Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work · Nick Petrella and Andy Heise

#357: Jack DiIanni (Musician & Owner of Volkwein's Music) (pt. 1 of 2)

·38 min·2 clips

Benny Minack taught 20-year-old Jack DiIanni to replace flashy drumming with musical “poetry.”

Volkwein's Music gets the first word. The cold open presents the shop as a long-running full-service music business, with instruments, accessories, music, and a repair department the host and professional musicians trust. Then the conversation settles into workbench mode. The host asks what success looked like at different points, and the guest answers by talking more about learning than milestones. He calls himself lucky, and that feels like the thread of the story. Older musicians mattered. So did his father's connections, and the chance to soak up information from people tied to rudimental drumming. Bill Hammond comes up as a reference point. The guest says his father connected him with Tom LaFlame after a family friend had studied with Bill. None of this lands as flashy. The useful part, to him, was getting that information into his hands when he was a kid. He talks carefully about natural drumming. He contrasts that idea with the Moeller Method, while still respecting Moeller's eye for what worked in certain players. The label is where he gets particular. In his telling, one of Moeller's students said Moeller was disappointed when Ludwig published the book under the Moeller Method name, because Moeller thought the ideas were about natural playing, not about him. That point sticks. Success starts to sound less like owning a technique and more like recognizing efficient motion when somebody shows it to you. The host mostly gives him room. By the end, even rest is part of the routine: his father's habit of coming home, sleeping, then getting back up. The warm-up sleep before bed joke keeps it dry and loose.

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