot of money, right? Because I'm going to tell you right now, like building custom drums and or having a drum shop. Those are not, you know, rich, quick schemes. Yeah. I would tell you, you want to know how you make a million dollars having a drum shop. [00:26:00] Start with 2 million. Okay. Okay. so anyway, I needed to find an affordable building. I found this cute little building in South St. Paul and I'm like, Oh, this is perfect. And then I had the idea, why don't we just do a little drum shop in the upper level of this little building? And then we can build the drums in the lower level of the building. It sounds like a smart idea. You know, later on, there was actually someone in the industry. they said having a custom drum company is like an awful, terrible idea. And opening a drum shop in today's music climate is a terrible idea. How did you manage to take two of the worst ideas and decide to do both of them? And I was like, I thought two negatives made a positive. I've always learned that in my life. So I don't know. I had to like reflect it. The question was why? Right. So he asked me that. I thought, yeah, why did I do that? So we got the shop. Building the drums and then, you know, it didn't work out with Tim and I, sometimes like we're talking about bands, right? Yeah. it's just, you're pulling in different directions, it's just, I'll tell you what, here's a working definition of a partnership. A [00:27:00] partnership is two or more people who decide that the others are not essential. That's what a partnership is. So anyway, when it was clear that things weren't going to work, I rebranded to Twin Cities Drum Collective. Okay. And developed. A new drum line, six, five, one drums. We designed, our own lug, which to me, if you're making custom drums, you need to do one of two things. You're not really a custom drum company. You need to build your own shells. There are a lot of people who, they might build their stave shells, you know, in their shop, or some people might cold press ply drum shells. You either need to build your own shells or you need to have your own lug, which is another big identifier of a drum company. In fact, the lug is probably the main identifier of a drum company. People know what Ludwig drums are because of their lug or DW drums or Gretsch drums, So the lug is like really an important part of the drums themselves. And I wanted to do something with the design that actually [00:28:00] brought something better to the table, a better engineered lug. And so our lugs are made, actually here in Minnesota, almost every drum company gets their lugs made in Taiwan. They're just outsourced there because usually it's not cool to get your stuff made in Taiwan. Stephen, what are you talking about? No, I'm just kidding you. No, but a lot of, a lot of companies, probably the vast majority of them do because. Theoretically, it's cheaper to do it in Taiwan, or how'd you find someplace in Minnesota then? Man, you, first of all, you got to put out like a lot of bids, right? To try to find the right manufacturer. Yeah. And then it's also finding the type of manufacturer that specializes in the type of work that you need to have done, because different machine shops specialize in different things, and our lugs are Swiss machined, so we found, you know, a shop that does that type of machining where we're able to work with them with quantities and in a way to where You know, we can get our lugs made locally here in Minnesota at prices that are competitive with, you know, sending them to Taiwan and having them made over there. And we, we also, by the [00:29:00] way, happen to have like the world class shell company here in the Twin Cities, Nordic Shells, which started at about the same time that TCDC started. it's been kind of interesting to have these kind of parallel pathways, but how cool that. The shells are made here in Minnesota and I can go to Nordic and hand pick the shells and, be hand in glove with the people who are working there. Our lugs are made in Minnesota. It's a very Minnesota centric drum. I'll get to why the lugs are a better design in a moment. But anyway, back to the idea about if you don't make your own shells and or your own lugs. Really what you are is you're someone who's assembling drums. Yeah. You're getting parts that anybody else can get. And that doesn't mean you might not be a great craftsman, person who's crafting things. You could be a great assembler. you could be great at, cutting the materials and putting the edges on and doing the finishes, and that sort of thing. But at the end of the day, like I said, there's nothing that's distinctively yours about that drum. Maybe you got a badge to put on it. Okay, but then, you could get a badge today if you wanted to. I'll give, I'll tell you where to order it from. Sure. I don't, you don't need a badge, I don't think, but. Okay. [00:30:00] But now I want one, I'll help you now you want one. so anyway, the design of our lugs is different. First of all, they're machined from 66, one aluminum, which is a really high grade aluminum is used a lot in aviation or like the chassis of a Mercedes or Audi is going to have some 66, one aluminum in it. So it's a really great product to begin with. So Swiss machined, they're super lightweight. And that's important because the more weight that you hang on something, you know, you're using a heavy cast lug, like most companies, for example, the more weight you hang on, on something, meaning the shell, the more that it affects the vibration and resonance of it. Sure. So it's helpful in that way, but frankly, a lot of people love it too, because our drums are like. super lightweight. We have a lot of people who they love everything about it, but they're like, Oh man, it's a dream. Todd Zuckerman had the last clinic he did for us. He played on one of our drum sets. He picked up the bass drum and he's like, and this is a working man's drum. He's I can't believe how light this is. so we have that we don't chrome our lugs [00:31:00] and there's good reason why we don't do that. Multiple good reasons, actually. Chroming is expensive, adds expense to the instrument. Chroming is not very environmentally friendly whatsoever. And chroming always fails someday. anyone who owns like a classic, Superphonic 400, will attest to that. the chrome gets pitted and peeling and it will fail. Maybe 10 years, maybe 20 years, maybe 30 years, but eventually it will fail. And when people look at our parts, they don't go like, where's the chrome? I've never had a single person go something's missing here. I can't quite put my finger on it. The chroming and that's, that's the quality of the machining is they also look at that good. That's cool. Out of the gates. And then we attach our lug with a through bolt and a lock nut. So there's nothing that's going to come apart on you. So it's just a better design. and I oftentimes say like DW and I love, look, I love all those drums too. I own a drum shop. I love drums. Yeah. And honestly, I don't care if someone bought a Tomah [00:32:00] drum set. From us or a six, five, one drum set. I'm happy if you have what you want, I'm thrilled for you. So I love all these other drum companies anyway, but they can't change to a, to a better, more modern, more effective design because their lug is their identity. Like I was saying, sure. Your lug is, yeah, it is what it is. Yeah. Drum company. It's hard to make a drum shell, a circle of wood identifiable, right? Yeah. I know that's a premier drum set over there because of the lugs. I can't see the badge from my angle here, but the lugs tell me what it is. Sure. Yeah. It's a nice drum set too, by the way. Stephen: Yeah, I do like that one. Yeah. okay, so tell people a little bit about the Drum Shop, because it's more than just a place to buy drums. You Lane: know, it's gotta be, right? So, obviously, we were open pre COVID, we're open post COVID, and one of the things that we were really working hard on pre COVID was being out in the community. Like my philosophy has always been, you can't just say Oh, we're awesome. Come see us because we're awesome. Yeah. It doesn't work generally. Right. You know, I mean, it's, it's about creating the type of [00:33:00] place where people want to go because they feel like they're a part of the family there. Or it's a place that you just want to go and chill for a few minutes. that's the big thing about being into music and being into drums or guitars or whatever, right? Every now and then it's fun to just go to