Street Drum Corps brings high-energy show to Grape Festival
The Grape Festival will be marching to a different beat this year. And probably dancing and humming along, too.
A new act at this year’s event is the Street Drum Corps, which will be playing throughout the festival all weekend.
“It’s a really high-energy, highly interactive street drumming show,” said Frank Zummo, who founded the group with Bobby Alt and Adam Alt in Los Angeles in 2004.
Instead of traditional drums, the percussionists use trash cans, oil drums, beer kegs, five-gallon and paint buckets, along with other “found items.”
But with these tools, the Street Drum Corps can produce a sound that rivals any traditional drum corps, Zummo said. In fact, if the audience closes their eyes they can imagine they’re listening to a whole drum troupe, he said.
“It’s really musical,” he said.
Because they use nontraditional items for their drums, the Street Drum Corps has been compared to Stomp. While they use similar tools, their sound is pretty different, Zummo said. Part of that is because they have three members instead of Stomp’s nine; part is from the musicians’ backgrounds.
“We have more of a punk rock, raw edge to it,” he said.
Zummo is the drummer for the punk-influenced rock band Sum 41, and has also worked with the bands TheStart, Julien-K and Dead By Sunrise. Bobby Alt drums for the punk band S.T.U.N. and the indie Faculty X. Adam Alt is a member of the band Circus Minor.
Street Drum Corps gives the three of them a chance to make music that’s about the music itself, without lyrics or a political message, Zummo said.
“At the end of the day, it’s just music,” he said. “Whether you understand English or not, you can understand it.”
They’ve been able to play with creating different sounds and a show that’s different from anything else they do. Street Drum Corps was meant to be more experimental and artistic than the more traditional rock bands Zummo and the Alts have been involved with.
The trio have toured the world, playing at venues from local fairs like the Grape Festival to half-time shows and pre-game concerts to playing on the Vans Warped Tour and performing with bands like Linkin Park, Paramore, 30 Seconds to Mars and Audioslave.
The group’s versatility is part of the fun, Zummo said.
“We’ll do a fair, and then a halftime show, and then a Halloween show all in the same week,” he said.
This year, they’ve hit a new record with 21 different fairs. The Grape Festival will be one of their last in the season, before kicking off their Halloween shows.
“It’s been amazing, just doing all these fairs and festivals on the West Coast,” he said.
At the Grape Festival, audiences can catch the Street Drum Corps several times a day on all four days. They’ll be offering up a punk drum show that gives the audience a chance to get involved.
“Babies to grandparents love it. It’s a show for the whole family,” Zummo said.
Street Drum Corps had a great season on the fair circuit this year, he said, and they’re hoping to have a fantastic time at the Grape Festival.
“We’re really excited. This is our first time in Lodi,” he said.