Chronicle Herald Article
Marching to a different drum...Chris Wallace, president of Phoenix Percussion Ltd. and a veteran pipe band drummer, demonstrates the Talon drum harness his Nova Scotia firm has developed and is marketing globally.
(BEVERLEY WARE / South Shore Bureau)
South Shore drummer plans to market new harness globally By BRUCE ERSKINE Business Reporter | 6:26 AM
Chris Wallace is hoping that his firm's innovative drum harness, the Talon, will have pipe band percussionists beating a tattoo to his door.
"It's a much more comfortable way of carrying drums," the president and CEO of Phoenix Percussion Ltd. said in a recent interview from his home in Port Mouton, Queens County. "It conforms to different body shapes."
The Talon harness is made of nylon webbing and articulating metal plates that distribute the weight of pipe band snare and tenor drums evenly across the body. Unlike rigid harnesses, the lightweight Talon allows the drum to sit against the body and it can be concealed underneath uniforms, making it more esthetically appealing for pipe bands.
"It's completely unobtrusive," he said, adding that the Talon can also be folded easily and stored in a drum box.
Mr. Wallace, 45, is an artist who was born in Dundee, Scotland. He spent time in Nova Scotia as a child and emigrated to the province with his wife in 1994 after completing degrees in graphic arts and fine arts from, respectively, the College of Commerce in Dundee and the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design.
As well as being a painter, Mr. Wallace is also a world-class pipe band drummer. He began drumming in 1974 with the Dartmouth Boys Pipe and Drum Band, was a member of Dundee's Tayside Police Band that won a world pipe band championship in 1991, and is now a member and instructor with the Dartmouth and District Pipe Band.
Phoenix Percussion, which includes business partners Bill Mackie, an engineer and professional model-maker, and Sandy Roberton, who owns a landscaping firm, was originally established to manufacture customized, lightweight drum rims.
But Mr. Wallace said the firm is focusing on the Talon harness, whose development was prompted by back problems he suffered that were associated with the increased weight of today's drums, which use heavier hardware to withstand the higher tension of high-tech Kevlar heads.
"I wanted to offer an alternative," he said. "I'm amazed it hadn't been done before." Mr. Wallace said the Talon, which has been in the works for almost three years, met with some skepticism from the tradition-bound pipe band fraternity.
But that changed after a provincial trade mission to Scotland earlier this year when the harness was adopted by Glasgow's well-known Scottish Power pipe band and by Scottish drummer Stevie Kilbride, who worked with Madonna on her 2004 Re-Invention tour.
"He thought that we were onto something great," said Mr. Wallace. Marc Servant, drum sergeant with the Arbroath Pipe Band from Oklahoma City, Okla., spent two years looking for a new drum harness before stumbling upon the Talon via the Internet.
"I'm old school so the single shoulder sling was what I started with on and still felt the most comfortable with," he said in an e-mail interview. "Unfortunately, as I got older, the single shoulder sling became more and more uncomfortable and difficult to wear for any length of time."
Mr. Servant said the fixed harnesses he's used stabilized the drum but were even harder on his lower back, which prompted him to seek out alternatives. "In the process of searching, I came across, rather by chance, the Phoenix Percussion website and decided to give the sling a try. It was a little more expensive than other products but seemed to maintain the look and feel of the traditional single shoulder sling but with a much more robust carrying system.
"In the two months since I've used it, it has proved to be very comfortable and greatly reduced both shoulder and lower back fatigue," he said. "It still has the traditional look of a single shoulder sling, i.e. the natural movement of the drum on the leg, which I find characterizes a pipe band as opposed to the carriers, which I feel really make the players look too much like military marching bands."
Mr. Servant said the Arbroath band is still test driving the Talon, but he expects that the Nova Scotia product will eventually replace the band's drum harnesses. Phoenix Percussion is largely self-financed, but the firm has received a $23,813 ACOA loan to aid in marketing the harness, which sells for $270. Rigid harnesses sell for $150 to $600, he said.
Mr. Wallace said the company hopes to make further global market inroads by attending the upcoming world pipe band championships in Scotland in August. "Sales are not huge, but the potential is great," he said, adding that the business is also looking at tapping into the lucrative marching band market. "It's 10 times the pipe band world."
(berskine@herald.ca)