the guitar store or the drum store and just Lose yourself for 15 minutes and check things out. And it's just a break in life to like really delve into something you enjoy. Right. So, so we're really trying to build a lot of, you know, kind of the community and being out there and that sort of thing. And then of course this COVID thing that I really don't like very much. Most of us don't kind of like destroyed that, right. We were all at home. And so it's pretty hard to, you know, kind of develop that, right? So now we're back at that, doing, uh, some outreach, like not last night, but the night before we were at Dash Rye Bitters, their tasting room and doing, doing a drummer hang and Q and A and clinic with Dave King from the Bad Plus, you know? Which is super cool. And, we, it wasn't like, let's do a traditional drum clinic where we're all going to sit in our chairs in a line and someone's going to play [00:34:00] paradiddles super fast and yeah. Any questions? Let Can you do that faster? Yeah. So, you know, I, I'm like, nah, man, I want to do something where, people can get a non alcoholic drink or alcoholic drink or whatever they want to drink, glass of water and hang out, talk with other drummers and just kind of have it be informal and casual. And another thing that we're, we did pre COVID we're bringing back is drum set karaoke at the Uptown VFW, which is like fully mic'd up. Drum set on the stage, all the stage lights. And, if the song is on Spotify, dial it up, which is I don't know, pretty much a lot of things. Yeah. Dial it up and play drums along to it. And the experience honestly is like playing to a drumless track. Like you can't tell that drums are in the track when the drummer on stage is playing along to it. Sure. And it's super fun. And even like non drummers who come out to it because this is a different take on karaoke. and actually one person actually, Patrick's wife, Christy Costello, at one point she came out and saw one and she's like, man, , this is where people should go to like find their drummer. [00:35:00] Right. You know, I mean, I've never heard of it. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. it's just fun stuff. is that something you started? Yeah, we started that. And it was actually a guy named Craig, who was at a Fulton Brewery for a long time. It was actually his idea. We originally did this thing at Uptown VFW that we called Beats and Brews, right? So come check out the drums, grab a beer, hang out, so we had an event sort of thing. And Craig's always creative mind and he's like, let's take a half hour of that and do drum set karaoke with ACDC songs. So it was like pretty narrowly defined at that point that he was actually the origin of that idea. Cool. And then there are like, Let's try it out as like an actual thing. Yeah. So that would be coming back in the new year, 2024. So I look forward to that. I'm definitely going to check it out. And to Christie's point too, again, it's it is a great place for non drummers to come check it out because it's fun, but also that dude who like nailed that Foo Fighters song, like that's the drummer that we're looking for. And. And the other thing I ought to say about it, that's like super cool. We're like totally inclusive. I don't care if [00:36:00] you've been playing drums for like two minutes. It's a fun, inclusive thing. Sometimes people bring their kids. We have both men and women drummers who show up, which is cool because I think women drummers oftentimes are underrepresented, you know, sometimes in some places feel like, Oh, it's the boys club, you know, or whatever. Everyone comes out. And the, and it's like a super positive vibe. Right. So if someone gets up on stage and plays whatever song poorly, everyone's into it. Yeah. They're up there having fun. We're all having fun. And I've had people get up on stage and nail Tom Sawyer by Rush. And you know, you're like, well, you go, wow. yeah. Where someone get up and like groove to a song. You go wow, man, that person, she can play. And that's really cool. Or see some kid who's like. 13. We had a kid. I don't know. Maybe he wasn't even that old. And he's like shredding up there. One time someone, brought in their adult son who had autism, has autism, and he loves to play the drums. And I said, can we get him up there to play this Green Day song he wants to play? Absolutely. And, [00:37:00] you know, it's so cool to see, see this guy up there just having the time of his life. to me that, that's what it's about. It's gotta be about the hang and it's about finding relationships and finding the community, right? Because otherwise, it is just like walking into a Sam Ash, which I don't know how to round it. There's not one here locally or that sort of thing. it is just walking into some place where. It's about a transaction, right? Yeah. I know I need a 14 inch Remo Ambassador. Yeah. There's one there. Yeah. Okay, can I have my backpack back when you're leaving? No, do they still do that? We don't do that at the Drum Collective. give us your backpack. We're gonna shake you down. Make sure you're not walking out of here with a Alright. Tension rod or something. I don't know. No, it's gotta be about the hand, the hangout and that sort of thing. It's gotta be about fun. And you guys also do lessons through the shop. We do. Yeah. You know, it's probably a little over a year now. Our first teacher, Todd trainer from shellac. Who's this amazing dude. And he's a great instructor and I love his approach, which is. What do you want to [00:38:00] play, who do you want to play with, where do you want to play? let's tailor the approach to what your goals are with the set. Yes, people saying lessons. Yeah, because some people just play lessons because, they want to play the Led Zeppelin in their basement or they, whatever, they're into it, right? Why does anyone pursue anything? It's your thing, You want to get better at it. So Todd's amazing. Gordy teaches down there. I couldn't say enough things about Gordy. I mean, he was like, the director at... Music tech that then became McNally Smith. I think I always want to say Rand McNally. It was just like the running things at the map company, Rand McNally. But I mean, he'll map out a path for you on drums. He's a master educator. And of course, played with Steve Miller Band for 35 years. Was kind of like the guy to call for a lot of studio work in Twin Cities here for a long time. I mean, the dude can play anything. And he's an amazing educator and cool dude to hang with and talk to. Daniel Stanton is another guy who's a teacher. He hasn't started doing lessons yet, but JT [00:39:00] Bates, another guy. So to me, like to be an educator, for our shop, this is my standard, you need to be a professional on one level of another, you've actually have experience playing out live. You've been in a band or. Yeah. Gordy, you've done everything under the sun, so you need to have actual professional experience, and or be educated in the instrument, or a combination of those things, obviously. as opposed to someone, you know, I could put out an ad and go need a drum teacher. And someone could show up and go like, I could do that. when I was in high school, I gave drum lessons to other people, but I grew up in a small town. I was the only person, you know, I'm in the 11th grade, giving drum lessons to an eighth grader. It's okay. I did fine. but I wouldn't look at myself as like, I don't need to add another thing to my plate anyway, but I wouldn't wake up and go like, ah, you know, I'll give some lessons down there at the collective as long as I'm down there time to time. I, to me, I'm not qualified to give lessons and so we have to, better people well and fortunately it's been pretty easy because, those guys wanted to be there and so it's like really a, it's [00:40:00] great, you know, I use the word everyone, it's great synergy, man. Yeah. The corporate buzzword of the day, it's gone out of fashion, though, so I'm trying to bring it back. I feel like we've got synergy here. Stephen, do you feel that? Amazing synergy. I think so. We both put our hands together. yeah. That's cool. Stephen: Alright, let's say I'm a drummer. When do you think it's time for a drummer to get custom drums? Lane: I'm gonna quote Todd Sucherman again, he must be on my mind today, he's gonna come back do a masterclass for us again, we've had him for a couple times, by the way if people don't know who he is, he's a drummer for Styx and he's a monster player, great guy. And he's got a huge