“I get to live my dream,” Adrian Davis said.
After years working as a musician and travelling Australia in bands, he’s returned to his passion of drumming and being able to share the magic and power of rhythm with others.
“It works on a lot of levels: firstly, it’s a lot of fun, beyond that it has incredible therapeutic benefits,” Adrian explained.
“It’s very healing, strengthens the immune system and builds confidence, empowerment and relaxation.”
Adrian began drumming around 2006. He started out with one drum which multiplied to 20.
“I was at a turning point in my life. I bought one and really didn’t know why, but I had to have it. I found a drumming circle and found I had an ability for it,” he said.
His passion led him to teaching the West African djembe drums and he started a group with about four people, which rapidly grew to about 20.
Hands On Drums did regular performances, including opening the Zamia Theatre when it was rebuilt in 1997.
“We filled the stage with about a dozen drummers and it was very special,” Adrian recalled.
He said strong friendships were forged and some even got married.
Adrian’s focus changed and he returned to working as a solo acoustic musician.
However, in 2023, realising what he was missing he returned to drumming and reignited the Hands on Drums circle.
“My life’s journey has involved music one way or another: from playing in rock bands around Australia, to moving to the mountain in 1990 and discovering a lot of live music here,” he shared.
Adrian discovered Tamborine Mountain when he took up his dream of hang gliding at a point in his life when everything had fallen away.
“I lost my job, lost my partner, the band broke up,” he said.
Upon finding a room in a share house on the mountain he found paradise.
“This mountain fulfilled all my dreams; I met wonderful people up here,” Adrian said.
Those that haven’t come across him through music will have met him building or landscaping properties here.
Music came late in his childhood, learning classical piano at the age of 16 and then working in a music shop in Brisbane.
“I had always had a solid perspective of the emotional impact of music; drumming was one way of working this energy,” he said.
“It addresses a primal need, there’s a certain amount of power and centring that people experience.
“It takes you out of your cerebral day and into something more primal.”
And after playing in some wild rock bands to large audiences, Adrian now finds the real magic happens getting people together around a table playing acoustic.
“There’s a lot of interaction between musicians of all forms on the mountain,” he noted.
With this year’s season of Hands On Drums having just begun he’s looking forward to newcomers coming along and discovering a new passion at St George’s Anglican Church on Wednesday nights.
