Bang on this drum …
Up Close & Personal
By Eric Scicchitano – Diamond City Weekly

Having a fouled-up instrument in marching band is certainly not novel, but fixing it up and eventually translating that into a business is. That’s the path Scott Carey, 23, has traveled. The Elmer L. Meyers alum turned his tinkering into an enterprise during his senior year at King’s College. Now with partner Gerald Lamark, he’s heading up Breaker Boy Drums and Percussion, which will open its first storefront on Casey Avenue in the coming months. He uses shells from Keller, as well as RCI acrylic shells, for now, but is focused on product development and designing his own shells and hardware. Have a look at his products at Breakerboydrums.com, but first, meet Scott Carey …

Tell us how you got into fabricating drums.

Well, I was in high school playing in the marching band and my first drum was held together with duct tape; absolutely horrible.

So you had the worst drum in band?

Basically! And I spent six years in school learning how a drum works, the different parts of it, and I repaired a bunch of drums. When I went on to college, I was like, “I’m bored,” so I started ordering some shells, tested it out to see what I could do and I turned it into a business my senior year.

And you were making them for yourself at first.

Yeah. One of my best friends gave me a shell that was laying around in his basement, and I said, “You know, I can refinish that. Let’s see what I can do with it.” So I just took it, cleaned all the hardware up and made it look real nice and just went from there. After I finished that shell, I bought another shell and did something basic to it — I did all the veneer work, painting it, spraying it, you name it.

Are you handy in other trades?

This is all I’ve ever done. I never really got into any other type of woodwork. Everything I’ve learned with woodwork, like with routers and drillpresses, I’ve learned through doing the drums. … It was all do it yourself. I went online and researched it.

You got better with trial and error.

Yeah. The drum I repaired in high school, I probably made it worse. From there I just learned and learned and learned. When I first started doing veneers it was really tough because you had to get the veneers to totally fit onto the wood, and there were times when it would bubble up on us. After awhile we got it down right.

At what point did you realize you could make a dollar off this?

When I started to compare my work to other companies. At first when I was building stuff I was looking at other drum companies, trying to compare my drums to theirs and make something just as good. Eventually I started to build stuff that was better. It sounded a lot better, it was well put together. Everything from the hardware to the finish, I just liked it and thought it was a lot better. (Holds up a drum shell.) When do you ever see a drum with a finish like that; like a really hand-rubbed, high-glossed ebony finish?

And if you don’t want to use this for a drum you can make a really cool looking vintage lampshade.

Basically. We screwed up a drum and we were like, “Yeah, let’s make a table out of it.” It’s a very costly business. If you build a Web site and you screw up all you have to do is replace the design or the code. If you screw up the wood, yeah you could fill it and make it look like it’s fixed but it’s not going to sound as good. We’re always very detailed to our work and very patient.

Who is your partner?

Gerald Lamark. He came to me as a customer. I was working in my basement by myself, me and my dad, and Gerald had some cool ideas. I said, “Why don’t you come down and watch us build drums and hang out?” I wanted to expand my business and see what kind of talent I could draw from the area. He was all about it.

Was he like an apprentice?

Kind of, but he knew a decent amount about drums too, so I learned from him and he learned from me. Right now Gerry does stuff that he’s good at and I do stuff that I’m good at. When something comes in like a high-gloss finish he’ll do that because he’s more comfortable with a spray gun. If someone needs something drilled like an off-set drill pattern, I’ll do it because I like to lay out the drum.

It’s a tough go right now for small business. What gives you the confidence that a niche business like this will fly?

It is tough. We’ve actually run into issues where one month we didn’t make any money, and it’s like, “Can we do this?” But we keep putting our name out there. We’re grassroots, always talking to people. I was real down one night, although I knew I had a great product, and I ended up going to a bar one night and started talking to a drummer and I made a sale in like 20 minutes. So that stuff kind of keeps me going. I’ll lend out drums to drummers who want to play them, promote my name and kind of build partnerships like that. Right now it’s a tough economy, but I believe in our product and I believe we’re one of the best custom builders out there.

Who are some of the area drummers who are playing a Breaker Boy drum right now?

Ben Russin from Title Fight, AJ Jump of Underground Saints, Zack Baldassari of Kartune. I ave a few kids playing snares, they’re not really in bands that are known. I actually shipped a drum kit last week out to Arizona to Esteban’s drummer. Our drums are getting out there. It’s a tough economy but people are seeing our product, hearing our product and they’re liking it and buying it.

source: http://www.diamondcityweekly.com/features/story.asp?id=50343
-escicchitano@timesshamrock.com