Instagram following. Todd said, man, go get a custom kit right now. this is like what, or whatever kit you want. This is what you love. It's what you want to do. You're not like committing to buying a 5 million house on the beach. Life is short, invest in those things that you want. Now, I do want to say,obviously financial constraints are real for a lot of people. Of [00:41:00] course. But, I've had a lot of people come in where they're like, this is really what I, what I want, And I say, how about we do something where you put half down and I'll just, we'll invoice you monthly for the balance, When it's done, come pick it up and we'll create a payment plan for you. Yeah, that's the kind of thing that like, you know, local drum shop can do if you're like connected to it and that sort of thing, you know, I want to help people out, you know, I want you to have, whether it's custom drums that we make or, or a brand that we carry or that sort of thing. if I'm able to help you out, I want to help you out. But. But also, it is about where do you want to, spend your money, right? I know people who, they got into recovery, decided they were gonna stop drinking, and they go Man, I've got enough money now after a couple months of not going to the bars that I can, actually go buy the snare drum I want. or the cymbal I want, And I'm not saying you have to go into recovery to find a way to discover money. Do it. I think if you need recovery, do that. I'm fully into that. I love to hear when people are like doing something healthy for myself. But the point that I'm making, it's a budgeting point, [00:42:00] is You know, if something's important to you, you figure out a way to make that happen, right? Yeah. But, I think it's interesting, and I'm gonna be a little stereotype here, but there is this, kind of stereotype that guitarists are, like, really, they're into buying gear. Not all of them, right? I don't wanna paint with, too broad of a brush, but, I look over there, you got a lot of guitar. I mean, I see multiple acoustic guitars, right? I don't know how many guitars you have in the studio here, but more than you have drums. Yeah. Okay. And I think a lot of drummers like settle, my gear is good enough or, you know, works well enough or, compromise on this or compromise on that. What I challenge about that from my own experience, and again, I recognize people are different. So it's not just because it's my opinion or experience, it applies to everybody, but to me, I think that there's something to be said for sitting, whatever your instrument is, sitting behind an instrument that inspires you, that makes you want to sit down and play it. Not like sit down and go like, this thing sounds really crummy, but you know, I'll get through my practice or through the set list with my band or whatever. I mean, man, it's a [00:43:00] bummer to sit down at a set and you're, you're hitting a broken cymbal and it doesn't, you know, it doesn't ring. or. Your drums don't tune because it just, it's not a very well made drum set to begin with or whatever. So I'm big about if it matters to you, figure out a way to have the gear that, that is going to really motivate you to be the best player you can be, whatever that is, whatever your goals are. I can remember being young and broke. Who broke for a lot of years in my life, but to me, it was important to sit behind a drum set that felt good. I'm not going to do it for probably in this podcast, but I could tell you all of the different drum sets. I played through different D four eras, right? And drum sets that I was just like, Oh man, I was super into that drum set at the time and it made me feel good having it on stage and Yeah. Getting behind it. And I felt like it helped me capture the sound that I wanted it to have. And, Stephen: I guess more specifically, let's say you're, you're a drummer, you're playing out, you have a nice kit. Maybe you've got a Ludwig or a premier or something like that. Like the idea of like custom [00:44:00] building where you really make it your own and go out to try to figure out like. Is that just about a sound you're chasing or, about trying to be more unique in that sense or Lane: it's a really good question that you ask, right? Why would someone play like six, five, one drums? I could get a custom drum set rather than, I guess I'm prying around other than something off the rack or something. You could take a shirt off the rack and go, this fits me pretty good. You know what, or do you get something tailored? So first of all, I'll give you a little bit of my philosophy on drum building. I think that when you have a good formula for building drums and. You have great execution in doing that. The drum should be pretty versatile in terms of styles. Now, where you're going to like really have the differences come in is if I'm playing, you know, jazz, I'm probably going to have smaller drum sizes. If I'm playing rock, you know, the, the sizes of the drums get bigger. I'm going to make different. Choices in terms of what heads I'm putting on the drums. I'm going to make different choices with the tuning, but it's not like [00:45:00] how you would engineer a really great, drum set for jazz. It's not like that's a different formula than the drums that you're engineering for someone who's playing death metal or punk, or, so, Lane: here's the thing in a lot of ways, we're both a boutique drum company and a custom drum company. And what does that actually mean? A boutique drum company means, this is our formula that we approach most of what we build with. Like, our formula almost always is six ply shells of a single species, meaning it's going to be all maple, or all birch, or we just built a set all cherry wood. It doesn't have filler plies like maple, poplar, maple, which the reason why people put that filler ply in there is, poplar is a cheaper wood, brings the cost down. So our philosophy, thin shells, single species shells. So it's same wood and we put a dual 45 bearing edge, which I believe is the most tunable bearing edge out there. It gives you a really wide tuning range. It's easy to tune a drum with a dual 45. [00:46:00] It is also something that gives you really nice articulation. So basically I'll give you a quick rundown on edges, right? Yeah. So a lot of drum companies do what I call the lazy edge. here's the edge of the drum shell. They do a single 45 cut, right? It just means they just. Route the inside of the shell. The problem with the lazy edges, I call it is because they haven't removed any material around the outside of the shell. Sometimes the drum heads themselves don't seat well on the bearing edge. Meaning that the outside of the shell, because there's no material taken off of it, the outside of the shell might actually not contact the head where the film is flat. But it might contact the head where the head is like curving over to the flat spot. Makes sense. So a lot of people will, to, to avoid that problem, they'll put more effort into the edges and they'll do a round over into a 45. And that's a nice edge. The philosophy with a round over. Into the 45, the round over fits the contour of the drum [00:47:00] head as it's rounding over to where the film is flat. But you know, I kind of try to be really logical about it. I go the goal actually isn't to fit the contour of the curve. The goal is to avoid the curve altogether, right? Sure. So the idea with the double 45 edge is where the bearing edge is. In the middle of the shell, it comes in contact with the drum head where the drum head material is flat, and you totally avoid the curvature part of the drum head. it's not about, let's fit the contour of it, it's like avoid it, so, and, you know, doing a round over, sure, that's good. But if you make that a 45, you're actually taking off more material, right? Yeah. You're accomplishing that goal better. So that's my quick logical analysis on bearing edges. And that's why we choose to do the dual 45. It's also a very strong edge because it's really a 90 degree angle. So it's stronger than a 45, but, I digress. No one comes in and goes I want the strong edge, strong edge drummer. So we, we, we've got that formula, [00:48:00] right? They're going to tune up easily, tune up well, wide tuning range, articulate. But that doesn't mean that we can't do something custom either, because certainly we have people come in and they go, this is what I want. I want a mahogany poplar, mahogany shell. I want a round over into 45 edges and if that's what you want, I'm not going