The Family that Rocks Together

My three-year-old son is a drummer. For his birthday in January we got him an honest-to-god drum kit with a bass drum, a floor tom, a snare, and a ride cymbal. It’s small (“ages four and up”), but it’s a real kit. He has already broken one of the drumheads rocking out.

Rewind to the Spring of 2002. As soon as we got pregnant, my Old Man and I began joking that we wanted the kid to be a drummer. We both play guitar and bass, and neither of us plays drums, so in order to fulfill our dream of having an in-house rock band, we needed a drummer. (Hell, we could even take it on the road. Can anyone say Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players?) So you would naturally conclude that we have pushed O. into his current drumming frenzy, but actually, we haven’t. Like the slackers we are, we sort of dropped the ball, figuring we’d get around to pushing him to begin fulfilling our dreams for him later – like maybe when he was four or five.

But our friends were more proactive. One friend, a drummer herself, bought him a little wooden drum with a mallet when he was only five months old (O. used this mostly as a toy wheel for the first two years we had it). Then other friends bought him a little skin drum with a wooden stick for his second birthday. At around two and a half he began losing interest in drums-as-things-to-roll and spontaneously started using his drums as things to hit with sticks, in rhythm. He dumped his matchbox cars out of the tin box we were keeping them in, turned it over, and improvised a third drum for his makeshift kit. He asked to watch the White Stripes live DVD over and over, imitating the beats and scoping out the kit of his favorite drummer, Meg White. He started calling the skin drum his “bass drum” and the upturned tin box his “crack drum” (the term he still uses for his snare). He started trying to figure out how to hang or prop the drums up so they’d be at an angle. He was clearly ready for a kit of his own.

Now it’s a common occurrence in our house to hear O. shout “Mama! I want to rock out in the basement!” or “Daddy, you play bass!” I’ve taught him to say “Louder, please!” instead of just barking “I want it louder!” when we’re listening to music. Yesterday as his dad was unbuckling him from his car seat (after a trip with soundtrack by Wilco), O. observed “Daddy, listening to Wilco makes me want to go in the basement and rock out.” So they went down and rocked. Weekday mornings before I leave for school often find me playing my until-recently neglected Fender Jaguar to the beat of O’s drums. I’ve played more guitar in the three months since O. got his drum kit than I did in the entire three years prior (i.e. from AB to AD – After Birth to Anno Drumkit).

I’m a mighty proud parent. Barely out of diapers, my kid can keep a beat and figure out the patterns in his favorite songs. He’s even come up with a cool drum part for one of my songs, which I often play around the house on my acoustic guitar. (I can’t claim credit for figuring this out – the Old Man, who has a better ear for drums than I, said “E, I think he’s playing a beat for Song X!” I played along, and sure enough, it fit like a charm.) And, O. is more socially adept and far less irrational than the drummer from the last rock band I played in. (Victor, wherever you are, I don’t miss you.)

The family that rocks together… (I challenge you to come up with a rhyming ending for that sentence that is in no way obscene.)