It all started at George’s Drum Shop, my retail store in Jackson Mississippi from 1985 - 1987. Joe Partridge was my right hand man there, doing minor repair and refurbishing jobs like taking the old wrap off of drums and re-wrapping them (actually burning the wrap off of the old volatile pre-OSHA drums - the more sadistic customers wanted to be called when we did that so they could come watch!) Joe would also drill holes to put new hardware on some of the customers’ drums. We didn’t actually build any drums at that store, per se, just sold typical name brand drums and repaired then. Joe and I would start building drums separately in the years after that first shop .closed. But, I had some foil stickers made that looked like drum badges with the name of the store and a cool looking drum. So that was as far as we got with the drum building in those first years - badges!