Howdy,

Random thoughts -

 - I am operating on a mere two to four hours of sleep each night. I have a newborn baby girl at home that has apparently decided that the middle of the night is the best time to be wide awake and hang out with her daddy.  :-)

 - I am addicted to two recent releases - Killing Season by Death Angel (myspace.com/deathangel) and Death is This Communion by High On Fire (myspace.com/highonfireslays). These are two of the best METAL records I have heard recently. I grew up on metal in the 80's and early 90's and have to say that as the 90's wore on, most metal sounded like "pro" wrestling to me...just very fake and very laughable. But in recent years there has been much more believable and cool metal that has surfaced and these two albums are great examples.

 - Meinl Cymbal artist Trevor Lawrence Jr. just hipped me to a new video he posted on You Tube. It's a lot of fun to watch. Trev has this cool 'stutter' thing that he does, for lack of a better term. Click here to watch.

Hope you're all well. Take care.

Chris

Many of us at Meinl have "official" titles and designations regarding our positions within the company, but the fact of the matter is, we all wear a lot of hats. Even though I am the "Artist Relations Manager, USA and Canada," I work on other things for the company in addition to my obvious duties given the title on my business card.

There is one duty I have that I really love, and that is building and creating our ever-evolving team of US and Canadian cymbal artists into an unstoppable force. That being said, as we move along I'll keep you all up-to-date on our most recent additions to the team so that you can check out some great drummers and their respective current musical situations.

The most recent artists to have made the smartest move of this life and the next by joining forces with Meinl Cymbals are John Merryman, Anthony Salajko and Bill Stevenson.

John Merryman is a Denver, Colorado-based drummer and plays for the 'hydro-grind'-core band Cephalic Carnage. John is one of the most technically accomplished extreme metal drummers on the scene today. When he sent me a copy of CC's latest release, Xenosapien, I was fairly blown away by his insane ability to blend jazz-like chops with extreme metal drumming. Also, every time I name-check John to one of the heavier-metal guys on Meinl's artist roster, I always get some serious words of approval. John is definitely respected by his peers.

Anthony Salajko is a Mississauga, Ontario, Canada-based drummer who plays for The End. I was initially turned onto Anthony by Chris Adler from Lamb of God. Chris was raving about these guys and insisted that I download a copy of their latest release Elementary while we were in Germany last September for the most recent Meinl Drum Festival. I did as Mr. Adler ordered and was not disappointed by any means. Anthony is one of those drummers that is so spot on with killer accents, killer grooves and total tastefulness, that the good tunes he is serving only sound better because of him. Plus there's something in these guys' blend of ambient metal that reminds me of the to-die-for early 90's band Quicksand (an awesome band).

Bill Stevenson is a Fort Collins, Colorado based drummer who is about as legendary as they come. If the names Black Flag, The Descendents and ALL mean nothing to you, I recommend that you go back to Rock and Roll 101 and take that class over again, because you missed three of the most important original "Indie" bands of all time. Bill cut his teeth by being an integral part of all three of these bands from the 80's and 90's, bands who without them, other bands like Blink 182 and Nirvana probably would never have existed. All of the power-pop hyper-speed punk drumming you hear today on the radio and on the VANS Warped Tour in the US...that pretty much came from Bill exclusively. Currently Bill is involved in ten million projects. He owns and produces records at the Fort Collins-based recording studio, The Blasting Room. He tours with Only Crime, a collection of punk legends, and he gets together with the Descendents on an "every seven years, whether we need it or not" plan, where they go out and remind everyone who really rules.

So check out these artists' pages at meinlcymbals.com and then check out their music.

Enjoy!

Chris

hello everybody,

it's been an interesting weekend. as we all know, drummers like get together and see other drummers play. they love to drum-talk and gossip about other drummers. there is always something to discuss about the latest piece of gear, new inventions, or unheard drumjokes.  that is why drum-festivals have been invented so that we can meet and do what we love. drum festivals basically happen everywhere around the world. the so called "worldwide drum community" is actually not a fantasy, its reality. drummers love that, and so do i.

so last saturday some of my colleagues and i hung out at the second "beyerdynamic drum festival" in heilbronn, germany. it has been a very well attended event with some amazing drumming. it has been good to touch base again with some of our artists who performed there: reinhard schwarzinger, felix lehrmann, jost nickel and flo dauner.

jost's performance impressed me in particular. over the last few years i feel that he has made an incredible development and now easily belongs to the top drummers in europe. he currently is on tour with french singer "jenifer". jost will play for us at the upcoming frankfurt music-messe in a couple of days actually, and he is also confirmed for our drum festival in september. i am excited about that.

i have also filmed two interviews, one with jost, the other one with felix. check them out here.

my compliments go to bernd neubauer at beyerdynamic for putting a great festival together.

more to come.........thanks for reading.............stay tuned and be safe!

