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Interviews
Tad Britton: The Coolest Thing in the World
“ Were all in love with playing music. Weve all had to struggle and endure some crazy shit to still be playing, especially jazz, for this long. ”
In a recurring nightmare Dracula climbs a tree adjacent to Tad's bedroom window. Each moment in the dead of night brings the vampire closer until the boy, seized with terror, jumps out of bed, clutches his drumsticks, runs to the window and hurls his two wooden stakes at the Prince of Darkness.
Tad Britton's drumsticks saved him from Dracula, the Werewolf and the Mummy. They also succeeded in warding off the evils of growing up in Sturgis, South Dakota (pop. 5,000) in the early '60's. His drumsticks rescued him from the suffocating small town conformity that demanded he join the jocks or the nerds or suffer the consequences. Tad did neither. His drums became his identity; they sparked his confidence and gave him an all-access pass to school dances, country jamborees, and later, the roadhouses and honkytonks that littered western South Dakota's backwater towns—places like Sturgis, Deadwood, Spearfish, Rapid City. In the '80's Tad's drumsticks were his ticket to Oklahoma City and then to Seattle, where he's lived for the last 15 years. "I really like drums. I like collecting drums, talking about drums, playing drums, Britton admits while retracing his past for this interview in the basement of his north Seattle home. Drumsticks in hand, voice full of energy, eyes wild with excitement—one gets a sense of the 10-year-old boy peeking out his bedroom window.
"Before I got my set of drums, Britton says, "I think I was playing with butter knives on every surface in the house. So my parents finally figured out, well, maybe if we give him something to focus doing that on it would be better than having everything in the house chipped and nicked, so I got a practice pad kit at first, and then I had to join the concert band—we didn't have a jazz ensemble at that time—and learn basic things, snare drum basics. I kept after it and inevitably Christmas or birthdays would roll around and somebody would say, 'What do you want for your birthday?' or 'What do you want for Christmas?' and it always was the same answer. Inevitably I got the big surprise one Christmas [a set of blue sparkle Tempro drums] and, one way or the other, I've had a set of drums ever since then. I really liked them. It was a good paring. I don't know what I would have ended up beating on if I wasn't drumming. I'd probably be in jail or something.
Before receiving those blue sparkle drums, however, the center of Tad's musical universe was his older brother Mike's new stereo. In the Britton home and all across the country young people were identifying with music. Woodstock was happening. Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin records spun at all hours. Music represented the kids, united them, and drew Tad to the doorstep of the only boy in Sturgis with his own drum set: Darrel Story.
"Darrel was my first and biggest influence on the drums, Britton explains. "He was part of a band in town, the Darrel Story Band. He was a year older than me, graduated in 1977, and his whole family was like the Partridge Family. His dad played bass. His mom played percussion. He had three brothers: Chip played piano; Dave played organ; Dana played guitar; and they hired this girl, Anne Townsend, to be the singer. Anyway, they rehearsed the band over at the Story's house, and the drums were there. It was a beautiful set, a 1969 Ludwig Ruby Strata finish, beautiful sounding drums. Darrel and I were friends and he let me play those drums—and this was previous to me getting my own set; I must have been eight or nine years old—and you couldn't get rid of me. They couldn't get me off their doorstep and I think that's part of the reason I got a set of drums, because his parents made a little phone call to my parents, 'Hey, your kid is at our house again. He's driving us crazy.'
"That was the coolest thing in the world, continues Britton, "playing those drums. Darrel's band would play at high school functions or Sadie Hawkins dances or whatever it happened to be in Sturgis at the time. They had a couple blue lights maybe, a little strobe light, no sound man or lighting person. When it came time for the drum solo, the singer would go over and switch on the strobe light. Darrel would play "Wipe Out and the strobe light would go on and I thought that was the coolest thing.
Memory floods, makes the words come fast, in bursts like tom-tom fills. Around 14 Tad was hired for his first paying gig. A kid in high school named Dan Chapman asked him to play. Dan played bass and his dad, Coke Chapman, played guitar and sang country western. Coke was a farmer, a crop duster. He led a group with his son Dan and his daughter Donna: Coke Chapman and the Countrymen.
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