Music Style Just like the name suggests.

Group Members Peter Neff plays bass hammered dulcimer. Erik Grotz plays electric guitar. Jim Thomson plays drums. Scott Hudgins plays the bass guitar.

Instruments Guitar, Drums, Bass Hammered Dulcimer & the Bass Guitar

Press Reviews "David Lynch visits Twin Peaks. He commissions the Log Lady to make him an instrument from the wood of her psychic lumber. She presents him with a hulking apparatus of spectacular machination -– a six-foot-long bass-hammered dulcimer. Lynch is pleased with its sound -– forboding and majestic, dramatic and austere. Special Agent Dale Cooper, low on funds to support his voracious consumption of cherry pie, decides to steal the dulcimer and hock it for some quick cash. As Lynch dismally searches the grounds of the Great Northern Hotel for his lost instrument, Peter Neff casually strolls into a pawn shop in town and purchases the mighty dulcimer. He then returns to Richmond, teaches himself to play the medieval monster, and eventually settles into a band with old friends Erik Grotz (electric guitar) and Jim Thompson (drums). They call the instrumental project Tulsa Drone. OK, that first part is completely untrue. The dulicmer is actually from Inwood, West Virginia. Neff bought it from a man named Sam Rizzetta 11 years ago. But the aesthetic is similar. Tulsa Drone seems to channel the all the gravity and menace of Lynch's cracked TV drama into their instruments, releasing mean and beautiful soundscapes that shimmer and reverberate. They call it "twang-noir." The project was begun by Neff and Grotz in February 2001 and has been confined to their downtown practice space until recently. Thompson joined four months ago, and the result, says Grotz, was something like sonic nirvana. "There are only a handful of drummers in Richmond that I'd consider playing with," says Grotz. "It's an honor for Pete and I to play with our friend Jim. We're really floored with how things are working." If you are a connoisseur of the local underground scene of the last 10 years, you may already be familiar with these itinerant musicians. Neff brought his dulcimer to The Hard Ride, an avant garde quintet specializing in slow and moody renditions of film music and big band standards, and Doppler, a project that boasted two dulcimer players. Grotz moved to Richmond in the late '80s, paying his obligatory punk dues in Anse, then playing brief stints in Aurora Paralysis and Eggs. And Thompson has played drums for half of the city's bands, from Bio Ritmo to Patrick Phelan. "A lot of people from that scene have come and gone," says Grotz. "It's been a long time since I've done anything musically, too. It's a nice period of life to come back to and spend more time." Tulsa Drone's music could provide the soundtrack for any number of scenarios, driving through the Tennessee hills or lying awake at 4 a.m., unable to sleep. "I suppose our influences are Southern in nature," Grotz muses, "But they take on weird shifts." Italian folk songs, dirges, Brian Eno loops, ambient scores, and thundering barnstormers all assume a metallic resonance when performed. The dulcimer sounds like a gutted piano chiming out in reverberating warning. "There are some beautiful tones," says Neff, "but there's always that undercurrent of menace." The guitar often lays down a subtle tiptoe of bass notes or trills solemn Latin rhythms around the dulcimer, and the drums measure out stark and hollow strikes in 4/4 stealth. Often, as you're listening to the music, your ears play tricks on you -– telling you the telephone is ringing, or in this case, as I am writing this, that I have new email. These sounds are all phantasms, products of the dulcimer's natural and mercurial distortions. Don't expect to see Tulsa Drone playing Alley Katz or Hole in the Wall anytime soon. They're sticking to the underground. "We don't have the recuperative powers of youth," laughs Neff. They're also keeping their day jobs. "We don't want to be the hot new thing," Grotz says. "We're not in it to make money. We're more blue-collar musicians. We want to be playing somewhere where it's fun and unconventional and conducive to good sound. We want to do this correctly." Article by Kate Bredimus, Richmond.com, May 30, 2002

Location Richmond, VA - USA

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