If already there seemed really cool that Ringo Music had been the only Italian drumstore invited to the establishment of Oxnard in California, where the DW Drum Workshop Inc. has its headquarters, the best was yet to come.
(We have already written about our adventure at Namm, we promised you an extensive report of the DW factory tour and this too, have faith, is coming, ed.)
Last January we found ourselves in the famous studio immortalized in dozens of videos, where DW presents all the news and where John Good unveil the latest releases. Well, for once we were in that room too. And he is Father Lombardi, the historical founder and still president of DW Drum Workshop Inc.
We were sitting there: behind us there was Steve Ferrone, a few minutes before we had crossed paths John Hidalgo in a corridor while we were looking for water, Ralph Johnson of the Earth, Wind & Fire was two chairs away, Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers he had been sighted a few minutes before. We, guests in a room together in half of the world's groove (and many others escape us…).
John Good is an extremely affable person, we will talk about what he talked about in another episode on our blog and let's jump straight to the moment in which we actually met.
At the end of the meeting, like a good host, John approaches us: “Hey Ringo, I know you!”. Okay, he knows us. The pleasantries begin, but Italy always wins the hearts of Americans: “I used to live in Pino Torinese in the 70's”. “We run a shop in Turin”. It's immediately groovy.
John Good loves Italy. And especially Turin. It is a city to which he is very attached, he takes a liking to us, tells us to visit it regularly whenever he happens to be in Italy and rattles off the names of squares, places and clubs that only those who breathe our city really know. After a nice chat together, we say goodbye, leaving him a business card as a courtesy. He thanks us in a really affectionate way and promises to come and see us at the next tour in Italy.
We think it's a classic "Oh, but look, I'll call you, promise!", "Leave me your number and I'll call you", "Yes, yes, then let's organize an evening, I'll let you know, now I have a mess of things to do...": in short, the classic situations in which we have found ourselves a thousand times in life, especially after a concert when we tried to approach a girl in the audience who then, you know, would never call or show up again at our concerts.
The weeks go by, caught up in the daily routine of our work, we don't remember John's promise.
Tuesday 5 March, in the morning, a message arrives on the phone: “I'm Esther, the wife of DW's John Good. We have come to Turin and we would like to stop by the shop to say hello".
Okay, okay, okay. After us going to DW, DW comes to us. All normal.
The first thing we think about, as good Italians, is setting up a banquet with food. It's Shrove Tuesday, running to the pastry shop to buy what here are called bugie (or chiacchiere, or frappe, in short, those fried carnival things).
Just before 3 pm there are customers in the shop, a representative and then John Good arrives: “I was in Milan to choose wood (we'll tell you later, ed.) and I said: 'I want to visit my friends at RingoMusic'”.
We welcome him with a big smile, he seems to have stopped by for a quick hello (“my wife wants to go shopping”) and instead he stays over two hours talking little about drums and a lot about music. And this would already be enough to love him.
He is completely absorbed by music, his culture in the sector has no boundaries and contrary to what we imagined, he doesn't even touch on too technical topics related to the construction of instruments.
He is a very curious person, is interested in listening and we like listening to him because he is full of anecdotes: he tells us about his past as a roadie of Frank Zappaexperience that he now remembers laughing but which caused him a serious back injury, he tells us about his 5 years in Turin, he tells us that he loves exotic finishes and that he has a problem with the color turquoise (“I grew up in a house where everything was blue, from the floor to the crockery to the fence in the courtyard: perhaps it's the only color that gets boring for me"). Every word exudes passion for his work and he is truly involved in every production process of DW (“What do I like most about my job? Go into the rooms to hear the timbre of every single keg").
The minutes slip by and in the meantime his wife Esther also arrives, who chats with us and seems very at ease. Indeed, he also tells us anecdotes from family life, such as when for John's 60th birthday he worked hard to find his first owned set and shuttled back and forth in great secrecy and several times between home and the Professional Drums of Los Angeles, which is 4 hours by car from John Good's home, to go every time to look for spare parts and accessories to restore the set to give to her husband (incidentally: Professional Drum is the Mecca of drumstores worldwide: there it's easy find on Saturday afternoon, wandering around, Danny Carey try snare drums just like they were at home years ago Neil Peart, Hal Blaine or Buddy Rich, ed.). All without being discovered and giving him a wonderful surprise.
John asks us for some photos with him, taken by his wife Esther and he is really enthusiastic: he tells us that RingoMusic reminds him of Chicago drumstores, the old school ones, with a soul.
“This place has a soul, you have the groove”: these are not words of circumstance and we are happy that a character of his caliber is saying them. When we tell him that now we can't fit even a couple of chopsticks into the shop and that we would like to move to a bigger place, he literally tells us: “Stay here: this is a beautiful place, you have loads of stuff, it's warm and welcoming: don't make yet another soulless warehouse”. That, we, never: John, don't worry.
We tell him that when we opened, years ago, we were so down-and-out that many companies didn't even want to serve us: so we thought we'd go knock on the bigger ones and then all the other brands would come along. And so we did: DW was the brand that pioneered all the others. He laughs at this and tells us that we have adopted the right strategy.
He tells us that he has been in northern Italy and Germany to choose new woods for 2020: we ask him how he knows that they sound good once transformed into drums but ours is a rhetorical question. “Trust me, if I say they'll sound good, they'll sound good!” and bursts into laughter.
After more chats we say goodbye, promising him that next year we will go back to DW to find him to organize something together.
We give him a bottle of Barbaresco Asili Riserva from 2013 and ask him to drink it for our health, in California.
Many gurus, many artists, many truly influential characters for our small world have passed through us: but we never expected John Good, vice president of Drum Workshop Inc.
We are very proud that he dedicated part of his time to us and that in the following days he still sent us messages to thank us for our hospitality with a series of compliments that even embarrass us a little. His was a savoir faire that we have rarely encountered in many years of activity.
If we had a fashion store, it would have been like getting a visit from Giorgio Armani himself. We sell drums and more on John Good, really, there is none.
Hi John, ad maiora!