to argue with you about it. it's going to sound great. No one in the world has probably said, that's a great sounding drum, but only if, you know, I mean, if it's done, if it's executed well, it's going to sound great. If you want to round over into 45, sure, we'll do that, but sometimes people come in and they're very particular about, How they want it constructed or they want custom touch or custom detail. And then we can do that. Actually, the snare drum here is a great example of a custom in terms of the finish, but it's a project I did with Michael Birawer, the great artist here in Minnesota. He's all over the place now, but he's got these, this great architectural art is what he's known for, right? Distorted architecture art. He's done all of these depictions of the iconic venues here in the twin cities. Of course, first Avenue, the caboose at the [00:49:00] turf club. Orchestra Hall, Paisley Park, the triple rock. he's done all of these great paintings and I was talking to Mike, I go, man, wouldn't it be cool to do a snare drum that had all of these iconic like music venues and he's super cool dude. we collaborated on it. We made 12 of them. So 10 to sell one, one to live at the drum shop, one to live in his, studio and they're all signed by him and numbered and come with the print of the art that you can frame and hang up too. Nice. And, of course that's a super custom thing with the finish. So sometimes the real custom touch is about how we finish the drum. I said to you earlier, I go if you can imagine it, we can probably do it, Yeah. And I said unless you have like really wild imagination, you know what I mean? Like you're crazy imaginative, I'm sure you can stump us, but you know, that hasn't happened so far. and I think though, beyond that, for the people who play our drums, I think a lot of it is. They like to identify with the drums, not, certainly because they're well built, they love how [00:50:00] they sound and that sort of thing, but they identify with, this is local or regional, or I like the vibe of the company because we sell drum sets outside of Minnesota in the region, but people identify with the company and the brand and the aesthetic of it. Our lugs have a particular aesthetic, just like for years and years before I had 651, I played Ludwig drums because I just, I loved. The aesthetic of Ludwig drums. I would have never got on stage and played Yamaha drums, but I love Yamaha drums. . I'm into Yamaha drums, but it was just not an aesthetic that fit me. Yeah. and so it just Ludwig was like what I identified with and so that's what I played. Stephen: And I think that anybody that's into their gear, guitarist, drummer is they don't need any convincing of why to go get this stuff. Right. They want it already. That's not a good thing. They feel it, right? Yeah. That's good. You know, I'm also thinking of it from, as a studio owner and people come in with Way too many drums, right? We don't need all this stuff, man. can you take away three of these toms and yeah, let's just [00:51:00] pair this down. And that's also the question behind it too, of like, when are you ready for custom drums? Like, when are you Lane: actually going to, again, I go if you're serious and you want it, look, we'll work with you. It makes you happy. Yeah. We'll work with you to make it happen. Right. Because here's the thing. Let's say you brought in your child. You've got I don't know, 14 year old daughter who wants to play drums and she's like super into it. Yeah. Super serious about it. And you know, your kid, like some people know their kid and they go like my kid, try something out. And three months later, they don't give a shit about it anymore. And some people come in and they go like. When my kid's into something, man, they're like 110 percent in, and I know that they're going to be doing this two years from now. You know, if you're a parent and you come in and you're like, I don't, I, I don't really know whether my kid is that interested in whether they're going to stick it with it. I go look, we'll give you a great beginner package. It's like affordable. Yeah. It's not going to break your bank. It comes with everything. Let's figure it out. And that's not something we're building. That's not custom. But we've got that product. We're a drum shop. Yeah. But if you know that your kid is like into it, don't buy him a different drum set in a year. Like I am the thing [00:52:00] that like, yeah. Assuming you obviously, again, and I understand some people have financial constraints, but if you're able to do it, like it's going to blow their mind. You know what I mean? It's going to sound like you, you cut out that bad word. You notice how I said it, but not really. So it sounded like an edit kind of, it's going to blow their mind. By the way, I think that's environmental too, at some point people have to go like, why do we buy these things that like are going to break down or we're going to throw away in two years? Why don't you like invest in something, quality. from my Stephen: standpoint, running a studio and stuff, like I, enough gear here to do it, what I need to do, of course, but in comparison to other commercial studios, like a very small amount of gear, I'm very careful about like, when I buy. A kit or a bass or guitar or whatever. It's I want it to work on everything. Yeah. You want it to be versatile. And I want to keep it forever. Lane: And by the way, I've been in a lot of studios that might have a lot more gear and at least talking about the drums, a lot of it's broken. So I should let people know, bring us your broken [00:53:00] toys and we'll fix them for you and get them sounding good for your studio. Right. You know, actually, uh, Jason from the Terrarium was awesome. He came in, I don't know, at some point last year or something. And he goes, Hey, Lane, I've got these drums. I want to trade for some new drums. And it was like, the broken down toys, there are drums that can be rehabilitated and sold. They're nice drums, but. The throw offs broken on this one's missing snares, half the tension rods are lost on another one. I'm probably exaggerating, a little bit, but Tram's a beautiful studio, right? None of them were in the condition of let's take that drum off the shelf and see how it sounds. they're just, they need to repair. But anyway, he was like, I want to have a nice arsenal of snare drums. he bought like two Ludwig metal snare drums. You can't go wrong with a Ludwig snare drum. especially their ones made out of, the super phonics and the black beauties, slam dunk, and they're going to be worth money if you go to sell. And that's the other thing about buying quality stuff, you decide you don't want it. You can get something out of it. You buy something that's just like, I'm making a super [00:54:00] economical choice, go to Facebook and see how many other people are trying to sell the super economical choice, and any bought a six, five, one, wood snare. Actually, it was cool. I, you know, after he'd had him for a while, he contacted me and he goes, oh, the six, five, one snare is my favorite out of the bunch. He loved them all, you know, so it was cool to hear that, you know, we sold us a snare, actually a metal snare, black over brass snare to Pachyderm, this past year. if you're, if you have a studio, we'd like to, we'd like to help you out, even if it's just fixing you have so that you can actually use it in your studio. Otherwise it's a paperweight. Stephen: I was going to talk to you a little bit about it afterwards too, because Max and I always have a wishlist of what's next on the gear thing. So we'll talk about that, but on that note, you guys supply kits to local venues too. You've got some six, five, one kits. I can't remember all the spots, but. For musicians that are listening to this, you might've played one Lane: that you don't even know. No doubt. Turf Club has one. Turf Club, yeah. And... We get a lot of people send us pictures when they're in there playing that one. Mortimer's has a kit that we just made for them. other venues outside of Minnesota, [00:55:00] Turks, New York city has like a 651 kit production studio out in Denver has a 651 kit. So they pop up in, in different places for sure. And I'd love to have a 6 5 1 kit in any music venue in the Twin Cities that's interested in, you know, and the other thing, obviously being in a band, touring, going to clubs, being on multi band shows, it's a, it's actually a really good thing for a club to have a really quality backline kit