on into this microphone, and you can, you know, do whatever you want with it.
Yeah. A deep respect. And that really begins because of the way we play music together, which is hard to explain. We really communicate. Okay, well, that doesn’t even come close to what I’m trying to describe, which is a really amazing thing, you know? “We really communicate” sounds weak compared to the feeling. DD understands what I do, and I understand what she does. A lot of people kind of get how special DD is. But it says something special about her, that she also gets what I do, because that’s not as common, for whatever reason. Actually no, okay, because there’s a good reason for that.
I’m not sure where to start about it, but I guess I’ll start with how I met her, and that leads me to Geoff’s book, I guess.
So … I really enjoyed Geoff’s book, or I guess Cam’s book, or whichever. Ha ha. It was a lot of fun, and I understand that when someone is writing a whole book, things get edited out and everything, for space.
And I don’t want to make a big deal out of this or anything, because it’s not a big deal, and I guess it’s a matter of ego, or something, and that’s not really how I like to live my life. The thing is, in that book, there’re a lot of things that happen in it where, you know, I was actually there.
I don’t mean there in Calgary, or there at the festival. I mean in the room. Participating in the discussion. And in the book it’s like I wasn’t there. Actually like there was either no drummer at all, or else he has Jenny drumming, when, if you get right down to it, she was playing bass. Jenny is a great drummer, but, you know.
Like I say, I don’t mean to say that somebody has done some kind of terrible thing to me by leaving me out of the history of what was happening, but I just need to say for the purposes of telling you about DD that, for the record, I was there.
I was the drummer for the Athena Amarok project that summer. Cam specifically asked me to do it because he’d admired my old band and he liked what I was doing there. I guess he liked the portability of my set-up, too, which took a lot of work, a lot of trial and error, to fit right into a suitcase, unlike a lot of drummers that have to have this huge kit and everything. I mean you couldn’t have put Neil Peart into a situation like that and fit his stuff into a rental minivan.
For instance, right there at the start of the story I was in the minivan with Mykola and Cam and Jenny when we were zooming over the Rocky Mountains toward the Calgary Folk Festival. I was holding the map in the passenger seat. I was looking over the distances between cities on the back of the map, comparing the driving times between Vancouver and Calgary and Vancouver and Edmonton, comparing them to my own personal experience driving to Alberta from the coast. I say that just because I remember exactly what I was doing when Jenny shouted at Mykola to slow down and Mykola jammed on the brakes. My travelling water bottle can be a bit too big for the cupholder in some of those minivans — if you drive smoothly it’s not a problem, but, to be fair, it was a bit precarious. So the contents of the water bottle spilled all over the map, and all over the front seat, and Cam didn’t mention that part in his story, or else Geoff maybe couldn’t decipher that part of his handwriting, I guess.
There’s a fair number of parts of the book where I was there like that, and I’m just not mentioned anywhere, so yeah.
This is something that happens to me a lot, I have to say. I know it’s partly my fault. Probably my fault. Maybe because I’m the second youngest in a family of six kids, and I’ve always wanted to be a drummer, or I’ve always been a kid who drums, like since I can remember. I am a drummer. Of course I’m a human first, but I experience the world as a drummer. Probably only other drummers will understand what I’m talking about.
I was always practising, even when I didn’t have a stick in my hand. Everywhere I was, I was always tapping out paradiddles and little patterns with my fingers, and it just bugged the heck out of my mom and my older siblings and my dad, too. When I was quite young, when they would notice me tapping, they’d get irritated, and you know how kids can be. They’d slam down on my hands to stop me tapping. You know, like, “STOP that tapping!” and it would really kind of hurt. I still remember it now. So, I kind of learned how to practise without anybody noticing.
That’s how I developed what DD calls “Pete’s incredible superpower of invisibility,” which is really something where I can virtually disappear from peoples’ consciousness and still be right there, doing my thing. I mean, I don’t even think about it now. I almost have to work to turn it off, so that I can actually have people pay attention to my opinion or let me contribute to a decision that’s being made. It’s a power that’s really benefited me over the years, but maybe also led to me not always getting noticed or credited by people for the things I’ve done.
Or servers at restaurants will forget to take my order when I’m out with a group at dinner, and I’ll have to say “excuse me” a few times or maybe even get up and tap them on the shoulder to get their attention.
Or I’ll be up onstage and I’ll notice there’s actually no drums whatsoever in the monitor, and I’ll have to get the singer to shout into the mic that the drummer needs his wedge turned up with more of him in it. And the tech will say “drummer?” and kind of look at me like he just saw me teleport onto the stage out of nowhere, even though I introduced myself to him earlier in the day.
I’m not saying this for my own horn-blowing here (although okay, maybe partly I am … I mean, I don’t claim I don’t have an ego. I mean, that would be silly because of course I have an ego; everybody does). But I’m just doing this because Geoff specifically asked me to talk about DD. Here’s why:
I actually met DD before anybody else did, when she and her band — what were they called? The Speedy Zippers? The Supersonic Grifters. Right. Anyway, I met her first when they were busking outside the Calgary Folk Festival gates, because I was kind of tapping along on the fence and DD noticed me.
She noticed me. Right away. She looked at me just grooving, tapping the fence, but doing it in my own way, which is that the first thing in my mind is how to serve the song. How to make a rhythmic contribution that helps the song. It sounds obvious, but actually most drummers — I’m sorry, maybe not most drummers … well, actually, yeah, sorry, most drummers — are kind of thinking more about their own playing, and whether or not they’re being cool, or “check this fill out” and that’s fundamentally not what I do, as a drummer. I serve the song. I love, love great songs. Sometimes I serve the song so much that people don’t remember there were drums, and in a way, that’s a compliment. But true musicians hear the drums and get what I’m up to. And when I was only just tapping on the fence, DD locked on my eyes. She locked right in with me and shared a part of herself with me. I know that sounds kind of hippy. Sometimes Mykola mocks me for being a little bit hippy but, to be fair to him, he wouldn’t mock me about that, because he knows about this stuff, too. That’s why we play together. And I looked back at her, and she gave this little nod. And I knew what that nod meant without either of us saying anything, and what it meant was, “I see you, you’re a real musician. We’re making something together now.”
I know that sounds silly, but actually it’s completely true, and I stand by it. My invisibility power doesn’t work on DD. She sees me as who I am, which is a damn good, song-sensitive drummer, an artist. Not to toot my own horn too much, and I realize that the more I say that, the more I’m undermining what I’m saying, which is super frustrating for me.
[Pause.]
I’m just saying DD saw me. Right away. I was never invisible to her. I don’t know if that makes sense but anyway that’s what I wanted to say. Okay. I know I was supposed to try to think of clues about where she might have gone, and I don’t think I’ve really done that. I’m going to take
