The ones I’m using right now are the Slingerland 5A Peter Erskine model. We’re going to switch sticks to Silver Fox, from down in Florida. They make great laminated sticks. Dale Crover and Coady Willis: 5 drum tips for double drumming. [laughs] So the teacher’s like, “Well, on paper this looked good because I figured I’d probably get like ten bucks out of it. If there was an afternoon and an evening show, I’d go to both shows and write down set lists, so I’d know what was coming up in the next show. We took a couple of pairs out and beat the daylights out of them, and they work. Meeting famous drummers was neat until we toured with a couple of English bands who I won’t mention, but I never bought their records again. That kit I had for a long time, and it was great.
But the only people who showed up were me and this other kid. Last year, you voted Crover and Willis's work on 'Talking Horse' one of the top 20 drum beats since 2000. Eventually they ran back off the stage and through the front of the house to get out of the venue. We tried them out, and we just looked at each other, like, “Hmm…I think we need matching drumkits.” [laughs]I thought I’d try different sizes this time, so I went with 24″, 15″, 18″. But we exchanged phone numbers, and I’m going to call him up and grill him—see why he did it and what he did. I sent them in to somebody and had my name put on them. I thought it was great and I went the next weekend, and only I showed up. The Melvins' drumming duo on avoiding double trouble. But it was always fun to talk to those people when I was younger, nick stuff from them, or just see what they were doing and ask them questions. It worked pretty well. Don´t overthink.
Here the dynamic duo reveal the foundations of their work. So I sat down with Tony Platt, who mixed the album, and said, “Listen Tony, I think we’re going to have to bury the drums on this one. Despite the intense tremors, Tokyo was spared the major damage that has devastated the north of Japan.He started from ground zero, how to hold your sticks. A 24″ always sounded better recorded than a 26″.
I just assumed they’d all show up, because it was a great deal. There was one that Buzz remembered from his school, and I was in marching band, so I remembered mine. “That whole time it was still shaking,” Dale says. I knew it was on hydraulics and I thought maybe they were messing with it, but after a couple seconds I looked at one of the sound techs and he’s like, ‘Earthquake!’ It was getting violent, and I could tell it was super-big.” The band members scrambled around the building to find an exit, at first with no success. But we just came up with our own thing.Live I used to have a 26″ bass drum, a 16″ rack, a 20″ floor tom, and a 20″ gong bass drum. In Modern Drummer’s May 2011 cover story on the Melvins’ Dale Crover, out now, we get into serious detail.
That stuff really made a big impression on me.
We speak with Crover about the first time he saw the Melvins, way back before he joined the band in 1984. Dave Lombardo with Slayer: Disciple (Big 4 Yankee Stadium) Sleep - Antarcticans Thawed (Live) Danny Carey with Volto: Live Gillz Drum Solo Excerpt at Knitting Factory LA . Rainbow played there. “Plus that 10-inch is in mono, because they cut it on an old lathe from the ’40s,” Crover says.