Hollister drummer heading to Memphis for blues competition
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Baldhead
”
Fred Rautmann has been waiting his whole life for an opportunity
to make it in the music industry. For someone who picked up the
drums for the first time at the age of 22, he’s well on his way to
achieving his dream and next month he and the band he performs
with, the Lara Price Blues Band, will have their opportunity to be
heard when they perform at the International Blues Challenge, in
Tennessee.
Hollister drummer heading to Memphis for blues competition
“Baldhead” Fred Rautmann has been waiting his whole life for an opportunity to make it in the music industry. For someone who picked up the drums for the first time at the age of 22, he’s well on his way to achieving his dream and next month he and the band he performs with, the Lara Price Blues Band, will have their opportunity to be heard when they perform at the International Blues Challenge, in Tennessee.
Rautmann understands a thing or two about the blues. He has faced the doldrums of an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. life of construction work followed by long nights of performing wherever he could. Sometimes he’d be out until after 1 a.m. and then have to get up at 5:30 a.m. the next morning to start all over again.
“When I started playing, I gave myself 10 years to go pro,” Rautmann said. “I don’t know what being a professional means, but seven or eight years after I set that goal I found myself sitting on a stage at B.B. King’s House of Blues in L.A. and for a guy who just kinda picked the drums up, that’s pretty cool.”
Rautmann met Lara Price at JJ’s Blues, a bar in San Jose, seven years ago. It was during an open jam session, according to Rautmann. Price and another member of the band, Jack Cannon, had been performing together. The fourth member of their band was a then-18-year-old who asked to sit in with the band and ended up blowing everyone away. Her name is Laura Chavez.
Since that time, Price and her band have performed all over San Jose, San Francisco and Marin hoping to gain more experience and build some contacts within the music industry.
In October, the band was one of 14 that competed to represent the Sacramento Blues Society at the 2007 International Blues Competition in Memphis, Tenn.
“We’d gotten to know the Sacramento Blues Society through a benefit show we took part in at Grass Valley,” Rautmann said. “They suggested we enter the contest and we blew the competition away. Everyone’s timing was impeccable.”
The winners of the International Blues Challenge band competition will receive $1,500 cash, but the real prize is that the winning band will get to play every big blues event in the United States during the following year.
Though the band is on the verge of the big time, Rautmann still listens to plenty of other musicians. Rautmann’s influences as a drummer are varied, but he respects and appreciates anyone who is putting music out on the radio and continues to do so.
“I also really like Steve Gad,” Rautmann said. “He’s a studio musician and when I had my first show I went out and bought a new drum set and bought a video by him. In the video, he said he doesn’t play the same song the same way twice. He just plays what he feels is right at that moment.”
The band will have to raise all traveling money on their own to pay for transportation, food, lodging and any other expenses they acquire along the way. Rautmann estimated costs for the trip around $7,000. In order to subsidize their expenses the band will have a fundraiser concert Friday, Jan. 26, at Paine’s Restaurant starting at 8 p.m. There will be a $10 cover charge and the band will play for three hours. The band will have a raffle between sets.
Patrick O’Donnell can be reached at [email protected].