because then the majority of the drummers go Oh man, I'm excited to play the turf club. I don't need to bring all my gear down and bring my snare drum, my cymbals, my drum pedal. Good to go, right? Because I know the kit's great. And so for the club, they don't have to deal with, like, all of that, equipment and changeover time. Yeah, you can dial in a sound and get the tuning right. The kit's there and you have a quick, easy changeover rather than, Alright, let's haul this whole kit off and put another kit on. And that's the thing, man, when Dillinger 4 shows, I'd love to go to the Turf Club [00:56:00] because there's a great kit there. this was before I had... 651 in the drum shop, but I always kept a kid down at the triple rock. So I did before I would play the triple rock on a lot of, I don't know why we got a good deal on the door there for those that don't know. Yeah. Eric in my band, like owned the triple rack, so had a little bit of a little bit of an in there. And I knew love that there was a kid down there that I. New is going to be great. And we backline a lot of different things too, provide backline at the state fair for a particular stage there for Mark Joseph and what he's doing and the last Waltz production, certain drummers come to town and we'll backline them or I've had different venues with festivals and they go can we get one of your kits there again? So we don't have to deal with all of the. Yeah. Shuffling of gear when everyone just knows they're going to have a great kit to be on. So yeah, we do a fair amount of that too. Stephen: One other thing I wanted to ask was you got, cause you guys have like ambassadors, right? For the custom, Lane: how does that work? Yeah. Okay. So yeah, we have players who I guess we would call endorsers. Endorsers. Okay. They endorse [00:57:00] our drums. Just to clear it up, some people think it's the other way around that a drum company endorses a player, but it's actually the player who endorses the product. I'm actually, I'm really honored because we have a lot of outstanding and even world class drummers who choose to play our drums. Dave King with the Bad Plus has been on the cover of Modern Drummer, Caliber Drummer, not like his name, but he's the whole cover. I could be wrong, Stephen: But I think Dave King was here and played here with, What was, did he do something before that? Happy Apple. Happy Apple. Yeah. Yeah. I think he did something with happy apple here, like in the nineties. No, Lane: it and. And go, Hey Dave, have you been here? See if he remembers. They said you left your hat here. Exactly. Still holding on to your drum kit. Tease him. Dave's been with us. We just made a kit for Bobby Drake of the Hold Steady Coke bottle acrylic. I mean, that was super cool. D4 was playing with the Hold Steady and Mountain Goats down at Salt Shed in Chicago. Newer venue down there. Awesome venue. [00:58:00] Anyway, you know, he saw my 651 acrylic kit that I play with D4 and. Yeah, I love a Coke bottle acrylic kit and next thing you knew he had one. so that was really cool. Dane, who plays with Durry and he's, they're out on, blowing up and out on tour. Like he's got a custom 651 kit. Daniel Stadden, who plays with a band called Made in Dixie. They played a lot of gigs. they're like full time gigging band and he's a fantastic drummer and he plays our drums and I play our drums. gosh, I'm not only the president, I'm also a client. Isn't that what they say? Something like that, That's gonna be the clip. Yeah, for sure. Luke from Modern Day is War. Derek from Nightbirds. Kyle from Off With Their Heads. We were joking beforehand because, sometimes I forget all the people who play the drums. I'm like, oh, that sounds horrible. Yeah, all of our players are forgettable to me, but it's not, it's because there are like so many, because those are maybe some of the higher profile people that we have like so many local guys who like, they're [00:59:00] pros or semi pros or they're out gigging and they play our drums, to me, they're every bit as important as Dave King or anybody else, because I mean, this is so cool. I get a thrill whenever I see people post on Instagram, you know, them out playing our drums, wherever, because I said so many people who do it. They're all, part of the family and they choose to do it. And the other thing is I don't give away drums kits to people. Like I think that there's, there are some places out there where they play that and, you know, endorser game, like they want to get some profile people, you know, but you know, with the people who play our drums, it's not because I'm like. Hey, Stephen, I really want you to play. So here's a free kit, of course they're going to get a deal on it, but I call it like the owner's deal. Right? So, so again, I'm not only the president, I'm also a client, right? I endorse my own drums clearly, but I don't get like a free kit. Like I pay for the drum shells and the drum hardware and the drum heads and the little, I pay the labor of my master drum builder to, to build it, so I, it's not even like I could get a free kit. and people understand that and people [01:00:00] who care about the product that they're endorsing, like they get it, they're smart, they're professionals. Yeah. that's not to say I don't ever get people go like, they send it, write the email and they go yeah, so I'm, I've got this really cool band. And, you know, we've, we played at, you know, the Nobles County fair last year. And I think I could be a, you know, cool endorser for you. And the, you know, can I get a free kit? there aren't many dudes who get free kits ever. So here's, I'll just tell a quick story. Maybe it's a boring story or not. No, please. I saw this article. About Joey Kramer, drummer for Aerosmith for, he's not now anymore, but for most of their history, right? The story was about this Tama Kit That had been the second kid out on the permanent vacation tour with him, okay? So you remember Aerosmith permanent vacation, loving it elevate all of those timeless Classic amazing songs that you know, we listen to all the time. I mean, but they were huge back then, right? that was like yeah. Yeah. That was I mean they were the thing They're all over MTV and that sort of thing. So anyway [01:01:00] Tama gives Joey Kramer free kit, makes a lot of sense, right? Mm hmm. And, and Joey went to Tama and said, Hey, can I get a second drum kit? And they're like, No. We already gave you a free kit. Dude, this is like, at that point, one of the most famous drummers, most visible drummers out there, right? Yeah. And Tama goes, No, we're not going to give you a second kit. And basically an AR rep. And like I said, I read this in an article. Brokered a kind of a deal where they go, Look, we have this new midline Tama set coming out. And I forget the series. It doesn't matter. How about we give him that as his second kit? And we can promote the launch of this midline thing. And so he ended up getting two free kits only because he, you know, This dude like brokered a deal for it. But like he's also not playing like a huge double bass drum kit, right? He played his five piece drum kit. Tama can give Joey Creamer. Two drum kits, but that's the point. Like a lot of dudes are like people pay for their drums, you know? Lane: it's a big Stephen: instrument, it's Lane: not cheap. And then, you know, it's a business at the end of the day too. you want your drum [01:02:00] company to be there. Exactly. Yeah. So, well, and Stephen: you know, that was kind of what was crossing my mind of like, you know, people care also about having a local shop, having a place they can walk into, having somebody you can talk to get advice from bounce ideas off of having a community, that's important to a lot of people Lane: too. Yeah. and sometimes it's the, the sneaky knowledge to that by sneaky knowledge, I mean, things that people don't think about, So you come in and you go, yeah, this is what I have in mind for a drum kit, whether we're building it or whether you're, buying one of the brands we sell in the shop and a question might be, what do you drive? Oh, like I have a, I don't know. Lacar. Do they still make lacars? I have a Pinto. I have a Gremlin. You get the idea. I have a smaller car. Yeah, you might want to think about, a different size, so that you're able to You don't have to buy a new car. You don't have to buy a new car, right? look, if you have a Suburban, yeah, and you want to, 20 inch deep, 26 inch kick. Yeah. Cool, right? but even just practical things, like they're real questions. So someone might come in and they might go, I just, I don't know whether I want a 20 inch bass drum or a 22 inch bass drum. I just don't really know. Yeah. and what I [01:03:00] say to people is this, I go an 18 inch bass drum is its own thing. A 26 inch bass drum is its own thing, right? On the continuum, they occupy two opposite sides of a continuum. That said, there've 24 inch bass drum, Tony Williams by Rich, you know, so it's not. Rules are made to be broken too, right? And, and I'm sure it's gone the other way too, but typically 18s and 26s, they live on the extremes. 