While Caring for His Family, Gulfport Man Drums Out a Living
By Arin Gencer
David Laycock's hands drum on the table, beating a rhythm that has pulsed through his veins all his life.
It began when he was 5 or 6 years old, listening to his father's big band and Dixieland music on the newly purchased reel-to-reel.
It called him when he was 13 and saw Ringo Starr drumming away on "The Ed Sullivan Show."
It rang out on the Maestro snare drum his father bought him that summer.
It got him into trouble with his ninth-grade science teacher, who made him write "I will not play 'Wipe Out' in Mr. Shipley's third-period science class" 500 times after he drummed the song on his hollow wooden desk one too many times.
Now, at 53, the Gulfport man is Dave on Drums, doing what he has always wanted to do, living his passion for music every day.
That passion drove a 15-year-old Dave to run to his Park Hills, Ky., home after school every day to practice on his first drum set in the basement.
He would get out of school at 3:30, he said. From 3:30 to 5 p.m., he would practice in his house on Old State Road until his dad, an electrician, came home.
"When Dad flipped the [basement] light, buddy, you put those drum sticks down and went upstairs," said Laycock. But one hour later, his father would leave to pick up his mother from work.
"I'd run back again and play until he got back at 6:30," he said. "I was allowed to play. I just wasn't allowed to play when they were watching TV."
Laycock has spent his life continually balancing his passion for music and his devotion to family.
On the Road – All the Time
When he was in his twenties, Laycock would travel from weekly gigs in Ohio to his parents' Kentucky home.
He'd often get off at 2 a.m. on Sundays – his only day off – and make the five-hour drive to Park Hills. Then he'd hop in his car the next day and arrive in time for Monday night's show. Longer distances during the summer did not deter him.
"I used to fly to Florida on my day off. Just to go swimming," said Laycock. His family regularly rented a house in Treasure Island. After finishing a show, he'd take the 4:45 a.m. flight out of Cincinnati, arriving early Sunday morning. Then he'd turn around and head back to the airport Monday.
"I wouldn't tell anybody," said Mary Laycock, 76, of her son's surprise visits. "His grandfather was so tickled."
Then, in the summer of 1976, when Laycock was touring with the band Sound Circle, his grandfather had a heart attack. He quit the band to care for his ailing grandparents.
"All of a sudden he just came home, which was very unusual because he loved running around the country," said Mary. "He came home and he stayed home and he worked in areas around the house…He never made a big to-do about it."
Laycock spent his days with his grandparents, making sure they ate, giving them their medication and doing work in and outside of the house. He took night classes at Northern Kentucky University.
"My grandfather was more important than music, than drumming, than anything," Laycock explained. So he stayed home to be with the man who had taken him to opening-day baseball games and on train rides to Orlando.
His grandfather died the next year. And then the familiar rhythm called him back to the road again, this time taking him to the Ramada Inn in Ocala.
Getting a "Real Job" – and Drumming on the Side
In the 1980s, Laycock gave in to the ever-present pressure to "go out and get a real job." He started working 9-to-5 at Wagner Electric in Kentucky. The next two decades, he jumped from his first job wearing a tie to owning a restaurant—Happy Dave's—to selling cars. But he would always find a way to incorporate music into his life.
"David's had regular jobs and he's worked just like all of us in different corporations and companies," said Dan Laycock, his older brother. "But all along underlying that has been playing music." So while Laycock worked days, he opened Cobblewood Recording Studios and spent his nights over the next five years recording demo tapes for bands. Then he started playing with a calypso-jazz group—the Sugar Hill Street Band—in a jazz club six nights a week.
He remembers convincing his boss at the Florence, Ky., branch of Mike Albert Leasing to let him leave work early so he could play at the Carousel Inn four nights a week. Then he started playing with the Rick Kinman Trio, later renamed Triad when Kinman left. Laycock would get off work at 9 p.m., get ready for the gig at 9:30 and sleep during the first break at 10:30. The band's singer would come wake him up in time for the next set.
Laycock eventually got burned out and left Mike Albert Leasing. He took a two-month break, staying with a friend in Gulfport and checking out the Florida music scene.
When he returned to Kentucky, he started working at Saturn. He rejoined Triad in a Grant County, Ky., bar – The First and Last Chance – and then moved on to a band called Outrageous, which he managed and played in.
Then it snowed in October 2000. It was the last straw for Laycock, who despised the cold Kentucky winters.
"I'm not doing this anymore," he recalls thinking. The next month he flew down to Florida over a long weekend, bought a home in Gulfport and came back to give his two week's notice. He moved to his new house with a plan: get a job at Saturn and "eventually do the music thing."
Another Family Pull
His parents, who used to go to St. Augustine every winter, started visiting him in Gulfport. And then Laycock's father began forgetting things. He'd be driving David's mother to Sam's, but end up at Service Merchandise, said Laycock. And then one day, on his way back from running errands at Winn-Dixie and Walgreens, his father made a wrong turn and got lost.
Ten hours later, the Treasure Island Fire Department called the Gulfport police. His father was asking for directions, thinking he was on vacation. Laycock went out to meet him and bring him home.
"And that was the last day he drove," Laycock said. After some concern that it was Alzheimer's, his father was diagnosed with dementia – an illness that results in the deterioration of one's ability to process information and remember. His parents have been living with Laycock for the last year and a half, and are in Gulfport to stay. As far as David was concerned, said his mother, there wasn't any other way to do it. He has more freedom to help than his older brother, who has his own family.
"I don't know what I'd do without him at this stage in my life," said Mary Laycock. "It really is a big help to me."
Now Laycock drives around the man who would cart him and his drum set from one gig to another in a "god-awful green" 1956 Chevy station wagon.
"He's devoted to it," said Dan Laycock, referring to his brother's care of their father. It doesn't matter "if it's a bad day or a good day or he's tired. David does it – in that case he's really like a saint."
Finding the Balance
To be available to his father, he left Saturn and worked from home for a Clearwater company. Meanwhile, he picked local musician Bill Agans' brain. Agans, who plays at Philthy Phil's and Jeff's Bent Elbow in St. Pete Beach, showed him the equipment he needed to perform as a one-man band – a concept Agans had mastered. Laycock familiarized himself with the technology and prepped his voice by singing during karaoke nights at O'Maddy's and H.T. Kane's. He quit his day job to focus on music and started playing at H.T. Kane's last November.
Four times a week, Gulfport residents can hear Dave on Drums – a one-man band featuring Laycock playing his drum set and singing with background music he arranged using a computer program at home.
Working at H.T. Kane's allows him to be close enough to home in case of emergencies.
"It's a luxury too because I'm almost paranoid to go any further than downtown Gulfport," said Laycock. "Thanks to Tim and Helga [Kane], I can go out and play drums, still make an income and take care of my dad, who is precious to me."
And his fingers are eager to pick up their familiar rhythm again, beating out everything from Sinatra's "Fly Me to the Moon" to Young MC's "Bust a Move."
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