Meet Ben Pham | Drummer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ben Pham and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ben, where are your from? We’d love to hear about how your background has played a role in who you are today?
I’m originally from Texas. I grew up in a small city there called Arlington. My middle school had a band program where I learned to play percussion. They taught us orchestral percussion, like snare drum, marimba and timpani. From there I joined the marching band in high school, playing the snare drum. Marching band had a huge influence on my playing and really set a good foundation. We practiced many hours and it really helped me develop a discipline to practice. After college I set my sights on performing drum set professionally.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
My career in the music industry as a drummer has been a pretty wild adventure. I’m most proud and excited of the fact of where I am today compared to where I first started. I didn’t actually think about starting a career as a professional drummer until a little later in life (around the age of 23, after college).

I originally attended college and studied music education. It was great training however it wasn’t actually what I wanted to do. I studied classical percussion, so I spent many hours learning marimba but that didn’t exactly translate to the drum set. After my undergrad, I thought about going back to school to either get a masters degree or another undergrad in jazz studies, but after thinking it through and talking to others about it, I didn’t think it would be wise to go into debt and spend another 2-4 years in school. And I definitely didn’t have the money to just pay for it. So instead, I decided to find people who were already doing what I wanted to do and basically just ask them how to do it. I looked up drum set players in my area that I wanted to sound like and took lessons from them.

Even though I had a background in classical and marching percussion, I was really terrible at drum set when I started in my career! Some skills translate from playing marching percussion but not many, so it’s something I’ve had to learn and adapt over the years. I was so bad as a musician for hire at the beginning, that most people didn’t want to hire me! That wasn’t good because I needed to make income but I also needed to improve my skills.

So I made a plan for myself – I looked for as many opportunities as I could to play drum set. I started going to jams, I signed up for jazz big band classes at local community colleges and I even started my own wedding/events band, to improve my skills while making some money on the side. After a few years of this, I started to connect with other musicians, improved my skills and started getting the calls I dreamed of to perform as a sideman with other artists.

Some lessons I’ve learned along the way: 1) Always be prepared and treat every gig like it’s the biggest gig you have. You never know who’s listening. 2) Treat people as you would treat yourself. It doesn’t cost anything to be kind. 3) Be an asset. Be useful and serve the artists/bands you play in. Help them where you can, promote their shows and try your best to elevate their show, especially as a musician for hire.

My pathway has been a little different than other musicians. I think it can be easy to get down on yourself if you didn’t know what your dream was until later in life or you didn’t grow up around money to attend the “best schools”. But I think my approach of creating an environment for myself to learn in has helped and I hope it can inspire someone else who maybe doesn’t have the same opportunities. I think as artists and creatives, your special skill is creating magic out of nothing. I hope this story inspires someone who may not have those traditional opportunities but instead takes the opportunities they do have to turn things around for themselves.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
There’s so much to do in the city and impossible to hit everything! There’s a really cool area over in downtown Monrovia. Free parking and you can walk around and visit the small shops. I recommend checking out the drum shop there “California Drums”, then grab some food at “K-Chicken and Beer” and maybe dessert at “Moo Moo Ice Cream”. If you like coconut, one of my favorite dessert restaurants is a place called “Melo Melo”. If you like pizza, check out a surprising place called “Barney’s Beanery”. They don’t specialize in pizza but their pizza is really good! They also have karaoke if you’re into that sort of thing.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My music successes so far in my career would not have been possible without the support of past teachers and mentors in my life. I’ve had the privilege to study with many teachers and get advice from many mentors over the years; too many to list them all here but a few teachers that I would personally like to mention are my first percussion teacher, Robert Poulin who set me up with a solid foundation, my high school percussion instructors Brian Lowe, Dennis Carty and Hector Gil, who pushed me to achieve and aim higher in my goals, and finally my first drum set instructors Keith Umbach and Stockton Helbing, who not only set me up to have a solid foundation for my drum set playing but also gave me knowledge into the business side of the career.

Along with this, my family, friends and fiancée who have all been supportive since day one!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/backbeatben/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@backbeatben

Image Credits
Andrew Aguilar Photography