PS. how many drummers does it take to install a light bulb? three. one to install, and the other two discuss if thomas lang could have done that faster.

aloha,

yes, it seems like as if the cold weather is finally going to be changing. spring is around the corner. i spend all day yesterday in munich doing a photosession with a percussion artist. the weather was just beautiful and all the people in the city were longing for the sun sitting outside in cafe's and bistro's. i am ready for some nice weather again.

every now and then it happens that one of our artists requests special custom cymbals made according to his or her exact requirements. that's been the case lately with trevor lawrence jr. (info about trevor) who was in need for some extra extra thin jazz cymbals. about once a month we get a delivery from our cymbal factory in turkey, which has been the case again last friday. along with the usual byzance and mb20 series cymbals came trevor's specials: a pair of 15" hihats, and two 20" rides - all extra thin.

first thing we do with every shipment we get from our turkish factory is that we count all the cymbals, weigh and play them. if a cymbal does not pass our test, it is going to be recycled. so with trevor's cymbals we did the same thing: i took them aside and played them on my drumkit here in our studio to make sure that they are not damaged or would fail in a real-world situation. what can i say - they sounded absolutely beatiful and i didn't want to let go anymore. our cymbal masters in turkey did an awesome job with those instruments. congratulations guys.

after my test we finished them by applying a nicely laser-engraved custom-shop logo.  i'm sure trevor will love these babies. check out the pictures on top. click on the picture to see a big version and to read some more explanations about what you can see there.

more to come.........thanks for reading.............stay tuned and be safe!

hello,

on behalf of all of us here at meinl i would like to congratulate our long-time artist simon michael and his band subway to sally for winning the german bundesvision songcontest 2008 with their song "auf kiel". the contest took place last night and has been broadcasted in a nationwide tv-show. subway to sally's music has an intensly mediaeval character along with an impressively fiery and explosive stage choreography. the band won with 147 points. only one point ahead of the first runner up, "clueso".

coincidently, simon lives very near our factory in small city by the name of forchheim. that alone makes us especially proud :-)

check out simon's arist page

on a different note: as you know, oli rubow will be performing at our booth during the upcoming musikmesse in frankfurt. last wednesday he came to visit in order to do a photoshoot in our own studio here. i also recorded the "10 questions with" video interview with oli. to my shame i have to admit that neither have i seen oli play live, nor have i spent much time with him talking about drums and music before. well, after spending some time with him here i really like his approach and vibe. his ideas and philosophy about drums and music in general are very interesting. not only does he know how to incorporate electronics into live drumming, he also always comes up with different ideas for new sounds and techniques. i especially liked his minimalistic approach to drumming (he hates schlepping a lot of gear, just like me, hehe). from a marketing standpoint it sounds like complete suicide to preach to only use one pair of hihats and one 18" crash-ride in the entire setup. but for him it works and when you know how to, you can do a lot of stuff with just these two cymbals. most of the time you actually dont need more than that.

one of the bands oli plays in is "netzer" (yes, named after günther - some of you will know what i am talking about). netzer's first album actually is the only one cd that i have in my car. i usually always listen to a radio news-channel, or connect my iPod to my car stereo. however when i forget my iPod and want to hear music, netzer has been my only choice. sophisticated, minimalistic, modern electronic music with oli playing drums. awesome!

to make a long story short, NOW i am really looking forward to see oli play live at our booth for the first time. he will play all day wednesday march 12. i hope to meet some of you there.

oli's artist page

more to come.........thanks for reading, stay tuned and be safe.....

Greetings & Salutations,

Since I will be contributing to these blogs along with my colleague Norbert Saemann, I thought I would give you a little bit of background on who it is that is doing all of the typing.

First of all, my name is Chris Brewer and I am the Artist Relations Manager for the USA and Canada. Sometimes I am asked how does one get into this position...The answer is not so simple. If I think about my past experiences, I can see how I came into this job. However there is really no direct path.

I grew up in Tennessee and have been a drummer since I was 9 years old. I was into music way before then. I don't even remember the first time I heard bands like Kiss, Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, etc., because I had an uncle that was a teenager in the 70's when I was a wee lad and he lived very close to me and was always exposing me to very cool rock and roll. I also have an older brother that has exposed me to some seriously great music.

Anyway, I played in bands from the time I was 13. Eventually I got on the road touring out of the back of a van all across the USA and  that took me to Los Angeles where I set up camp with a band I was in for a long time. While that band never experienced any commercial success, we played music that was very fulfilling and to top it off, we were and still are the best of friends.

While in LA, I had a great job working in the drum department of S.I.R., a rehearsal and instrument rental facility, one of the largest in the world, in fact. This was an awesome experience where I learned A LOT about the drum industry and the music industry in general. This job led me to meet different production managers for tours. Eventually I got out on the road drum and percussion teching for artists such as Lionel Richie, Enrique Iglesias, The Dixie Chicks, Maxwell and others. This was another awesome experience that taught me so much.

After I had had enough of teching on the road, my wife and I moved from LA back to Tennessee where we are from. We never lived in Nashville before (we are from Knoxville originally), but we decided this would be a great place to be. I got a job at S.I.R. Nashville and that led me to meet the fine folks at Meinl USA, whose headquarters happen to be in the same town. After a few years at S.I.R. Nashville, I went to work for Meinl USA and have been here ever since. Meinl is a great company to work for. Lots of enthusiasm, ideas, energy and passion.

Anyway, this may have been way more than you ever wanted to know about someone you probably have never met. Still, I think it's important that I try and let you in on who it is that is actually speaking to you.

Looking forward to sharing all the in's and out's of what goes on at Meinl Cymbals. I hope you enjoy reading about it all.

Thanks for reading and take care!

Chris