Drumm Don’t Strum
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Drumm, a 28-year-old native of South Holland, didn’t know he was building on tradition when he started sticking things in the strings of his guitar back in 1991. Like prepared piano–a technique popularized by John Cage in which objects are placed within the instrument to damp the strings or rattle against them–the tabletop method transforms the guitar from a chordal instrument into a noisemaker. Bands like Sonic Youth and Live Skull got noticed for wedging drumsticks and screwdrivers through the strings of their axes, but tabletop guitar is far more radical, a pure-sound approach pioneered by experimentalists like Fred Frith and AMM’s Keith Rowe.
Drumm played conventional guitar in a few rock bands in the late 80s. But when he moved into the city in ’91 to work at the Board of Trade he didn’t have anyone to play with, and so spent time practicing–and experimenting–on his own. Going to shows, he began to meet musicians from the local improvised music scene. One of his first partnerships was with Ken Vandermark–he played on the reedist’s album Standards (Quinnah) in 1995. “I would listen to the way saxophone players dipped into things. These sounds that someone like Mats Gustafsson makes–pfoom! and ssssck!–I started making noises like that with the guitar,” Drumm says. In 1994 and ’95 he gigged several times a week, frequently on Monday nights at Myopic Books, where he curated the improv series for a while.
On Tuesday at 6 PM, as a warm-up for next weekend’s Chicago Blues Festival, the Film Center at the School of the Art Institute will screen Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl?, a new documentary about Robert Johnson narrated by Danny Glover. David “Honeyboy” Edwards, one of the last living associates of the legendary bluesman, will perform a short set afterward. Call 312-443-3737 for more information.
