Jim has a deep family history that revolves around Slingerland drums dating back to when Slingerland was a guitar company. His great uncles and father were long time employees of the company running the woodshop, and Jim worked there in his high school years during the night shifts. Did you know “The Ludwig Boys” used to go through the dumpsters at Slingerland to try and figure out what they were working on? Jim shares a number of great stories that only someone on the inside of the company would know! Nowadays, Jim is the founder of Chicago Drum – a company that prides itself on building drums in the vintage Slingerland style, but with all the modern innovations. Check out the amazing kits they build at Chicago Drum at www.chicagodrum.com We touch on the company history a little bit in this episode, but I’ll be doing a full history of Slingerland in the coming episodes so stay tuned for that! (P.S. This was the first interview I did for the podcast back in April 2018, so some of the dates we talk about in this episode for various drum shows have already passed but you can catch them next year) Find me on instagram at @drumhistory_podcast for great historical drum videos that I post daily. Subscribe, rate, and leave a review if you like the show, thanks for listening! -Bart