iamelliotjames:

chipferarri:

sjcdrums:

It’s been 5 years since I met the Butcher on the balcony of the Palladium backstage at the Midtown/The Academy Is/Hidden In Plan View tour. I went to the show to meet up with Rob Hitt of Midtown, and ended up hanging with Spencer Peterson and the Butcher all night as well. Fast forward: I remember vividly Scott and I crammed in the back of The Academy Is’ trailer in the rain at Bamboozle in NJ designing some new hoops for the Butcher’s bass drum. It seems like just yesterday the band rolling up in their white 15 passenger van to my grandmother’s house to check out the SJC shop that was in her basement to pick these hoops up before their show at the Axis later that night.. and it seems like just yesterday I stood watching in awe of how much this band killed it. Here we are, 5 years later, and The Academy Is will be celebrating the 5 year anniversary of “Almost Here”.

We are celebrating a decade of making custom drums, and I can’t imagine being where we are without the Butcher being part of it for the past 5. He’s been a huge part of our creativity as a company and it’s been amazing working with him and the band for the past 5 years.

I just wanted to write this to show my appreciation for The Academy Is and the Butcher himself and give them a big CONGRATULATIONS on the 5 year anniversary of “Almost Here”. I wish I could be at the show in Chicago this weekend.. so if you are going, please take some pictures for us and Tweet @sjcdrums and put tag us in them on our Facebook!

Much love

Mike/SJC Drums

Fastest five years of my life. This album was a big one for me. Band like Say Anything, Emanuel, Acceptance, Brand New, Lifetime, Midtown, and TAI were what really got me into the scene. One of the first tours we did for Hey Monday was opening up for these guys every night. To this day it was one of my favorite tours. I’m still in awe that it ever happened. When you have that much of connection emotionally to a band it makes it really hard to think of them as just normal people sometimes. We tend to put musicians and people we idolize on pedestals, but no matter how much i know these guys, or how hard i try Sisky, Will, Guy, Carden, and especially Butcher will always be total rockstars in my mind.

When i was in high school i remember being in my freshman year and thinking how lame it was that Orange County and all these other companies we’re doing kit after kit after kit just like everyone else’s. Finally hearing about SJC i drooled over almost every kit on the site. Pristine, each one of them more creative than the last, it wasn’t long before i knew exactly what i wanted. I must have doodled the same kit in my notes a thousand times. I knew exactly what i wanted. When i finally had enough money (which was a joke that mike hooked it up as much as he did, i was nobody, but it didn’t matter. To this day SJC treats every person as good as the top drummer on their roster) SJC began putting nail to hammer on my dream machine.

Artists have different minds than regular people. We’re really messed up. We obsess, we barely use the left sides of our brain, we group and coordinate, we’re probably legally crazy in over thirty states. Regular people would say it’d be crazy for a bunch of kids to think they could make a band in chicago playing dumb love songs that would still be just as good (if not better) five years later. They’d tell two brothers and his friends building drums was a hobby and they’d never go on to become the most popular drum company in the west.

Here’s to the fastest five years of my life. Cheers.

Congrats guys!! Your songs have meant so much to me over the years. I wish I could go see you guys perform…