Too Many Drummers likes to play coffee shops, but there is one little problem: the drums.
"One of the challenges we have is Collin and I like to play loud — too loud for coffee shops," lead singer and guitarist David Abbott says of himself and the band's drummer, Collin Berner. "There's this thing about drummers: They kind of set the ceiling for a band's sound, so however loud he plays, we all have to be that loud to be heard."
And when you're in a relatively small room like a coffee shop and it starts getting loud, "that's no fun for anyone," multi-instrumentalist Josh Dahm says.
Fortunately for the band, small rooms have not been a concern lately.
Too Many Drummers recently spent a few days playing at the Ichthus Festival in Wilmore. On the opening day, the group was one of nine acts in the Ascenxion Scout Competition. Then, on the festival's closing day, the band took the main stage as a reward for winning another competition before Ichthus.
Next Saturday, a month in the spotlight will continue for Too Many Drummers when the group opens for Sanctus Real and Tenth Avenue North at Summer Slam at Winchester's George Rogers Clark High School.
For the band, Ichthus and Summer Slam are chances to get in front of audiences that otherwise might not hear it or anyone like it.
The men in Too Many Drummers describe their sound as "melodic art rock."
To a newcomer, it can sound kind of jam band-oriented, as they launch into Reckless Love Trilogy, which the group played at the Ascenxion competition.
But, band members point out, most of TMD's music is written by Dahm, a classically trained musician who studied at Asbury College and is now music director at Mount Freedom Baptist Church in Wilmore.
The group started at Asbury but is by no means a college band. Abbott and Dahm initially got together at Asbury in 2002, played together for a while, then reunited years later.
"We were playing coffee shops and praying for a bass player and a drummer," Abbott says.
They met Berner to form a trio in January 2008. With the addition of bassist Erik Rishel, an old Asbury friend, in the spring, Too Many Drummers' lineup was complete.
Asked where they hope to take the act, Abbott replies, "Our wives ask us that all the time."
He allows that success is hard to define in the music business these days, and he can't necessarily say that a recording contract would be the best thing for the group.
For instance, he says, the group's six-song Wreckless Love EP, which was completed just in time for Ichthus, was recorded at home studios, self-packaged and mixed, pressed and printed at a fairly modest cost. So when the band sells copies at gigs and online (www.toomanydrummers.com), several dollars go back to the band with each sale, whereas on a label, the group would get a few cents.
And in a radio-oriented recording industry, TMD acknowledges that it might not be what labels are looking for.
"We are not very radio-friendly," Abbott says.
Then again, not everyone is looking for a Christian All-American Rejects or Black Eyed Peas, and the Drummers guys say maybe those listeners are the ones they are supposed to reach.
"One of the things that is most important to us is that we write the music that we have to write — the music that is in us," Abbott says. "What we have been learning in the last year is that God is in control. The more we surrender to that, the more he has brought us to an audience."
And thankfully for the drummer, those audiences seem to like it when the band plays loud.
