Instructor

Your instructor, sole owner and operator of the Strange Studio, Derrick Strang, has been playing drums for twenty years, and has been helping students unlock the secrets of drumming for over ten. Born in southeast Idaho in the early 80’s, Derrick began playing music in seventh grade with the trumpet. Two and a half years later, one day his coveted horn was repossessed. That night when he told his dad what had happened, the old drummer pulled out a pair of sticks from his sock drawer and said, “Lemme show you how to play a paradiddle”. The next day at school he stayed after for his first drumline practice. “I remember hearing how the snare, bass drum, tenor and cymbal parts lined up together to create a solid, syncopated cadence that no one drummer was capable of doing on his own. I remember really hearing the “big picture”, and I remember feeling a sense of power that I had never experienced before in my entire life. From that day on, all I have ever wanted is to learn how to be the best drummer I can possibly be. Twenty years later I am still working towards that dream, and for the rest of my life, I always will be.”

All through junior high and high school Derrick played snare and tenors in the drumline, and drum set in jazz and pep band. “Playing in the drum line was the greatest way to start, and I am so grateful for that experience. I learned about accents and taps, rudiments, and how to line my hands up with my feet while we marched. This knowledge transferred directly to the drum set and proved invaluable to my coordination, understanding, and progress as a drummer”.

Derrick really cut his teeth playing in the pep band at football and basketball games, and he never missed a single one. “I really enjoyed playing drum set in the pep band, and those years are when I really learned how to play with a band. The more I played, the more confident I got, and this confidence transferred to other areas of life as well. Physically I got bigger and stronger, and I stopped being so shy and awkward in social situations. Playing the drum set helped me find my voice in life”.

Soon after his first drum line experience, Derrick mowed lawns until he could afford an old Ludwig drum set. With duct tape holding most of it together he would practice daily by playing along to recordings of his dad’s all time favorite music, The Allman Brothers Band. “I had a CD player, a pair of headphones, a desire to rock, a strong sense of determination, and a whole lot of free time. I would play for hours doing by best to sound like the CD. It wasn’t until years after high school that I realized what I was hearing was being played by two drummers, and a percussionist. We didn’t have internet back then so there was no youtube, and no opportunities to see videos of those guys performing. This interesting fact really had an impact on my style and the way in which I approach the drums”.

After high school Derrick happened to get dragged to a reggae show at a local venue. This was extremely rare for his small Idaho town, and was pure chance that they needed a drummer to travel with. They were using a local drummer to fill in for the show, and when Derrick’s friends began talking him up during one of their breaks, they quickly decided to put him to the test. “I didn’t know anything about playing reggae but I knew how to play a solid backbeat so that’s what I did. I played way too many fills, and didn’t know much about how to groove yet, but they liked my energy and enthusiasm. They asked me if I wanted to move with them to Seattle to be their drummer, and said that they were leaving the next morning. I was 18, broke, scared and really unsure, but I remember being more afraid of not going, and forever wondering what might have happened if I did. I thought about it all night, but knew that if I really wanted to spend my life playing drums then I couldn’t turn down the first, and maybe the only, chance I got. So I wrapped my drums and cymbals up in blankets and sheets, and sat on the back porch all night staring at the road. They rolled up to the address I had given them the night before, and I jumped in”.

Derrick played with a real roots rock reggae band from the Virgin Islands called “Cannon and the Lion of Judah” for about four years. Based out of Seattle, they would tour the Pacific Northwest, northern California, and east as far as Colorado. The Lion of Judah played mostly bars and small festivals, and the first year Derrick was traveling with them they got a spot on the Bob Marley Festival Tour.

“I was totally unprepared to dive into the reggae music world, but I did the best I could. I really appreciate that experience because I learned a lot about reggae drumming from watching all the other performers. Because I always had a back stage pass, I was able to get real close to the other drummers and see how they played differently from the classic rock drummers that I grew up listening to. It also gave me the chance to see new parts of the US. I had never really been outside of Idaho before joining up with these guys, and this tour went as far east as Alabama. We even played that summer in Asheville, North Carolina, which was definitely the farthest away from home I had ever been. It also helped me see that people are basically the same everywhere, and that the magic of music is a universal power that can bring everyone together”.

After about five years, the strain of traveling so much had really diminished the excitement that Derrick had started out with. Needing a break, he returned home to southeast Idaho to work at one of his family’s many carni type operations.

“My family was very work orientated, but no one was really that educated from a college or degree direction. We were full of common sense and a tough work ethic, which in many ways influenced me as a drummer. The ability to push past physical discomfort and to figure problems out as they arose, have certainly aided me in getting to where I am at as a musician. We would work extremely long hours running merchandise booths at state fairs, selling fireworks in the heat of the summer, renting bouncy houses for kid’s birthdays and company parties, and even setting up a carnival type games area at rodeos around Idaho and Utah. I love my family, and everything I learned from them, but my heart was into music and I needed to continue moving towards my dreams”.