24 is it's getting towards its own thing for sure. But a 20 and 22 inch bass drum, there's so much overlap in terms of the sound that you're going to get from each of those bass drums. I will tell you, you're a sound guy. Yeah. Have you ever listened to a record and said, man, that's a 20 inch bass drum? No. I'm certain that's a 22 inch bass drum. Absolutely. Oh man. That drum track would have been killer. If only it had been a 22, so, you know, it really messed it up really. So anyway, I say, as I go, what do you feel comfortable sitting behind, let's set something up and sit down and you're a pretty tall guy, you might feel more comfortable behind a [01:04:00] 22, you might feel you get behind a 20 and it's starting to feel small to you, but again, exceptions like Todd trainer, super tall guy, and he loves a 20 inch, bass drum, that's his thing, cool. Yeah, Stephen: but having somebody that cares enough to ask those questions, Lane: the process, like, I'm kind of a fat dude, so I get behind too small of a bass drum, you know, I'm like, I gotta either like get serious about losing weight, like, how about I just get a 22 inch bass drum and then I, you know, looks a little bit more my size, it is stuff like that, and helping to dispel things that people worry about that really aren't going to make a difference, right? talking about Stephen: differences. Yeah. Do you think about different things when it comes to playing live and recording? Oh Lane: yeah, man. Absolutely. Stephen: Yeah. So talk about those things for people, like in terms of if they're going to pick a kit, like how they balance those, they know that they might record with it. They know that they live with it. Or do you just think Lane: different worlds? again, it gets, it gets into some nuance and people are going to have different opinions. And by the way, I think this is important. I'm, I could be really opinionated about lots of things. But if you come in the shop, I'll share [01:05:00] my ideas with you. If you ask me, or if you're interested in my ideas, but your opinions are more important than my opinions, because you and you know, your music, you're your expert, more about it than I do again, unless you're. Specifically saying, I want your advice and I'm happy to give it, but you know, I think when you're in the studio, maybe to start there, I think, number one, you have to have some flexibility because all studios are different. The rooms are different. Sometimes there might be a choice with drums that would be unexpected in your mind. That is going to give you the best sound with how it's being recorded. Right. And so, you know, recently doing some new D4 stuff, and of course I brought in metal snare drums, guys who play rock and punk and that sort of thing, their idea is like, it would be more cutting, right? You know, this is going to be the sound I want. Yeah. And it just so happened that the snare drum that sounded. Most cutting and fattest out of everything that I brought in was a 6 5 1, wood snare drum, right? Sounded the best, right? it shouldn't matter to me whether... You gotta be open minded. Be open minded, right? Or someone might go... Makes a lot of [01:06:00] sense to take the resident head, the front... Head off the bass drum. I think we're going to be able to get better position on the mics. It's going to sound better. that sort of thing. I do believe you're going in the studio, unless your sound is to get like a super dead sound or that sort of thing, for goodness sakes, put some new batter heads on your drums, and spend some time tuning to spend a little time tuning, thinking about it and by the way, if I'm going in the studio. What I would recommend almost always is didn't bring in coded heads, texture coded heads. They're easier to dial in a sound. They're going to be less ringy than a clear head, uncoated head, which might be great live. A little extra ring here or there, a little rattle here or there. That's all going to be absorbed into the environment. Stephen: Then you get another 12 mics and you go. What Lane: is that sound? What's that sound? it's going to be easier in my experience to tune and get the sounds you want with coded heads. Like, and they're just, they're a little bit more dialed in and you're going to be happy that you changed out your heads. Get some new drumsticks. If you don't think worn versus new drumsticks make a difference, Take one of your worn [01:07:00] drum sticks and tap a cymbal and I'll take a brand new drum set drumstick and tap a cymbal. You'll hear a difference. So bring in fresh sticks. By the way, I believe in that live too. Like when I play live, I've got new or nearly new sticks and my worn ones go to the practice room. I'll use them till they're gone. But I kind of say if you break a stick on stage and you can randomly break a new stick. I've had it happen. It does happen. Not that often though. But if you're breaking sticks on stage because you're up there with worn sticks,that's kind of on you. Live, I think, and again, depending on the style of music you play, yep, I love things to sound really wide open. Live. So my toms are wide open. There's no dampening on that. if I'm in the studio, I'm, I've got coated heads and I, I might have zero rings on, they really get a focus sound. But live, man, I love it wide open. Same thing with a snare drum head. Like stock on, on almost everything we build is going to be a single ply. Snare drum head, single ply coated snare drum head, this is great wide open sound. And you can always, dial it in again by, putting a zero ring [01:08:00] on it or moon gel tab. Yeah. putting a moon gel on it or something like that. Yep. But I've seen people who, they like the sound of a really dry snare drum when they're just hitting it just themselves. You're not just hitting it just by yourself when you're playing in a live situation. all of the extra that might bother you when you're just hitting it. by yourself in a room is that is, again, you're fighting with these amps, let it ring, man. Again, personal preferences. So to, you know, just some basic things about that, you know, if you're going to a studio, I'm sure you'd welcome a drummer calling you up, Steven going Hey, what do you got down there? Oh, I got a Premier Signia kit, you know, and these eyes, it's a great drum kit. And if you don't have a great drum kit, come down and use this great drum kit that's in here in the studio. don't be weird and go like, well, yeah, it wasn't, you know, this is, this is my. Drum kit. Yeah. But you might not have a very good kit, at least not for recording. I Stephen: think with recording, you know, obviously a lot, if you're going into a larger studio, you likely have options there. They're going to have kits there and that sort of thing. And then if you're doing home recordings, that's a different thing. And you might just be dealing with, you make what you have work, right? let's Lane: just use that, you know, right. How's it sounding [01:09:00] over there in the control room? Not how it sounds here. Yeah. Because, look, I traded out the snare because the engineer and Eric, they go, like, That snare is the best one. Exactly. The, Stephen: the music's only going to come through the speakers in the end anyway. So you Lane: not trying to sabotage the drummer. Eric's not in there going like, Ha ha, I made Lane pick the shittiest snare drum. I tricked him, right? No, I mean, I mean, he's, he's there going, you're, we're all have the same goal. We all want to sound great, right? You know, being open to collaborating with people is pretty important. Yeah, Stephen: definitely. I feel like we've covered a ton with this conversation, and I think I just have a few last questions. one that I forgot about, I meant to ask earlier was, what was it like to get a star on First Ave? Oh Lane: man, you know what, I love it. I mean, here in Minneapolis, here in Minnesota, that's probably the