Bon Tempe - Profiles in Cacophony: Funky Drummers

Scott gets Hot

Ever since Spinal Tap created the self-combusting drummer, it's largely been expected that a band will forever cycle through drummers like so many vacuum cleaner bags. Truth is that this perfidious behavior was SOP long before Spinal Tap made it terminal. For Bon Tempe, there's never been any obvious firing/hiring activity where the band gave one drummer his walking papers, (or in more extreme cases vodka laced with gasoline followed by a particularly sparky joint) while sending a new one in for drug screening tests. I guess you could say, true to form for the times, drummer changes happened as organically and naturally as a hippie taking his monthly bath.

The original Bon Tempe drummer was The Corn Nibbler, aka Nibs (legally Ken Corsiglia). Imagine for a second that people called you The Corn Nibbler, so when you walked into a room people would say "Hey, here comes The Corn Nibbler". Would you get the urge to go nibble on some corn? Or you were hailed with the short version, as in "hey Nibs, pass that bottle over here". Do you think such a nickname would have been assigned to anybody named Corsiglia? Perhaps we should Google Corsiglia, call a few of the results and ask them "has anybody ever called you The Corn Nibbler, or Nibs for short?" Doubtful we would get a positive response. In other words, anybody who gets a nickname like that has got to be a nut to begin with, and it was Nib's nuttiness that earned him his crazy names. He was nutty on the traps too, and had a huge impact on the Bon Tempe sound when we got started. While I don't think any of us had heard of Spike Jones when we were 17, Nibs had Spike Jones in his DNA and hence a signature sound that was fun, inventive, perky. But as best I can remember it  he was a very busy, popular, party kind-of-guy and had better things to do than music. Then there was Nellie pestilence that irked Corn Nibbler who just had no interest in the level of seriousness about the music that the rest of the band intended to pursue so we parted company.

The Corn Nibbler

Next came Scott Kohler, who played on the sole Bon Tempe album and will be playing at 19 Broadway on Mar. 3. and has played on most of our "raw onion" gigs since 2004. Scott was indeed the serious jazz drummer Nellie, Alby and I were looking for (nobody was quite sure what Aches was looking for); a big fan of Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, and Art Blakey as well as the funk masters Dave Garibaldi, Steve Gadd, Bernard Purdy, Clyde Stubblefield etc. Biggest problem with Scott was, and still is...NO NICKNAME! So frankly I don't know how we're gonna talk about Scott which is probably ok 'cuz Scott has always had this aura of scariness about him like he would rather be bashing you on the head with those drumsticks instead of the snare drum. I mean, really. Check it out:

Badass Honey Drummer

Finally, there was the fabulous Sleepy Hacienda, who actually did not earn that moniker until much later while with Call Me Bwana, my "signature" band who's antics are sure to be chronicled in another blog where we get closer to releasing our Best O' Bwana compilation some time later this year and gearing up for the obligatory Bay Area tour. I will have my novel Hack out by that time too so the blogwaves are sure to be humming with bullshit from your favorite renaissance dork. But meanwhile we have Bon Tempe to stick a fork in, and Sleepy Hacienda, aka Dave Casini, (who was also known as Dog Weenie thanks to Walt Dickson and the Sky Blue Band) probably played more Bon Tempe gigs than Nibs or Scott.

Sleepy Hacienda at a Call Me Bwana photoshoot

But I am going to save the legend of Sleepy Hacienda, as well as the stories of all the various iterations of Bon Tempe that our man Nellie kept throwin' out there to see if they stuck, for tonight I am too downhearted after going another year without winning an Oscar. Damn.