Thank You - A Message to Our Drumming Community and PDP’s Next Step

April 9, 2026

Hello PDP Members and Fellow Drummers! 

On this day 14 years ago, Philly Drum Project hosted our first event - Beats, Brews, & Banter with Eric Slick, at Roosevelt’s Pub at 23rd and Walnut. 

Today, we share the news that Philly Drum Project will be passing our piece of the drum community torch to the Pennsylvania chapter of Percussive Arts Society over the coming weeks. 

During our 14 years in service to the Philly drumming community, PDP held multiple annual DrumPhil summer programs for high school students, multiple sessions of Rhythm Sessions after-school programming for high school students in North and West Philadelphia, and countless Beats, Brews, and Banter events, highlighting dozens of professional drummers in the Philly area, while facilitating the sharing of education and gear in order to build the drumming community in Philadelphia, especially at a time when the city was lacking a drum shop and other drumset-focused nonprofit organizations. 

Percussive Arts Society is a well-established, legacy educational organization within the drumming community and has the proven capacity and effectiveness at the national and state level to carry on the mission of Philly Drum Project. 

As the founder and the elected steering committee of PDP, we have immense gratitude and solidarity with all of the drummers and music enthusiasts who have put time, energy, effort, and hard-earned dollars into this organization - whether you served on the Steering Committee, volunteered at an event, donated to a Giving Tuesday campaign, taught students, presented at an Open Drum, etc - we love you and thank you for making this a great run. 

The current executive board of the PA chapter of PAS, President Mike Dawson, Vice President Nick Costa, and Secretary Sean J. Kennedy, aim to create resources and organize events for the PA drum and percussion community. And they all are familiar with PDP - Mike and Nick have been members and featured artists of PDP in the past as well! The PA chapter of PAS has hosted clinics at various venues including Hawthorne Drum Shop, Philadelphia Drum and Percussion, Junk Rock Drums, and Pocket Percussion. 

We encourage you to follow the Pennsylvania Chapter of PAS on all the apps and keep an eye out for upcoming events and programs! We also want to shout out Philadelphia Drum and Percussion, Junk Rock Drums, and Pocket Percussion, three great drum shops that have filled a big gap in the Philadelphia region, which was lacking a community space for drummers when PDP came into existence in 2012. Shop local!

Onward!

Ryan Crump, Founder and Former Steering Committee Member

PDP Steering Committee: Mike Ragusa, Eddie Everett, Brendan Locker, Amy Benninger, KC Chann, Jerry Tanenbaum, Matt Deibert, and Kirk Kubicek

About

Philly Drum Project is a 501(c)3 nonprofit Percussive Collective dedicated to making drumming more accessible in the Philadelphia area. Our community helps drummers in our region share Knowledge, Beats, and Gear. Philly Drum Project was founded in 2011 by Ryan Crump with the aim of providing community resources for drummers of all backgrounds and experience levels.

Why Philly Drum Project?

Philadelphia has a vibrant drumming community with a rich history in jazz, orchestral, rock, pop, gospel, and world music. Even with this history of unique drumming culture, Philly was lacking a central hub – physical or otherwise – for collaboration. Philly Drum Project gives students and adults a productive way to be engaged in a diverse percussion community. 

What do we offer?

Philly Drum Project creates programming around three core resources: Knowledge, Beats, and Gear.

Knowledge: Philly Drum Project provides educational opportunities for under-served students in the Philadelphia region to study drums, regardless of social, economic, or cultural differences. We host DrumPhil, a summer workshop for high school students, and Rhythm Sessions, a free after-school program in local community centers.

Beats: Playing, connecting, and hanging with other drummers is a resource that we refer to as Beats. Drummers play drums because it’s a fun thing to do; we facilitate that fun. Beats, Brews, & Banter, our event series, helps adults network while they enjoy featured performers. We also offer Open Drum events for those in attendance to present on a variety of topics.

Gear: There are many moving parts to a drum or drum set, and establishing an infrastructure for drummers to share and access these parts is essential to our drum organization. Our Re-Drum program, a drum upcycling program,  manages gear donations and refurbishment, to satisfy the needs of the Rhythm Sessions lessons and those in search of gear.

