The rumpus room at Grant and Karen Boddington’s home in Thames is not a regular rumpus. In fact, it’s not even called a rumpus room – it’s called a “drumpus” room. That’s because it is a place where drum sets are refreshed, refurbished and restored for a good cause. Reporter DAVIDDA HIKATANGATA pops in for a jam.
Grant, who calls himself “the old rocker”, runs Drum Set Rescue alongside wife Karen. It’s a non-profit retirement hobby that provides young beginner drummers with refreshed or refurbished drum sets at a reasonable price. “I can get them a really good set for usually between $300 and $500,” he said.
Some of the drum sets he’d seen for sale before online would say they were in good condition or like new, but he said a lot of them were rubbish, with missing bits or broken.
His goal with Drum Set Rescue is to support young drummers with a set that’s playable straight away, and he even includes a laminated set-up guide for the drummer and parents to follow.
He aimed to sell the drum sets at no profit – just the cost to put it together, and while the drum sets were made up of pieces from a few different drum sets, he said people didn’t mind.
“It’s like a car that’s got a couple of different wheels on it, they still do the same job, and most people would never know. And it doesn’t matter, it’s a drum, it’s the right size. They all get re-wrapped in vinyl,” he said.
“Karen and I have worked out a good system for putting the wraps on. We work as a good team on that and get things done.”
The 71-year old drummer, who shifted to Thames from Wanganui in February, told The Profile he’d “always been drumming with my fingers on everything”.
The old rocker didn’t grow up with music around him, but he “just liked drums” from an early age.
“I spent a lot of time practicing when I was younger and I played in a pipe band.”
Most of the “technical playing” he learned there, and as he reached the age of 15, the muso diversified and ventured into rock music.
However, more than 20 years ago, Grant took a break from the drum world and got rid of his drum sets.
But he found his way back into the groove around 10 years ago, when he kicked things off with an electric drum set, which he said lasted for around three months until he bought “a real set”.
Grant started to spend time getting “bits and pieces” and “doing them up”, which led to purchasing parts or receiving donations of drum bits and pieces.
“People would just drop them off at the door [or say] ‘I’ve got a carload of drums for you, Grant’. “And I’d just mess around with them and strip them down and clean them up and put them back together as good sets,” he said.
“[I’d] mix and match a few drums, change a few lugs when they’re missing lugs and that sort of thing.”
Grant said he transformed what was “a rubbish kit ready for the dump” into an appealing and good sounding kit for a beginner.
That’s when Karen came up with the name: Drum Set Rescue.
It wasn’t the first time the restorer fixed up one of his drum sets though.
Around 40 years ago, Grant said he was in a band and played a late-night gig with his new set of Pearl Export drums. He went home, parked the car by his back door in the middle of the night and slept in very late the next morning.
“It was a hot summer’s day and all the wraps on the drums all warped. So I stripped them all down and covered them in denim and they were magnificent. It was the talking point of every gig.”
People referred to him as the guy with the denim drums, he said.
While he enjoyed fixing up drum kits as a hobby, “I don’t fix peoples sets for them”.
“It’s really about the fact that I’m trying to support the youngsters, get them into drumming with a reasonable set, for a reasonable price.”
DETAILS: Visit www.dsr.nz or follow Drum Set Rescue on Facebook.
By DAVIDDA HIKATANGATA
