Playing drumset and learning songo type rhythms with the Betty Holiday Review

Betty Holiday features Vince Schaefer in her R&B Showband

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Betty Holiday has a long career of rocking people at bars, lounges, parties of all kinds, festivals, weddings and anywhere else they like and appreciate good music! She has enjoyed the drumming styles of Vince Schaefer for more than 100 gigs over the past couple years. Sometimes the trio of instrumentalists included Steve Alston playing bass and Al playing keyboards along with Vince. Other times key player Ubla Bey played when Al couldn't. Steve Alston was also the bass player for Dancekats with Vince on drums, and jammed many gigs throughout the years together. Jimmy Ponder, and Dean Alston were also favorite musicians from Steves' family. Ponder has over 17 albums, with jazz notable Jimmy Smith and the likes, and I played in Speigles' (Bill Gaye) big 'Tower of Power' / 'Chicago' / 'Earth Wind and Fire' style band with Dean on percussion. Drumming for Betty Holiday was great experience in music! (flipped pic)

Drumming for Betty Holiday was great experience in music! (flipped pic)

Miss Holiday covered all Motown and Rock / R&B oldies as well as all modern dance music, giving her a large audience base. I particularly remember a wedding on one of the boats (Partyliner?) that really rocked, and the customers couldn't believe we could play any song they requested so well. Sometimes we added additional vocalists to play bigger gigs like Idlewild Park or Kennywood Park. Betty always dressed impeccably, and was always 'on' as far as her voice. Chops that could sing through a cold!
Betty loved the sound of the modern triggered drums from the DrumKAT which was first used live on one of her gigs. Back then, my rack was: a Yamaha RX7, a Roland U-110, and an Alesis Microverb. There were even times I snuck the drum machine in (playing a simple latin part) at the tempo of the band, without anyone noticing! Later stopped using the sequencer so much, and opted for more of the songo type rhythms I'd learned form Bernie Taupins' drummer while on the road with Energy Rush. (sorry but I forget the dudes name....any help out there?) My left hand became much stronger playing cowbell, conga and tymbali parts along with the grooving drum set line. Started to develop the second drummer in brain to embellish the ensemble. Who knew back then, how many more brain divisions were to come?

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