Todd Hayden
In the beginning
When I was a child, my older cousin had a blue Vistalite set. He played it with no front head and he had a blue felt pillow inside. Naturally, I assumed that was for me to lay my head on while he played. I could watch him through the drums! Two decades later, I purchased his set and immediately began refurbishing it and adding more drums.
Greg Hayden & Vintage
After a few years of collecting and restoring several more Vistalite sets, it was time to put them to good use. Greg Hayden, another cousin of mine, needed a drummer to perform his music. I had the drums, that’s for sure. The “Man’s House” was the perfect place to practice. Working a full job, writing songs, getting a band together to learn the music, booking gigs, and raising a family is not easy. If it was, everybody would do it. Greg pulled it off and made it happen. He was fortunate to find the young and talented Clay Wilson to play lead guitar, and his old friend Cary Riche’ stepped up on bass. Those were great times, but they were not nearly long enough.
Verge Of Truth
One day I happened upon the Bandmix web site and noticed Frank Caronna with his wife Virginia. Frank wrote his own music that he performed accompanied by Ginny. After listening to some of his songs, I thought to myself, “these guys need a good drummer”. As luck would have it, their home was five minutes from my office! They invited me over and I sat in on an electric drum kit they had set up in their garage. We jammed a little bit to a couple of covers they did, and we knew right away that we were going to be a band. Frank looked at me and asked “say, do you happen to know of a good lead guitarist?” I said “no, but I know a great one”. As you can see by the pictures, good times followed.
Old Zion Hill Baptist Church Praise And Worship Team
It wasn’t long before I had a new wife and four kids at home. So, my rock-n-roll drummer life soon came to an end. I played some for our hometown church in Amite, Louisiana, but the wife liked to get around and meet people. She visited Old Zion Hill Baptist Church in Independence, Louisiana and liked it a lot. I visited it too and felt the same…. but I also felt it lacked a little something…. So, I introduced myself to the leader of the praise and worship team, Regina Glascock. When I mentioned that I played the drums, she asked me “do you happen to have a drum set?”…….
Over the past few years I’ve spent a lot of my spare time (which I’ve had a bit more of since the Covid pandemic began) building and restoring acrylic drums. Because my collection is so large – two hundred acrylic drums total, give or take – I have to store them disassembled and nested inside of each other. This is safe because the acrylic shells do not get scratched as there are no screws or anything. All of the drums in one set fit inside of the bass drum. I store the lugs and other parts separately in sealed containers, coating the metal with silicon spray to help prevent oxidation. I’ll set up a kit in a spare room in our house and play on it a little before moving it all to my church. I take down the one I’ve been playing and disassemble it for storage. Then I’ll set up another kit at home….. You get the picture. The time that one set stays on the stage varies a bit, but is usually a couple of months, but sometimes shorter. I played my Black Red Black Pattern A Vistalite set at church for first time just before Holloween 2021. Next came my Blue Vistalite with Blue Cracked Glass wrap just before Christmas. Then on to my Clear Vistalites with Rainbow Sparkle wrap for the first of January 2022. My Clear and Red Pattern C Vistalite Mach Lug kit with the American Flag bass head is set up and ready to go on stage next, but I think I’ll hold out on that one until the 4th of July. However, Independence Day is too far away, so now I’ll have to come up with something else……