Events

The National Association of Music Merchants winter convention (the Winter NAMM Show) happens every year about this time in Anaheim, California near Disneyland. Basically, it’s a big, giant, massive, ridiculously mind-boggling candy store for musician-types like me and all my rowdy friends. In the simplest of terms and the purest of definitions, it’s a friggin’ playground for imbecile musicians. Not that that’s a bad thing.

Tomorrow will mark the first day of my tenth consecutive year at NAMM, although it will be my 14th time at the show in total. When I started attending, it was all about the gear: aisles and aisles of amazing new things just begging me and teasing me to take them home with me. I’ve spent small fortunes at past NAMM shows and the Musicave is littered with the spoils I’ve brought back from my many trips to the Anaheim Convention Center. One time, I made a friend walk the NAMM Show floor with me for five hours because I had forgotten where I saw this dude selling hand-fired Nigerian udus just the day before. Finally, at about five minutes before the floor closed, we turned a corner and there he was. I bought one and I love using it in my work.

Then, after my drumming career kind of caught fire around 2006, it was all about the fans. There were a couple of really cool years where I did nothing at the NAMM Show except camp out at the Sabian or DW booths with panels of other drummers to sign autographs and talk to folks who enjoyed my work on a modest few pop records. A few years ago, I miraculously found myself sitting at the Sabian signing table with Daniel Adair of Nickelback on one side, Steve Ferrone of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on the other, and my good friend Joey Heredia of Sergio Mendez and Brasil 88 two seats down on the other side of Steve. They were all smiling and shaking their heads about how people were lined up around the corner to talk to us. Joey said, “Yeah, man. Like… Who the hell are we, ya know?” I remember thinking, “Well, I know who YOU cats are, but what the fuck am I doing here?” Then, all of a sudden, every single one of the 200-or-so people who were waiting to talk with us dropped all their stuff and ran as fast as they could to the opposite side of the aisle. After a disoriented minute of not knowing just what the hell was happening, we realized that Alex Van Halen had sat down over at Paiste to sign autographs for 30 minutes. Without missing a beat, Steve said, “Um, we ain’t shit, chaps!”. Everybody laughed, but I’m sure for different reasons.

These days, my main concentration is composing, and my drumming career is at the point where I can risk being moderately particular, so my feeling on the NAMM Show has shifted a bit. What I now love about NAMM is the fact that after a year spent isolated in the Musicave working late into the wee hours on God-knows-what, I get to venture out into the daylight and see all my music buds, not to mention in the midst of the biggest musical toy store on Earth. I still love the gear, I still love the signings and the parties and the dinners, but honestly, it’s really all about the hang. I love my friends, and for me, NAMM is entirely about the social experience. It is now almost like a high school reunion… except that it’s actually one you’d want to attend. All this week, I’ve been excited to catch up with all my friends. I want to know what they’ve done for the last twelve months—where they’ve recorded, where they’ve played, who they’ve played with. And they want to know what I’ve been up to, too. There is nothing more hilarious than a famous rock star getting all giddy when you tell them you just wrapped a movie with Heather Locklear.

More than anything, NAMM reminds me that as crazy as the Hollywood nut-train can get, these people are just that: people. They have hearts, they have feelings. They hurt, they laugh, they bleed, they rock and roll. Sometimes, you get there and you realize that they passed away a year earlier, and you never got to tell them what they meant to you or how their music got you through, way back when. Sometimes, that’s THE reason to keep attending right there—to be able to tell one of these people how something they created positively affected you in your life. A few years ago while I was there to do a signing, I had a 13-year-old boy approach me with his father and tell me that a tune I played on for Natasha Bedingfield got him through a rough year at school. Even though I had nothing to do with writing that song, I had a lot to do with him being able to hear it, and I cannot describe how great it made me feel that something I was involved with made such a big a difference for somebody else.

You know, now that I think about it, that’s all anybody that deliberately goes out of their way to attend the NAMM Show really wants. They just wanna be inspired. They want to know that there is still a place where real-life musicians walk around and talk shop. They want to know that there still exists a place where people actually play instruments, and true artists congregate. There is such a camaraderie at NAMM. I don’t find much ego there, probably because of the sheer amount of talented people under one roof: there just isn’t much room for bullshit. When you see Dann Huff or Tony Levin getting coffee in front of you at the espresso bar, the braggadocio about how you learned Malagueña in one week becomes suddenly unimportant… even to you.

I still love the NAMM Show. There are a lot of people who don’t, but I still do. I’m not looking to get “wow’d” by some new hot piece of kit, though. I already own enough crap that I don’t even use. I could go and do the starstruck thing, but after you are in LA for, oh, say, 25 minutes, all that shit sort of wears off and you realize that everybody pays someone to put their pants on them, just like you do.

No, when it comes to NAMM, I suppose my reasoning is pretty simple: Like that little boy, I, too, just want to be inspired.

[divider style="top"]