Hand me the drumstick, snare, kick

As much as I enjoyed reading the AV Club's interview with Jeff Tweedy today, I think I'd rather share this brief anecdote about auditioning a replacement drummer for Uncle Tupelo, from Greg Kot's biography of Wilco:

"[W]orking out the nuts and bolts in rehearsal, [Mike Heidorn's] drumming could be like a shoe in a dryer. It was work sometimes to hear the kick drum, because Mike wouldn't play loud. And then Ken [Coomer] comes in and is just a powerhouse: tons of experience, tons of chops, and yet not so flashy that he can't come down and play a country beat. As a bass player, I could finally relax. With Mike, I was playing and singing and hoping that I was playing somewhere near where the bass drum was. With Coomer there was no doubt where the bass drum is: it's right up my fucking ass. I couldn't deny it.

...I think there was a certain amount of discrimination against Ken at the time because he had dreadlocks down to his ass. I don't think my concerns or Jay's concerns were ever so pure that we didn't have some vanity about how we pictured out band to be like; everybody does it. It was as simple as he didn't look like our drummer."

Uncle Tupelo went with another candidate named Bill Belzer instead of Ken Coomer. Six months later, Belzer was out and Coomer was in.


FMFM: Aretha Franklin's "See Saw", where the kick drum is right up my fucking ass. From Aretha Now, featuring one of the great session bands of all time. I think that kick goes, um, even farther on "You're A Sweet Sweet Man."