Drum Daze 2011
I had the chance to attend Drum Daze 2011 held at the Capital Theatre in the Riffe Center in downtown Columbus, Ohio on April 17th, 2011. The event is put together by Columbus Percussion and featured world-renowned artists such as Alex Acuna, Gregg Bissonette, Todd Sucherman, Karl Perazzo and Raul Rekow, and Jim Riley.
Drum Daze was also sponsored by many companies including Mapex, Pearl, Roland, Sabian, and Zildjian cymbals and featured some new gear from each company. If there was one complaint for the day, it would be that I would like to have seen more drum sponsors put their products on display. The major companies that displayed their products were Mapex, Roland, Yamaha, Sabian, and Zildjian. Even though Pearl was representing Todd Sucherman, you couldn’t find one Pearl drumset on display.
The event is a half day of drumming with each artist performing up to one hour. Each artist gets to choose how they will fill their time, whether they talk or just play the whole time.
The first artist up was Jim Riley, the Bandleader of Rascal Flatts.
Jim played along with some tracks that he brought and broke them down so we could count them out. Jim’s overall performance was very solid.
Next, my personal favorite and drummer I’d most want to be like, was Gregg Bissonette. He is currently playing with Ringo Starr and studio drummer for various projects including Phineas and Ferb. Greg had a great attitude and was very nice when we asked him to get his picture taken.
Greg was very funny while being informative. He spoke mainly about how his diversity has kept him employed. He played several beats from other famous drummers and had the audience identify the song by the beat, explaining how those beats wouldn’t exist if other music hadn’t influenced them.
Then Karl Perazzo and Raul Rekow, the percussion section of Santana, came on stage. They were very interesting to listen to and were fun to watch. Their teamwork really made the music come alive! 
I will show more pictures of the rest of the day in my next post.
Be sure to check back in for more pictures of Drum Daze 2011 where I will feature Todd Sucherman and Alex Acuna, as well as more pics from throughout the day.
