Cherie

I am an inventor, a musician, a businesswoman, a farmer, a metallurgist, a thinker. I create music, as such I play many instruments and am in a couple of bands/projects right now including a rock orientated bank and a free jazz orientated band. I try to produce music that comes from the soul, with hard driving groove and expression of concepts of the human condition which can be shared through the medium of music, often better than through words and discussion.Think Duke Ellington's Black and Tan Fantasy. Sometimes I write music that is akin to a painting, my best songs feel like musical pictures to me and mental images of my expressed intent fill my mind whenever I play these visually/sonically "living" orientated songs, kind of a waking dream. Sometimes my songs are just driving grooves which are oh so good to excite the soul and the our tribal rhythmic roots, passed down from our ancestors. Sometimes I write songs with targeted intention, sometimes I just hear in my head what sounds good and can follow it, sometimes what sounds good spills right out. Sometimes I write songs that describe a mood. My songs seem to come out best on guitar and keyboards, only analog as I rather dislike the digital keyboard sound. My staple keys rig includes a Yamaha CP 80, a Rhodes 73 stage (looking for a 54!), a Wurlitzer 200a, a Mini Moog and a Yamaha SK organ.
I started two sister companies about 10 years ago, Repercussions , a vintage and classic drum site &
Willoughcraft Drum Co , where my inventions are materialized and my own drum building creations are available. I am the first woman drumsmith in existence and am proud to break this new ground for womankind!
Check out my ebay auctions too!
Building these companies, particularly Repercussions, I have had the opportunity to examine and play just about every drum ever made. Looking at some of the ingenuity in past drum creations, I felt not only inspired but also obligated to take up the torch and bring the art of drum building to new and interesting levels. My proprietary dresden style drum lugs, which I invented about 5 years ago, have opened many new doors and I am absolutely thrilled with the sound that these drums produce, it's new and inspiring. I have worked to create drums and accessories which our drum building forefathers would be proud of and which I am inspired to play. In the pictures, one can see Al Anderson and Drummie Zeb from the Wailers jamming out on a dresden style 24" nyabingi drum as well as a set of 7", 9" and 11" polished stainless Taiko Timbale drums (seen above) and a timp kit that I recently built for an endorsee.
I enjoy as well thinking about and feeling the magic of drums, it's important for us to keep in touch with the mystic aspect of drumming, if you look or listen with said intention, you can hear the very essense and heartbeat of Creation in those drum beats and feel your connection to the very roots of existence as well as to our drumming ancestors who have carried the rhythmic torch since the dawn of time. I believe it's one of the reasons music is so compelling to all peoples of the world, it's a part of our existance, just as the bird sings as a part of it's existence.
I have always believed in drum "mojo". Not that sitting down at a Buddy Rich set will make one play like the man but that feel sort of oozes into the style of the player. I first noticed it on sets that had no history, I wrote a funny article about 9 years back about a Sonor phonic kit I purchased which is still to this day the only kit I ever whipped out "Wipe Out" on 8). I find this happens with drums I build as well, part of my character and playing essence ends up in all the drums I build and, when I see people playing them, even from vastly different styles, I can always seem to hear my own voice buried
in the mix. I know, one may think it's a bit out there but there is magic to drums and music in general, I have found it to be true through objective observation.
Being scientific, I have learned what metals, woods and materials sound good in drumming. I have my drum lugs cast in silica bronze, a pure, clean and resonant metal and they are cast, machined and plated in New England. As much as possible, I try to keep my business dealings with individuals, I appreciate the entrepenurial spirit and like to support it by spending my money with other entrepenurial people. I think everyone should take a shot at working for themselves, being stuck working for someone else is a tough trap to escape but it liberates your mind from a lot of crap.
I am also a self sufficient sort, stemming not only from the desire to be independent, but also due to low quality and toxic nature of the food available on the market. I raise most of my own food on my 10 acre organic farm
I keep bees, harvest maple syrup, make birch beer and harvest wild berries for wines, james and medicinal purposes. I make my own candles, wine, beer, maple syrup, smoked ham, bacon and sausages, jams, breads, tomato sauce, salsa, cheeses, butter. Saurkraut, pickled vegetables, many varieites of tea, vinegars, bone broths and feed for livestock. I have a store of my own heirloom seeds that I have saved over the years and have bred some cold weather hardy tomatoes which I was this year picking after the frost. And much, much more. Interested in learning more, ask! I'll see if I can help you out.
I also raise Bernese Mountain Dogs and am a big proponent of traditional diets, for both people and animals. I highly recommend the book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price. It spells out quite scientifically how the modern diet man has accepted is what is causing all of our degenerative health problems and by observing isolated primitive cultures measured against modern society, he was able to prove it. Our birthright is to be healthy creatures, undiseased and able to reason and exist fully in this world until we die a ripe old age. We have to follow up that birthright with the proper fuel for life. And sawdust, dead food and chemicals definitely are not it. You are what you eat, I guess that sums it up. My question to you is, do you really know what you are eating?
Knowing full well the price I exact on life in order to exist bearing witness to every life that is extinguished to fuel my own (including plants my friends, who are we to levy relative importance on species? Life is life, period), I try my best to walk softly, minimize the damage I cause so that this wonderful world can exist, like it has before me, for 10,000's of years to come. As we consume life, our debt to creation increases and so I try make the most of what I comsume and waste nothing. One does find that once you stop feeling compelled to buy things, you lose interest all together. Yes, there are things we must buy to survive but a lot of the wasteful garbage being pitched to people these days is redundant, wasteful, toxic, poorly made and completely useless. People throw things out when they break instead of fixing them? The concept of the totality of our waste hardly sweeps the minds of most folk but I can imagine the heaps of garbage in the world as if all laid out in front of me and it is truly horrifying! Plastic sucks, television is a mind control device and your brain is a muscle that needs to be fed properly in order ot work right. Truth is the foundation for growth. I never eat anything I can't envision in it's natual state, nor anything I can't pronounce. Your life is the accumulated sum of all your memories, memories which, while often reactionary, are largely in your control.