by Jesse Davidson

Few experiences in life are ones you’ve dreamed, thought, and fake planned about years before they actually happen. As a musician maybe it’s playing a venue you’ve seen your favorite bands play a thousand times and always imagined it was you. Sometimes it’s just succeeding in where others couldn’t. I’ll leave that to you to figure out what that means. An event that certainly has inspired this in young musicians in particular I think is the NAMM Show. If anyone is unfamiliar, the NAMM Show (National Association of Music Merchants) is one of the music industry’s largest trade shows for musical products. Over a hundred thousand people from distributors, musicians, and attendees flock to Anaheim, California every January to pitch, buy, or oogle at any piece of music equipment imaginable from any company imaginable. It’s the music store of your dreams on steroids.

And I am currently in the middle of it. This is my account of one of the strangest people watching experiences and largest music events in the world.

Day 1: After a two-hour car ride filled with talk of flopping wieners, my friends and I finally arrived in Anaheim. From driving to the parking structure to being shuttled to the convention, something strikes me right off the bat. The freaks have spilled on to the street. Executives in suits are forced to share the sidewalk with longhaired ragamuffins as they make their way to the same location. Good. Let The Man be in touch with the people who use his products every day.

As we turn right into the convention, a wave of weird hits me. This is something I’ve always wanted to do. Thought about it. Imagined what it was like. Had a fake plan to meet players I’ve always respected. Now suddenly it would be come very real in just a few minutes. Making our way to the badge line added to it. I already start to feel a little bit of sensory overload. Suits. Squares. Hipsters. Artists. Journalists. Religious protestors. Metal-heads. Douchebags. Cool people. Everyone is here. It’s like the DMV. When I start to feel overwhelmed it hits me, I’m here too. I’m here just as much as them. Everyone else is a person just like me. If you keep that in mind, especially if you’ve never been to NAMM before, you’ll be fine and won’t be anymore overwhelmed than you already are. I begin to relax just in time for the line to move again. The whole process of waiting in line and printing my badge only took a few minutes, which was a nice surprise. Seems the folks at NAMM have things down to a science. From leaving the badge point till about 6pm at the end of the day, I started get really spacey. This wasn’t caused by any substances but by NAMM itself. If you’ve never been there or any convention for that matter, its sensory overload. There’s a band playing on the main stage, food truck, booths, a thousand people around you, protestors waving signs telling me I’m going to hell. And that’s all before you’ve even walked through the doors.

Once you walk into a main hall, you’re done. Might as well be on Mars walking around in a space suit. There’s literally so much going on, it’s insane. Plus when you realize there are three more floors to take in along with the main hall, it’s baffling to say the least. My three friends and I began to wander. All of them have been to NAMM before except me. So they had more of a solid footing than I did. Wandering, I stumbled across magazine stands. Nothing notable about this except all of them were free. Major publications like Revolver, Guitar World, etc. I felt one of those schmucks who gets excited and takes all the little soaps and shampoos in hotel rooms as I filled my backpack with about half the magazines on display. In the midst of my pilfering, I noticed a man browsing the trombones that looked very familiar, Trombone Shorty. I got excited and wanted to tell him what great job he did at the Foo Fighters show a few weeks ago. However, he looked busy and I didn’t want to bother him. About a minute later I had decided to talk to him anyway. When I walked back to where he was, I encountered another NAMM phenomenon. I tried to find him and he disappeared. This was a phenomenon that I encountered all day. The best example was when I saw Joe Walsh wandering around. My friend and I we’re one aisle over when we saw him walking fast to get to his destination. He turned the corner and vanished. Between the aisles in NAMM is a sea of people that is constantly flowing. Once someone melds back into the sea, its like trying to find a needle in a seastack. Horrible analogy but bottom line, its really hard to find people.

In the midst of my wandering to find Trombone Shorty, I met a man named Tim Waddell of Kalium Strings (formerly Circle K). He was playing a very obscure djenty looking instrument. After a brief conversation with him, I checked out their booth and found all sorts of uber-metal looking guitars. Along with that, there was Jinmo, a featured artist who attached some sort of electrodes to his brain. As he played guitar, the electrodes would stimulate his brain causing some interesting playing to happen. I didn’t actually see this although I wish I had once it was described to me. At their booth, I met Chris Cardone, a representative of Kalium. He was energetic guy with an impressive mustache. So impressive, he had giant one recreated on the side of his amp rig. He explained the process of how their strings are made and the state of the art machinery that is used to make them. Chris even let me play one of these crazy metal contraptions. Not a bad start to the day for only being there for a few hours.

The rest of the day was a blur. It was an odd experience to see people in suits drinking and conducting business transactions just mere feet away from some longhaired dreadlocked dude browsing the Orange amp booth. The best way to describe NAMM is during the middle of the day, I had stumbled on William Duvall of Alice and Chains playing at the Framus booth. Only about three people were watching him. I asked him about his practice routine and he chuckled and said he didn’t really have one. The best way he thought to improve was to practice along with records and to play with other musicians. During our conversation, I realized Devin Townsend was only about five feet away from me the whole time and didn’t even recognize him. Then Guy Pratt and Scott Reeder from Kyuss showed up out of nowhere and a signing took place. It didn’t matter though because we were all still people. We were all there as people in the music industry in one form or another. The same thing happened when I stumbled on legendary bassist Marcus Miller just playing. He was set up at the EBS booth just wailing away. When the lights went down and the announcement said politely the convention was now closed, he still kept jamming. Just being a musician and having fun. With the first day over, I can’t imagine what the next day will be like when the “freaks “ come out.

Thanks for the flask Josh.