Meet Guy Champion: Drum-Hoarding King of Michigan

When I’m not touring with my band, The Swellers, I work at Guitar Center in Flint, MI and meet a lot of interesting characters. My favorite “regular” is a fellow named Guy Champion. With a name like that, it’d be hard to believe he wasn’t the star quarterback in high school, an American Gladiator, or a TV news anchor. As it turns out, he’s one hell of a drum collector.

My in-store experiences with Guy made me question whether he was a gear enthusiast or just a slave to good deals. The phrase “My wife is gonna kill me” was said more often than not when I’d watch him make a new purchase or trade on an almost weekly basis. My interest piqued when he walked to the counter and asked me if I wanted to trade my personal drum kit for a T-Bird. Considering we were in a music store, I figured he meant a Gibson Thunderbird Bass… but he was trying to trade me his car for new drums. This lead me to ask, “How much drum equipment do you have in your house?” The corner of his mouth smirked up just enough, his eyes widened, he leaned in slowly and whispered, “A LOT.” I needed to be his friend.

I set up a get-together at the Champion household a few days later so I could finally see the ultimate collection for myself. When I was let in, I immediately looked down the stairs to the basement in hopes I’d see the glow of vintage drums calling my name, but Guy brought me into the kitchen where our conversation would take place. We sat down and immediately started talking about his history with Flint and Detroit bands like Offense A.D., Fudge Gun and the infamous Guy Champion Sexual Revolution. Every few seconds, I’d hear a short clip of “Smoke On The Water” from his phone and he’d pick it up to read incoming texts. He told me his friend was at home following the NAMM convention going on in California. For those unfamiliar, NAMM is where all of the big music companies from around the country showcase their new, crazy products in an almost Cold War situation trying to outdo each other. It’s music nerd paradise, or a person with sensitive hearing’s worst nightmare. Apparently, Guy and his friend debated taking work off for the day just to keep up with all of the new announcements. It was just fuel to the fire. Which lead me into asking about how he got into drumming in the first place. Every great story has a beginning.

When Guy was a kid, a door-to-door salesperson for the local music store gave his mother the option of a saxophone for $600 or a Ludwig Acrolite snare drum for $300. For half the price, a snare drum was a deal his mother couldn’t pass up. A few years later, his grandfather was looking in the union paper and found a 60s champagne sparkle Ludwig Club Date kit which would be the focal point for the eventual obsession. This lead to the standard band program from 5th to 9th grade into marching band. Aside from drums, his love for golf started messing with his marching band schedule so the instructor would assign him to play cymbals as a punishment for missing some major commitments. If you’re a drummer, you know how badly we all want to play snare. After being tired of the treatment, the leap of absence from marching band became a permanent fixture. Guy started playing in some local bands doing covers and his childhood obsession with MTV mixed with a newfound taste of rebellion lead him into the world of rock and roll. If he really wanted to be a rocker, he had to get a kit designated for the role. It was time to trade the nice little classy kit for a beast and fit the 80s mold. The trade that would start it all.

Every time he would get excited telling me about a kit, he’d finish the story with, “I shouldn’t have sold that.” I finally had to ask what started his hoarding. In response, I was greeted with a defeated look and hesitation. Guy wasn’t always the champion collector he is today. He had to put his faith into the employees of the local mom and pop music stores and hope he wasn’t getting screwed on a trade. His Uncle Larry saw an ad for a 60s Ludwig White Marine Pearl kit, went to some mansion and picked it up for $400. Instantly Guy picked the kit up from him and thus acquired his dream setup. He played it on a few records, countless shows, and put a lot of TLC into it. The turning point was when he felt the itch to swap again and sold it for $1,000 to Bill Schaffer’s Drum Shop in Flushing. Two weeks later, they turned around and sold it for $2,000. Literally twice the amount. The regret was not only for letting this dream kit go, but for losing out on that much money. It was a shot to the heart and from that point on, Guy swore to start keeping the things that were close to him.

The lead into his next story was abruptly cut off when the wife and two daughters bursted into the house with laughter. The first words out of Mrs. Champion were, “The kids are arguing whether or not we’re rich.” This couldn’t have been more appropriate for the piece I was writing. “If you’re rich, you live in Paris or Los Angeles and you ride in a limo,” said one of the daughters. I wondered if this had anything to do with the amalgam of drums I was about to see in the basement. Before we headed downstairs, I asked for details on the craziest setup in Guy Champion’s career. It was a 30x16 1930s single tension Ludwig and Ludwig orchestral kick drum that he pieced together with a snare and floor tom. He didn’t use a rack tom because the 30” was too damn tall. It went from a black satin cloth finish to a hilarious Oscha Safey Yellow spray paint finish to a Mickey Mouse wrap made out of shelving paper. In my opinion, the best incarnation of the legendary kit was when his friend custom painted naked women, a wiener dog and Gene Simmons onto it. He was playing in some serious bands which easily made him the focal point of the stage. Like all of his older kits, this one was eventually sold to someone else. He let me know that he wanted to only collect vintage gear because it’s the only thing in the drum world with a better resale value over time. It was time to see the basement.

We first ventured into what he called, “The Overflow Room.” He had an older Pearl kit that he refinished himself and painted half black and white with a divider line down the kick drum. There was a beautiful Pearl Masters kit in natural finish with gold hardware from the 90s and stacks of used drum heads next to it. Vintage Ludwig and Rogers stands shoved into the corner alongside some shells of another vintage kit. “I started buying everything that I like, which is bad because I like… everything.” He smiled again as he walked me to his showroom. The unfinished basement room was covered in foam soundproofing and shelves of completed kits, shells, and random pieces of anything you can think of. I tried doing a quick count of complete kits and I got to at least ten, not counting the stacks of vintage shells he hasn’t finished setting up. His snare drum wall consisted of twenty snares sitting on a rack. The ages on those alone spanned half a century. My jaw dropped while Guy walked me through each kit, what year it was from, where it was made and how you can tell. Everything from the lugs to the inner shell to serial numbers, he had all of it on lockdown. With this superior knowledge it makes him a force to be reckoned with in the trading world.

“It’s not about the fucking equipment. It’s about me.” Guy was recalling a quote from a jazz musician that resonates with him. Regardless of the gear you own, you need to be able to play to back it up. His love for drumming is the same as his love of collecting. The basement is not only filled with lifeless wood and metal cylinders, but stories he’ll carry with him for the rest of his life. Everything is a reflection of who he is. It’s an escape from the annoyances of the real world, the day job, the terrible things we all hear on the news. I personally like to think that music is the healthiest distraction. Whether you play an instrument or not, you too can appreciate the power it holds over people because it’s in all of us in one way or another. Is Guy collecting or falling victim to the dark woes of hoarding? I like to think he’s simply investing in the rich history of something that’s changed all of our lives.

Jonathan Diener is the drummer for The Swellers, whose new album you can buy and see on tour to pay for his drum addiction. Follow him on Twitter - @jonodiener