coolest thing that you can have happen. Yeah. look, I'd be lying to you if I didn't sometimes say to people, yeah, we got to start on First Avenue, I say all humble, I've got to start on First Avenue. Yeah, you can just drop that anytime you want. Yeah, it will, where that comes in [01:10:00] handy is, I'm always a little bit surprised and delighted where I randomly come across someone. They go, Oh, you're the drummer in Dillinger four. or somehow they find that out and they go, you're the drummer in Dillinger four. They have this surprise and they know who the band is. Yeah. that was me. Yeah. Yeah. so that's always fun when that happens. of course you want people to recognize what you're doing. You know what I mean? It's cool. and actually I think that'd be in. Invalidating to other people too if they're like, Oh man, I used to listen to your band back in the day and I love the Situationist comedy and whatever. And I'm, and I was just like, whatever, dude. Yeah, right, right. You know, I have some weird attitude about it. I think, of course it's flattering. It's cool. but when people don't know your band, like, yeah, you know, they find out you're in a band and they go, yeah, whatever. Yeah. I'm in this punk band. we've been around for a long time, Yeah. We got a star on first Avenue. Oh yeah. Right. See you. I'm a legit motherfucker. Yeah, right. I forgot to edit myself there. Too legit to quit. No, it's super cool. Actually, this was the coolest thing. I know [01:11:00] people are like, Stop talking about the damn star. It's not that special lane, but... My daughter went on a field trip with her school to downtown Minneapolis last year, and they're walking by, and it's That's my dad's band. See, that's when you feel cool, is like when you're like relevant to your kid and maybe even your kid's friends for 30 seconds. Exactly. Like that, that, I was like, yeah. What year did you guys get that? Do you remember? It's been there for a long time now. I don't. Stephen: Cause I have some cheesy ass, so I grew up Southern Minnesota on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Lane: Well, see, I grew up in Worthington. Stephen: When I was doing senior photos, around that time, I did one when my sister was in college up here, so I went up and I took some in front of the first half and I don't remember which star we picked, but it might have been if you guys were up, it could have been that or it was probably the queers or somebody Lane: like that. I remember we used to play with the queers back in the day. Yeah, they were in town Stephen: again. Not too long ago. Joe Lane: queries. He's [01:12:00] surly, surly dude.. Stephen: One thing that I want to give you the opportunity is, you know, as. You've gotten a chance here to reflect on, on that journey, Of through Dillinger four, starting a drum shop, you know, so you've been ingrained in the Minnesota music scene for a long time, 30 years, basically. And, and had a lot of success along the way. what do you think has been some of the reasons behind that? do you have anything you'd like to impart to people that are getting in the music scene now? what's important to, to think about and to. Lane: it's a big question, but I think a lot of it is being open to developing, relationships with people, being a enjoyable person to be around, being a fun person to be, be around, take your music, take your drumming, take whatever your craft is seriously, but like, it's not life or death, you know, I mean, Make it accessible for people. Enjoy yourself about it. Like, if I'm thinking about, a band or whatever, I don't care how well or not well you think you played, when you walk off stage and someone says, that was really awesome, all you say is, thank you. And if you think, you[01:13:00] know, when you walk off stage and someone goes, that was really awesome, you guys really rocked it tonight, and you go, but I fucked this up, or I made this mistake, did you hear? That one little train wreck y thing. All you're doing is communicating to that person, like, you don't have a valid take on what happened up there. Like, somehow, you misperceived it because it was lousy. And why are you promoting yourself as lousy? yeah. Right? You know? That was their experience. validate their experience rather than arguing with them. And I'm not saying you're arguing by going Ah, actually, I suck, but you kinda are. Someone says you sounded good, say thank you. Someone says you sounded bad and you say thank you. I agree either way because I can tell you I've played shows where I thought man this show approached perfection and I played fantastically. And you walk off stage and someone goes, yeah, it wasn't your best show. And I've played shows where, made me want to quit playing the drums midway through the set. People go, that was the best I've heard you guys. [01:14:00] Thank you. This happened recently. So I said, we were playing this at, you know, Salt Shed down in Chicago. So it's, you know, it's, 4, 000 people. I don't know. It's a big crowd. It's a big enough crowd. In the middle of one of the songs, suddenly. My bass drum beater was just resting against the bass drum head and it wasn't moving so there's no bass drum, right? I think it's pretty unsettling as a drummer to have the bass drum out completely and your pedals not operating and yeah, you know That's sort of foundational to what you're doing. Yeah in a rock band And at first I thought I broke the pedal spring what I discovered was it was a double ply bass drum head What happened is I broke the first ply and the beater got stuck between the two plies so it wasn't returning so it seemed that's why it was inoperable. There was no bass drum for the last half of that song. And then suddenly the beater came free and that's when I discovered that the problem was what I just said it was. But fortunately by that time enough. Of the first layer of the head had broken away to where now it wasn't getting stuck and I could [01:15:00] finish the show just on the ply that was left. And so I thought like, man, that was crazy. Big crowd. This happens, you know, and do you know who noticed did any of the guys in the band notice No. Did the sound guy notice? No. Like nobody noticed. No one from the crowd, you know, talk to people who I know at the show and no one was ever like, man, that was wild. Although your bass drum cut out for half a song. what happened? No one noticed. No one knew. And you think like when that's happening in the moment and you think, Oh my God, this is like train wreck. Oh my God. Yeah. He, you know, Life is forgiving. Chill out, man. Bass was still going. Bass guitar is still going, you know. Oh man, you know what? You and I have been to a million shows where you hear something and you're like, Ooh, was that a mistake? And you don't have any idea. It's gone. It's like high end players. The real train wreck Stephen: is when the band acknowledges it Lane: on stage. Oh man, believe me, I and other people in my band, either me on my own, other people on their own, or us collectively. Have had undisputed train wrecks, where no, where the band doesn't have to go, [01:16:00] but that's what you call a train wreck. like everyone knows, but this brings me to the next point. That's like actually super important. People want to see musicians having a good time. You can fuck something up real bad. If you can laugh at yourself and have a good time, the crowd will have a good time too. I don't like seeing a band that takes themselves so seriously that if something small or even big goes wrong, that you can just see that everyone on stage up there has sunk into an attitude about it. Yeah. and they're super serious about it because that's no fun to see. I once saw a drummer, I'm not going to say who it was, but whatever, something was happening that was so frustrating to him. That literally, they weren't done with their set, literally he just got so mad he kicked his drum set over. That's when people go like, the mood got a little awkward there. Yeah. For a minute. Yeah. Just have fun man. Yeah. That's it. It's a good reminder. Stephen: obviously, music is such a dream for people and they, they chase it, they're pursuing it so hard. And it's hard to put so much time and energy into something, but then also hold it light enough that you don't have to, it doesn't Lane: have to be life or [01:17:00] death. I'm not sure that I've ever played a show where I executed everything perfectly. Where I didn't have a little stumble here or there or didn't, you