While working in Salt Lake selling fireworks one summer he was approached by a salesman with a van full of audio equipment who offered him a job. The company was about to move to Los Angeles, and Derrick thought this would be an avenue in which he could get a foothold in a much bigger musical market. A few weeks later, he moved to the big city with a job that he hoped would help him make some new friends and musical connections. However, he got a much different experience than what he was hoping for.

“The job was really difficult, and required working long hours, which I was certainly used to. It was completely commission based, and if you didn’t make any sales, you didn’t make any money regardless of the number of hours you put in that week. Long story short, it took all my time and attention, and I had no time for drumming. Two years flew by, and I had only gotten to play drums on the weekends with my best friend Wes, who was also a salesman for the same audio company. Wes was an amazing drummer who had attended the Musician’s Institute in Hollywood right after high school. He was really good at reading and writing music, and he knew way more about the technical side of drumming than I did. We used to set up two drum sets in the warehouse we worked out of, and surround ourselves with big speakers. We would play along to the Allman Brothers album, Hittin’ the Note all weekend long. Then a series of life changing events happened for me, and I quickly packed my things and moved back home”.
The Allman Brothers band came to the west coast during the summer of 2003. When Derrick and Wes got wind of this there was nothing that could have stopped them from seeing their heroes play. The two of them danced and cheered like the wild drummers they were at shows in San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and Las Vegas.

“I had never seen anything like those shows in my entire life. I went to a lot of shows during those years in LA, but no other band alive could compare to what the Allman Brothers could do. Seeing Butch Trucks, Jaimoe, and Mark Quionones, all playing drums in perfect synchronicity was a new level of drumming I didn’t know was possible. Add Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks shredding guitar along with Greg Allman and Oteil Burbridge, and you have a group of musicians that is capable of reaching heights no other band out there can. On top of that Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe was opening for them each time, and their style of cosmic face melting funk blew my mind. That was what did it. I knew right away that I needed to go back home and start practicing”.

Derrick left LA that winter, and moved back to southeast Idaho to continue pursuing his dreams. He spent the money he saved on new PDP drums, new cymbals, and some cases, and called up the Rastafarians to let them know that he was back and ready to rock.

On their way down from Seattle that winter to pick up their drummer, they were caught in a snowstorm and rolled their van.

“I remember Cannon, the singer and bass player, calling me in the middle of the night to say they were unharmed, but needed a ride. My grandpa let us borrow his old 1971 Dodge van to get to Boulder Colorado to fulfill a few weeks worth of shows that we didn’t want to have to cancel. There were no seats in the back, and the heater didn’t work. We were driving through the night wrapped in blankets, and we could easily see our breath. Whoever was riding shotgun had to continually scrape ice off the inside of the windshield. One heck of a way to “come back” huh? But we made the shows, and I spent the last of my money on an old Econoline when we made it back to Idaho”.

Derrick continued to travel and play with the Lion of Judah for another year, but soon realized that even though he loved the guys in the band like a second family, his heart wasn’t completely in reggae music.

“At this point I knew I needed to stop traveling and just focus on practicing. I learned so much from traveling and playing that music, but I didn’t feel I was progressing much because I was always playing the same music. I needed somewhere cheap to live, and I needed to be able to play all day everyday. Well, I found just that”.

Derrick’s grandfather owned an old abandoned warehouse in a part of his hometown by the railroad tracks. An old Meadow Gold ice cream factory to be exact. With freezers big enough to drive a forklift in, and huge insulated doors to block all sound from being able to escape, it seemed he had found just what he was looking for.

“I set up the largest of the freezers as a jam room, and the smaller one as my bedroom. I got old carpet to lay across the freezing concrete floors, and as many space heaters as the breakers could handle. Running water would have been great, but I’m a survivor so that was a minute detail compared to dealing with the cold. I could pretty much see my breath all through the winter, and many times I practiced all through the night because it was too cold to sleep. Good thing I am a drummer, if I would have played another instrument, I would have never survived. In the summertime I would toss a hose out the second story window and run it across the street to the neighbor’s water spout. I could then fill up big fifty gallon drums I had up in the old locker room. With a hand pump, I could then fill up the back of a toilet, or use it to shower. I think back to that time, and just laugh at myself. However, for the three years I was in there, I got a lot of time on the drums”.