Philly Drum Project reaches a specific group in Philadelphia - those who enjoy rhythm - and gives them an outlet to study, teach, perform, and/or experience drums. We host programs that provide our community with educational and entertaining events.

2020 Steering Committee

Co-Chairs:
Mike Ragusa
Eddie Everett

Steering Committee Members:
Amy Benninger
Brendan Locker
Jerry Tanenbaum
KC Chann
Kirk Kubicek
Matt Deibert

Education

DrumPhil - our annual free educational and performance program. This summer program gives high school students the opportunity to learn from skilled educators in individual and group settings over the course of an entire day. In the evening’s recital they perform group compositions that are written by students and instructors that day. The student recital is open to the public and also features performances by guest artists. Past featured artists include Eric Slick and John Kimock, Mark Colenburg and Ben O’Neil, JP Bouvet, Matt Scarano and members of Son Step, and Charlie Hunter.

Rhythm Sessions - We’re especially proud of this one. A program that provides refurbished drums through our Re-Drum program - and free instruction - to community centers in Philadelphia. We recently added several donated drumsets that our members refurbished to community centers, and we provided the staff for weekly drum lessons on those kits. Previous Rhythm Sessions were held at: Rhythm Sessions West (West Catholic Prep) and Rhythm Sessions North (Village of Arts and Humanities).

Past Rhythm Sessions instructors have included: Marcus Myers, Tre Lambert, Chuck Treece, Alex Maio, Spanky McCurdy, Abel Tabares, Matt Scarano, and Gusten Rudolph.

Events

Beats, Brews, & Banter - This event is held at Philly bars/venues. Check out our social media sites for pics, videos, and info from these events.

We’ve been lucky to learn from and build with so many incredible Philadelphia-based and national touring drummers over the past 9 years. If we were to #NameDrop just a few, that list would include: David Garibaldi (Tower of Power), Tre Lambert (Future, Meek Mill), Stanton Moore (Galactic), Jojo Mayer (Nerve), Lil John Roberts (Stevie Wonder, Prince), Mark Guiliana (David Bowie), Leon Jordan Sr (Roy Ayers, Chaka Kahn), Erik Slick (Dr. Dog), Patrick Berkery (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Wesley Stace), Mike Greenfield (Lotus), G. Calvin Weston (Ornette Coleman, The Lounge Lizards), Pat Petrillo (Patti LaBelle, Dee-Lite), Claude Coleman Jr. (Ween), David Uosikkinen (The Hooters), Jason Gianni (Drummers Collective), Pablo Batista (Alicia Keys, Patti Labelle), George “Spanky” McCurdy (Lady Gaga), Charlie Hall (War on Drugs), Alex Cohen (Malignancy, Hudson Music) and more…

Click here for a list of all our past events.

DrumPhest 2015 - This all day drumming event featured drum set clinics and performances open to all ages. The 2015 DrumPhest artists included Jojo Mayer, Lil John Roberts, Mark Guiliana, Jason Gianni, Pablo Batista, and George "Spanky” McCurdy.

Clinics - Exclusive Clinics for Supporting Members: Past featured artists have included Stanton Moore, Brian Frasier Moore, Ari Hoenig, and Akira Jimbo. 

Gear

Philly Drum Project was founded in part for the need to find a specific piece of drum gear; a wing nut. Our continued goal to make gear more accessible in the Philadelphia region starts our Re-Drum program.

Re-Drum - Our drum gear up-cycling program

We take unwanted drum sets and hardware donations, refurbish them, and provide complete sets to those in need, such as community centers, schools and venues. Through reconditioning unused drum sets, we help in reducing waste while providing a second life to usable equipment.

Do you have an unwanted drum kit that is taking up space? Donate it to Philly Drum Project by clicking here.

Are you a community center, school, or venue looking for a drum set? Contact us by clicking here.

Contact

Looking to participate in Philly Drum Project? Have drum equipment to donate? Looking to set up a drum-focused event? Let us know!