| 'Drum
god' marches to his own busy beat
By R.M. Monk
April 17, 2008 | LOGAN —With heavy
tattooed arms branding an Eye of Rah to Kanji characters
meaning “Drum God,” Clay Barnum, 27, knows well how
industrious you need to be to make a life out of music.
Barnum said he goes to USU as a full
time student, works as a stagehand at the Ellen Eccles
Theatre Company for upwards of 30 to 40 hours a week,
does auditions for music programs at UoU, is about to
start taking private lessons to further his skill, does
sound design for USU’s upcoming King Lear, adding, “Oh,
yeah, and I’m married.”
“I don’t take things very slow,”
he said, blasting the myth that all musicians are hippies
who won’t wake up till noon.
While most artists tend to be downtempo,
“I get busier,” he said.
He’s his most creative when he’s
challenged, he said. Barnum remembers when a fellow
musician, known in his circle as Gregdowns.com, bet
him 100 bucks that he couldn’t restrict himself to playing
just a three-piece drum set instead of his normal five-piece
for six months. A bet that, of course, he won, he said.
But Barnum doesn’t consider himself
just a drummer, or even a percussionist: he is “a musician.”
Barnum said within that definition
of a percussionist, people ask him if he can play this
or that, “I can play the table and chairs if you ask
me to.”
His love of music started at the
age of 6 or 7, said his mother, Rose Rockwell. One day
at work, she got a call informing her that her son hadn’t
been to school in seven days. It was two in the afternoon,
so she raced home in her truck to find the house empty.
Thankfully, she said, she had remembered that Clay was
fascinated with his older brother’s high school marching
band—they would let him play with their broken drumsticks
if he helped move their equipment. She drove to the
high school’s band practice field and found him waiting
there for the band.
After she got him in the car and
scolded him, Clay had begun to say that he would accept
any punishment. When his mother told him that he would
not be allowed to visit the marching band again, “the
tears just shot across that truck,” she said.
In addition to hanging out with,
and later joining, marching bands, Barnum’s skill started
with “air drumming” as a kid, said his brother Tyler,
32.
“Sitting in a chair with nothing
around him,” said Tyler, my brother would watch Metallica’s
Lars Ulrich and mimic his drumming even though there
were no snares for Clay to hit. He said he brother would
tape himself doing this, then watch it and try to do
it better.
Ulrich isn’t technically a great
drummer, said Barnum, but what attracted him to Ulrich
was his heart-pounding style.
This obsession with heavy music has
carried over into his adult life. While others may wind
down with a good book or their favorite television program,
Barnum will drum for three hours.
It’s cathartic, he said.
The latest leg of his drumming education
has come from his friend Gregdowns.com, the Batman to
Clay’s Robin. Since Barnum began to seriously play six
years ago, the two have survived multiple band attempts
with others people. The list includes such groups as
Eggs Blackstone, Halo Theory, Tiny Herc, Katsu (for
just one show) and the “untitled Gregdowns.com acoustic
era,” Barnum said.
But it’s becoming increasingly clear
to Barnum and Gregdowns.com that Logan is not the place
to further his career. Usually, all you can get are
gigs at Caffé Ibis or, if you’re lucky, “Sultan’s once
a months,” he said.
“Logan can only offer so much,”
he said.
Currently, between applying to different
music programs, Barnum and Gregdowns.com are looking
to finance a business loan to put on a tour themselves
“and hopefully getting paid for [the tour].” Their looking
to get enough “just for gas.” Food for the trip is secondary.
Recently, the main influence in Barnum’s
life has come from another artist, his wife Lindsey,
an aspiring painter.
I’ve been trying to experiment with
other mediums, said Barnum. Because his wife paints,
Barnum has gained a desire to do the same.
“It’s good because she helps
me and I help her creatively,” he said. Despite his
lack of skill, Barnum said his wife tells him to, “Just
start painting something! And if something stupid comes
out, we’ll just paint over and start again.”
Being married to another artist can
get a bit out there, he said. Barnum remembers telling
his wife about how one of his friends who owns a farm
had to once stab a cow in order to save it. The cow
had evidently eaten too much and the pressure had been
built up inside, and to release the pressure you have
puncture it’s stomach, he said, however, when you stab
a cow, a lot of methane is released. He said this prompted
his perceptive wife to note, “If you had a match, you
could have a cow-flamethrower.”
Sounds like a future album cover
for the Drum God.
MS
RR
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