Eventually Derrick began to loose enthusiasm. It was tough living in those conditions, and his personal practice seemed to plateau. So with the desire to take it to a professional level, and a relentless sense of determination, he decided to go back to Los Angeles and attend the Percussion Institute of Technology program at the Musician’s Institute in Hollywood.
“I didn’t really know how to practice new things, and I didn’t know how to extend my musical knowledge on my own. I could play along to tracks and albums very well, but I couldn’t understand a lot of the concepts in the books I was trying to work out of. I could play my ass off, but I couldn’t write it down if I wanted to or even read it off a page even if it was something I know how to play. My buddy Wes from back on LA had such a broader and stronger understanding of the technical side of things. He was a PIT graduate, and I felt like there was so much that I was missing. So I decided to go for it. I made a cheesy audition tape of me playing along to some Dave Weckl tracks from Rhythm of the Soul, and it actually worked. I got a small scholarship, and it just covered the remaining tuition after grants and student loans. I raised the money to move with a huge yard sale. I dragged anything of value I could find out of that old warehouse, and I sold my old 89 Forerunner. It was just enough to get me there so I went”.
Derrick moved back to LA in the fall of 2008, found a room to rent, and began the most grueling two years of his entire life. With no money left over from student loans for living expenses, he worked full time at the flagship Guitar Center store on Sunset Boulevard. Classes ran every morning until one or two o’clock, and then he would ride his old motorcycle to work. The drum shop would close down at ten pm, and then he would go back to school and up into his practice room.

“Having so little time to practice was really rough. I wanted to immerse myself in the material, and play all day everyday to get everything I could out of this dream come true, but I just couldn’t. If I couldn’t pay rent, I wouldn’t be able to stay there, even though I was hardly ever home. I would run over the things I needed to play the next day, and do my best to practice the things that were covered that day in class. The program was intense, and very difficult. Had I not been playing drums for years before attending, I would have never made it. I didn’t struggle with basic coordination like a lot of guys did, and I understood song form pretty well. But I failed reading pretty quickly, and realized I would really have to focus hard in this area to get through it. It was insanely tough to keep this up for two years, but I’m not a quitter, and extremely long days were something I was bred to withstand. I just kept my head down, and took it one day at a time”.

Derrick graduated the PIT program with an Associates in Percussion Performance from the Musician’s Institute in June of 2010. While looking for a place to rent in Boise Idaho, fate stepped in and gave him the opportunity to move to Bend, Oregon. Being a lover of the outdoors, and having a great experience in Bend years prior, he quickly jumped on the chance and moved to Bend.

“Right away I got to see how much music there is in Bend, and how much it means to the people in this community. Not only are there big shows that come here to play the Les Schwab amphitheater, there are a lot of local bands for a town this size. I quickly got a job in the service industry, and began to make connections. It turns out that everybody needs a good drummer, and my skills seemed a lot more valuable here than in the big city. Out there you have to be a phenom to even play, and there was such a sense of competition between musicians. In Bend, everyone is so friendly and inclusive, and I began playing with lots of bands. In Bend people come out to live music, and really make you feel important. I began to feel like part of the community here, and this is the first place I have ever lived that has made me feel like I Belong. I get to play frequently with really amazing musicians, and have made so many close friends that I couldn’t ever see myself leaving. I am so fortunate to get to live and play music here, and am so grateful that my path has brought me to this amazing place”.

Derrick continues to live in Bend, and you can catch him with a smile on his face playing with bands such as Strive Roots, the Fair Trade Boogie Band, Spacely Sprocket, G Bots and the JourneyMen, The SweatBand, KEEZ and Company, Tone Red, The Mostest, Rubbah Tree, Second Hand Soldiers, and more. Mr. Strange, as his students call him, also just finished his first successful year as the director of the Cascade’s Academy Lower School Music Program, and intends to continue teaching here for many years to come. He built the Strange Studio years ago from his need to practice without the cops showing up, and is now opening the doors to anyone with the desire to truly learn how to play the drums.

“I know this bio is a bit long, but I felt I needed to go into such detail to really give prospective students a true idea of who I am as a person, where I’ve been, and how hard I’ve worked to be where I’m at. I cherish anyone’s desire to play music, and I’ll always do everything I can to help it grow. Music is the only thing that has ever made sense to me, and has given me a purpose and a direction. Helping someone find their direction or purpose, or just helping them find joy through music, is the greatest thing I can imagine doing with my life. I’ve got plenty of enthusiasm for drumming to go around, and I’ve got lots of knowledge to share. So don’t wait any longer to contact me because next year is going to come whether you have been playing drums or not. You’re going to feel a lot better about it if you have been, and chances are we’re going to have a lot of fun. Thanks for visiting my site, and for your interest in keeping what seems to be a dying craft alive.”