I just happened to find out that yesterday was Pete “LaRoca” Sims’ 87th birthday. When I played with Dave Liebman and Bob Lenox at the Berlin club Schlot in 1999 (at that time still in the backyard on Kastanienallee), Dave strongly recommended that I look into Pete LaRoca and said that he was one of the key drummers. Until then I only knew him as the drummer on the Sonny Rollins records and had little idea what he had done since then. And of course, when Dave Liebman tells you what to do, you do it. And indeed, it was an eye-opener to find out how Mr. Sims had found his own unique way when it came to the music. And I have been listening very closely ever since. I even tried to get a model of the sticks he played back then, according to Steve Swallow they were Pro-Mark Pee Wees.
2012 was a tough year for me, I had almost no gigs and when I was invited to go to NY as part of Intakt’s residency at the Stone, I decided to take a lesson from Mr. Sims. I wanted to find out how he managed to leave the music business, especially after playing with the best. He told me that he hadn’t left the music business, but that the music business had left him. He had made it clear at the time that he wasn’t interested in playing free music with no time or backbeat music, and he had hardly any jobs as a drummer. He drove a taxi for 5 years in the worst time for it in New York and asked me if I had seen the movie Taxi Driver. When I said I had, he said the reality was much worse. He didn’t know if he would get home alive before every shift and said goodbye to his wife as if it could be the last time. He wrote the songs for his album Turkish Women at Bath in taxis while waiting for customers. After a while he realized he couldn’t go on like this and enrolled in law school. His work as a lawyer didn’t allow him any time to make music for years, but as soon as it was possible again, he was back on stage. His pride and joy was that, as a lawyer, he helped abolish New York’s cabaret card system, which had been hurting musicians for decades. We were talking about sound a lot and he showed me his Regal Tip sticks with nylon tips and said he likes them because they allow his ride cymbal to be heard over the band, even when he plays it softly. We also played some drums, of course, and he seemed to like what he heard; his last words to me were, “You didn’t really need a lesson.
And I am glad to say that 2013 was a very good year.