50 Plus: Drumming up business

Editor's Note: 50 Plus is a regular special feature profiling Central Virginians ages 50 and over and focusing on a particular theme. This edition's theme is music. Click here for more 50 Plus stories.

Larry Scott’s busy schedule gives new meaning to the term “drumming up business.”

In Scott’s case, drumming is his business.

“I play more or less regularly with five different groups now,” said Scott, a Lynchburg native who has been making percussion sounds ever since he started banging on pots and pans as a child, “and I teach drums at the Lynchburg Music Center.”

Scott was a Beatles fan growing up. His favorite Beatle, however, was not drummer Ringo Starr but bassist Paul McCartney.

“I always wanted to play guitar,” he said. “In fact, I still have three guitars at home, and sometimes I’ll pull out my old Yes songbook and play some. I’m just not very good at it.”

Fortunately, he has become good enough on the the drums to be in constant demand, both as a band member and a recording session backup.

“I’ve been in rock bands, soul bands, jazz bands, a little bit of everything,” Scott said.

At the moment, his two primary gigs are the Paddy Dougherty Quartet (and a smaller spinoff) and the Roanoke-based Lenny Marcus Trio.

“What I like about Lenny is that he’s very inclusive with the rest of the band members,” Scott said. “When we go into a recording session, he tells us, ‘If you don’t like something, just say so, and we’ll work on it.’ He knows how important it is that the whole band sounds good.”

As for Paddy Dougherty, she and Scott go back 15 years to the founding of Main Street Rhythm & Blues, a band that became to Lynchburg, in the words of one reviewer, “as the Dave Matthews Band is to Char-lottesville.”

Scott is well aware that many people see the drums as the weak link in a musical group – an instrument anyone can play.

“It’s true that there are some basic beats most people can do,” he said, “but it gets really complicated as you progress. You’ve got both hands and both feet occupied, all at the same time, and that takes a lot of coordination.”

It has only been in recent years, in fact, that Scott has become completely comfortable as a performer in his own skin – or beating on his own skins.

Although he generally stays within a 50-mile radius of home these days, Scott earlier paid his dues with touring bands. Naturally, he has a repertoire of funny stories from those days.

Like the time when his bass drum kept sliding away from him down a slanted stage and had to be tied to the rest of his drum kit.

“I had this vision of me and all the drums going over the edge of the stage together,” he recalled.

On another occasion, Scott was summoned to Puerto Rico, of all places, to fill a drummer vacancy.

“The problem was,” he said, “the drummer they had didn’t know he was being fired. I showed up at the hotel with my drum kit, and he walked in with his surfboard and said, ‘What’s going on?’ It was kind of awkward.”

His Paul McCartney worship far behind him, Scott now admits to being obsessed by drums.

“I’ve had so many drum sets,” he said. “I wanted to try everything I could.”

For drums, he has learned, are not as static as most people believe.

“Wood changes as it gets older,” he said, “and every drum has a sound of its own.”

Which could also describe Larry Scott.