Drumming up the past: Chris Butler’s vintage kit brings back memories; see it at PorchRokr

Akron musician Chris Butler can’t wait to show off his new drum kit Saturday at Highland Square’s PorchRokr festival.

Actually, it’s an old kit, but it will make him feel like a kid again.

The nostalgia will be strong when he plays at 4 p.m. with Dave Rich and His Enablers at 724 Payne Ave.

Butler, 74, has spent a year re-creating the first kit he owned in high school, the same drums that the FBI impounded following the National Guard shootings at Kent State University on May 4, 1970.

We’ll get to that in a moment.

Butler searched online and bought vintage equipment with a rare color wrap that was available for only a limited time in the 1960s. After lovingly assembling, restoring and tuning the pieces, he couldn’t believe his ears.

“I was just amazed at how incredible these drums sound for an ‘old, unhip kit,'” he said.

Butler, a former member of Akron’s Tin Huey and The Numbers Band, is perhaps best known for The Waitresses, a new-wave group whose songs include early MTV staple “I Know What Boys Like,” the holiday favorite “Christmas Wrapping” and the theme song of the 1980s CBS series “Square Pegs” starring Ohio native Sarah Jessica Parker.

More: ‘Christmas Wrapping,’ an unlikely hit for The Waitresses, spreads cheer 40 years later

Before enabling Dave Rich, Butler played with Half Cleveland, Purple Knif and other groups. Lately, he’s been thinking a lot about The Disciples, his 1960s band in high school.

Rock ’n’ roll memories

Growing up in Moreland Hills, Butler used to listen to a transistor radio in bed when he should have been sleeping. He recalls tuning into Cleveland stations like WIXY, KYW and WKYC, but his favorite was WBZ in Boston.

“For some reason, WBZ got the English records weeks before any of the Cleveland stations,” Butler said.

He started playing acoustic guitar and then went electric after seeing The Beatles perform on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964. But his life-changing moment was when The Who appeared on “Shindig!” in 1965.

It made him want to switch instruments.

“That just knocked me out,” Butler recalled. “And I said, ‘OK, I gotta play drums.’ I had to be Keith Moon.”

Butler pleaded with his father, Sam, until he bought a kit for about $200 at Sistek Music on Broadway Avenue in Cleveland.

“The hip drums at the time were Ludwig, but my dad got me these ugly Slingerlands,” Butler said. “It was a bass drum, a 12-inch rack tom, a floor tom and a snare drum.”

Today, Butler likens the shiny color wrap to “shop sweepings.”

“That’s the wrap called Capri Pearl,” he said. “It’s either really cool or really ugly, depending on your point of view. I thought it was hideously ugly when I was a kid.”

But darned if those drums didn’t grow on him. Playing along to records, he honed his chops and learned song after song.

“I drove my parents crazy,” he said.

He joined Orange High classmates in The Disciples, a band that included singer Chip Fitzgerald, guitarists Donny Baker, J.C. Hoskens and John Burrus, bassist Al Parker and saxophonist Buddy Vincent.

Butler lugged his Slingerlands from gig to gig. The group enjoyed success on the teen club circuit in Northeast Ohio, playing popular hits of the day.

When he left home in 1967 to attend Kent State, the drums didn’t fit too well in a dorm room.

Jamming with Jeff Miller

In 1970, Butler met Jeff Miller, a Plainview, New York, native who had recently transferred from Michigan State.

“Jeff and I hit it off because we were music fans,” he said.

Miller played drums, too. Butler lent his kit to Miller, who had space in the Summit Street house that he rented with roommates, and they listened to Grateful Dead records together, trading off on drums and guitar.

Butler doesn’t remember Miller’s talent level, but thinks he was “good enough.”

“I know he loved it and I know it was a big passion,” Butler said. “After school, he’d go home and play every day.”

Butler’s kit was at Miller’s home for a couple of months.

“He played them until he got murdered,” Butler said.

Miller was one of four students shot to death May 4, 1970, when Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire during a Vietnam War protest on campus.

Butler, a demonstrator, witnessed the horror of that day and suffered the tragic loss of a friend. Later that summer, when the numbness began to recede, he tried to retrieve his drums from Miller’s home.

They weren’t there.

“All their possessions were impounded by the FBI, including the drums,” Butler said. “After many, many houndings of the FBI, I did not get my kit back until the fall of 1970. They only gave me three drums back. They kept the floor tom. And I don’t know why.”

The agency never did return it. He schlepped around the remaining drums after graduating in 1972. When he lived in a Brady Lake cabin, he used the rack tom as a doorbell. Thump thump.

He lost track of two drums as his career progressed. He might have sold them. He doesn’t recall. But they’re gone.

Drum donated to Kent State

Butler and his girlfriend Beth Becker restored the remaining original drum and donated it in 2021 to Special Collections and Archives at Kent State.

Alison Caplan, new director of the May 4 Visitors Center, said that drum will be on view Aug. 28 through Sept. 22 at Taylor Hall as part of an exhibit titled “Snapshots in Time: The Lives of the Four Students.” The display will feature Miller’s personal record collection, including The Rolling Stones, The Doors, The Byrds, The Animals, Vanilla Fudge and Simon & Garfunkel.

The center has invited Butler to speak at 6 p.m. Sept. 21 to discuss Miller and listen to his records.

“It should be fabulous,” Caplan said. “I’m excited.”

The donation to Kent State could have been the end of the story, but Butler felt a “spasm of nostalgia” last year. He decided to put his high school kit back together, scouring the internet for vintage Slingerlands in Capri Pearl.

“It took a long time to find all the pieces,” he said. “A lot of times you’d have to buy almost the whole kit to get the one thing that you need.”

Butler doubled up on rack toms and floor toms, making it a six-piece kit in that rare color.

He had to remanufacture some items to make it work. Joe Nemes of Nemes Machine reproduced a couple of parts to make the legs stand up.

Butler’s girlfriend Beth, a photographer, took a high-resolution image so a drum wrap company could fabricate Capri Pearl for the inlays on the hoops of the bass drum.

“I was able to get a big sheet of it,” he said. “I carefully cut it in strips and glued it into the hoops of the drum to bring it all back.”

‘They sound fabulous’

Butler didn’t keep track of how much he paid for everything “because I was too terrified to add it,” but estimates he spent several thousand dollars. When the project was finished, though, it all was worth it.

“The thing that really surprised me is how good these drums sound,” he said. “They sound fabulous.”

And you know what? The Capri Pearl that his younger self thought was ugly is actually kind of beautiful.

He can’t wait to record with these drums, and he’s looking forward to playing them Saturday at Highland Square’s PorchRokr.

“They’re going to see the light of day at that show,” he said.

Dave Rich and His Enablers features Dave Rich on lead guitar, Mike Wilkinson on rhythm guitar, David Giffels on bass … and Chris Butler on the hippest Slingerland drums you’ll ever see.

“It’s so much fun to be in this band at the grand old age of antique,” Butler said.

Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com

More: The ultimate guide to Akron's PorchRokr festival 2023 in Highland Square

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Akron musician Chris Butler assembles drum kit from 1960s