know, or you'd think I'd know these songs. I've been playing them for a long time, man. I blanked on a part before. we played it, we played a benefit show a couple of weeks ago at Uptown VFW and we started a song and we were all so out of sync. it just wasn't, you know, sometimes your stage sounds not what you wish it were. we got really out of sync and enough out of sync that then I, I actually started stumbling around beat wise on it, and like things have to be really off to where like now I'm off to, usually I'll stay on and everyone can just get back on, but you know what, we all survived it. We, it just sounded really crazy for half of a verse or something and we just, you know, and, and then, all right, we're back, we figured out how to get it back together. Right. It didn't ruin anyone's night in the band or in the audience. Yeah. No, no one came up to me and not a single person goes wow, [01:18:00] there were like 16 bars there that felt really shaky. What the hell was going on with that? Yeah. No one said Stephen: that to me. I think those points are huge and worth repeating that. Get out there and invest in your network and expand your network. Meet Lane: people. Meet people. Play with other types of bands. Sure. Yeah. like cross pollinate. the best shows are when you go Oh, I really love that band, and I think I might like this band, but I haven't had a chance to check them out yet. I'm excited to see them. And this other band's cool too. I haven't really seen them. What I'm saying is you're going because of the one band. You maybe wouldn't go to a show with the other two bands. You wouldn't necessarily choose that, but you're interested enough in it. It's not in your perfect genre or taste, right? So that's why you haven't fully explored the other groups, but you have a chance to see them. And that's also where, if you're putting together a show, you're drawing a, you know, a bigger audience, right? If you're punk band A and I'm punk band B, we probably share the same fans, so we play a show together and it's additive. Yeah. We're playing to the same, they like [01:19:00] you, they Stephen: like me. Yeah, you're pulling Lane: from the same pool. Yeah, you're punk band A and I'm some other, noise. Art rock band, Now some of my fans are showing up, your fans are showing up, we get some cross pollination, we're playing to a bigger group. Especially Stephen: today, because I feel like people with, how music's changed with streaming and just having access to all kinds of music, I think that people listen to more types of music now than they used to, because it's just easy. Lane: It is easy, yeah. and it's just about exploring different things, being open, yeah, enjoying what you're doing, being easy to be around, those sorts of things. investing in the community that you're, you want to be a part of, yes, and you kind of have to, put yourself out there, you know, a little bit and, and look, man, I, I mean, everyone wants something great to happen for them, their music and or their band. obviously I should say every, most everybody does, I know lots of bands where you know. they maybe didn't make it as far as they really wanted to make it, but they love doing what they're doing and they'll show up and, you know, and open up a [01:20:00] show or, or play a smaller venue for a smaller crowd. And then they do it because. They believe in their music and they love doing it and that's a success in my book. Absolutely. like you don't have to go we can sell out this club or get on this big tour, that sort of thing to define success. Success is, being able to get a vertical every morning and, And to do something you enjoy, it's the same thing again, if you're into hobby investing in, you know, in your hobby, whatever your hobby is, I mean, maybe it's ham radio, you know, killer ham radio, system. I don't Stephen: know. thanks so much for doing this. It's been a pleasure talking to you, getting to know you better, learning about the shop. where do you want to send people if they want to look you up or connect with you online? So Lane: you can email TC. For Twin Cities, tcdrumcollective at gmail. com. That goes straight to me. Of course, you can, you can call our shop. We're about to have a new website up, but we've been really working hard on expanding the products in our shop and bringing in, higher end and or boutique type. brands that [01:21:00] you're not going to find everywhere just brought on noble and Cooley drums, which are amazing drums, brought Tom in the shop, and so on and so forth. So we're always starting to look in over the fence about how can we serve people better. If there's something that we can stock that you want, let us know. We want to be the place where, you know, if you buy a particular something, you can come to us for it. Come on in just to hang. We've got an area just for people. Sit down and chew the fat a little bit. And all my people down at the shop, they're all laid back. I'm like, the shop's gotta be fun, laid back, fun personalities, place where you want to go. Come on down. The other thing that's cool. We're up in Northeast. There's a lot of cool stuff around us. Diamond's coffee shop is at the front of the building complex that we're in. Tattersall distillery is just down the alleyway again in the same complex I talked about. Dashfire Bidders, they've got their tasting room in the same complex. A lot of cool shops, artists and other shops in that, that place. It honestly, it's important to, to be a regular at the places that you love, whatever those places [01:22:00] are. drum shop is like any small business. Sometimes it's easy to go to Sweetwater or Musician's Friend, something online. But if a place matters to you, it's important to be there. I remember our very first building we were in South St. Paul, I say cute little building and we'd been there for about a year and this couple comes in and they walk in and this would happen from time to time, they'd walk in. they didn't notice the outside of the building had changed at all, or they didn't look in the windows before they walk in. They walk in and they go, see all these drums and cymbals everywhere. What happened to the coffee shop? Apparently a coffee shop had been there or whatever. and this couple, they go, this is our favorite coffee shop. What happened to our favorite coffee shop? I look at them, I go, I don't know. We've been here for a year and a half and uh, apparently you didn't show up to your favorite coffee shop enough and now they're not here. Right. Can't get you interested in drumming. Yeah, you know, I'm not entitled. We're not entitled to anybody's business at all. We want to, be there for your [01:23:00] people, the community and that sort of thing. We want to earn people's business. And so let us know what we do well, let us know if we don't do something well. And yeah. And you guys are Stephen: on social media on Instagram, Instagram, you Stephen: check them out there. TC drum collective. And you're doing events every now Lane: and then you Stephen: had this last week. So there's all kinds of stuff like that. If you're interested in lessons, you can hit them up there, but you know, connect with people because yes, you can go get amazing drums there, but you can also meet people that you can learn from, connect with, collaborate with maybe Lane: actually this is a perfect example right here in this moment. Like I, I didn't know who you were. Yeah, you didn't really know who I was. No. you contacted me and you go, Hey, I'm doing this podcast, you think? and I said, I don't know. I really got to think about it, Steven. You mean what? I got to drive to your place and spend the morning there. And I don't even know you, Steven. let me take it to my advisors. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't, it wasn't like that at all. Like, like that at all. I go like, awesome. Yeah, definitely. Right. Exactly. and so, you know, , now the world's a little bit smaller. Mm-Hmm. , [01:24:00] we'll cross paths again, you know, and that sort of thing. And, or, I gonna meet someone and they go like, yeah, we're looking for a studio. What? You have any suggestions? And we go, I do. As a matter of fact, so this is how you do it, right? It's organic, but you have to be invested in that. You Stephen: do. Relationships are so crucial. Exactly. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for doing this and we'll put those links in the show notes. Perfect. This is Lane: a lot of fun. Thank you for having me. Awesome, man.