(lively music) (upbeat percussion music) (upbeat percussion music continues) (upbeat percussion music continues) (lively music) - Music has always been a way to express myself, and I don't, you know, I don't, I can't, again, there's a lot of things I really can't put my finger on about a lot of this stuff.

My dad bought me a little djembe at Gurney Mills Mall near Chicago.

I used to play that along with the Incubus "S.C.I.E.N.C.E."

album.

And that is when I found the djembe.

And I wanna say that point in my life kind of changed the direction of my life.

I met kids to play music with, I toured the country a little bit with them, and eventually, you know, 20 years later, I'm building the instrument myself.

I've been doing this since I was about 16 years old.

When my first drum broke, I gave it to somebody to have it fixed, and it was given back a year later unfixed.

So I was a little frustrated, and decided that, you know, I should just, worst case scenario, if I tear it apart and I can't get it back together, it's still just a broken drum.

But I tore it apart, and realized that there was really not a whole lot to it.

Light bulb went off when I was 16.

Started maintenance in my own equipment in the band that I was playing with for years.

And then probably six years ago, something like that, I was wanting to do, get a another side gig, but I wanted to be at home with my kids more.

But then I went to go repair one of my drums, and the light bulb went off.

I was like, "The reason I know how to do this is 'cause no one around me does it."

(lively music) In those repairs, I got in, and one of them needed to be sanded down.

So I sanded down that repair.

And when I did, and I reoiled it, I saw some of the most beautiful wood I've ever seen in my life.

And that's when I, like, I knew I was hooked.

Between the sound and then the material, like, I was hooked.

I was made a small Facebook page for doing repairs, and before I knew it, I had a dozen drums sitting in my house.

And then I kinda knew, like, all right, this is cool.

This is something I can take seriously, you know what I mean?

And from there, it just grew.

(lively music) I always try to use the best quality material that I can, the really hard, very hard woods.

And just subsequently, they have some of the most beautiful grains I've ever seen in my life.

And if I would like to use the best material in the world, I need to get it outta West Africa.

(lively music) I will never look away from the quality of the wood that comes outta Africa, and I will always be a carpenter, so I'll always wanna create with the best materials that my hands, you know, can get.

It comes from an understanding of these people.

This is what they use to eat, this is how they feed their families, this is how their cultures thrive.

So I absolutely want to give back to that side of things, always just out of respect and understanding of what's going on.

So this facet of my company, the importing side, will always be a part of things to constantly be giving back to the root in which it came from.

I'll always try to move forward in carving my own pieces, because there's just so much creativity in it.

It's fun to just open up that log and see what kind of present is inside there waiting for you, you know what I mean?

It totally just, it'll speak to you while you're cutting it, and it's a pretty neat experience.

(lively music) I do have some pretty big plans.

I wanna offer prebuilt drums outta Africa, and then I wanna continue to turn my different exotic woods and locally-harvested woods.

I'm gonna start importing blanks of these exotic woods where it would more or less just be this, just about two inches thick, where I can take those exotic woods and put them on the lathe, and get the shapes that I would like with the exotic wood.

So that way it kind of helps me carve a little niche in the market of a product that you really can't get anywhere else, but through River Pirate Percussion.

(lively music) To see people's faces, their lives being changed.

Now I've been selling drums for, you know, eight or nine years now, and I've built lasting forever relationships with my customers, and it's to see what it's doing for them, and to know what it's done for me.

I ain't gonna stop.

(lively music) (lively percussion music)