By Spencer Schneier, Staff Writer Published in print Oct. 22, 2014

“I tried playing with a jazz ensemble on Tate St. one night, and they ended up looking at me like ‘What’re you doing?’”

Zac Lassiter is a Jazz Studies major at UNCG, and he is a drummer in the purest sense of the idea.

“Something about notes scares me.” Zac is not one for finesse, and the drums are not an instrument of fine-tuning. While he notes some of the finer elements of his trade, it is clear that like Zac, the drums are raw and unrefined.

It is rare that one comes across a person so perfectly matched with their trade that they almost seem destined for each other. Surely there must have been some great universal moment in which Zac fell in love with the drums, and the rest was history…

“I started playing in middle school, and I wanted to play the saxophone. It’s such a sexy instrument, but then I saw how many buttons were on it. There are a lot of buttons on a saxophone,” he explained.

After a while, it was clear that the drums were meant for him. “I grew a wonderful attachment with them.”

Zac remarked multiple times that the beauty of the drums is their primitive nature, and that as humans it is a special bond between man and drum. Both man and drum are primal, but what they produce is far from it.

“We were hittin’ stuff before we were carving flutes. I can express myself in ways other instruments can’t,” Zac emphatically remarked. It is the “raw, powerful urge”, in his words, that makes the drum so beautiful, and so well suited to him and his form of expression.

A drummer for local bands SpaceBear, KnuckleBuster and PurpleFilth, Zac is pragmatic about his future. He chose jazz because it would give him a broad range of skills, and for a drummer that is of the utmost value.

KnuckleBuster is described by Zac as “aggressive and fast-paced style who’s lyrical content is a no-frills approach to bettering yourself and finding solutions to the problems in our society.” PurpleFilth is a time-travel gag in which Zac and his band have come back from the future to save punk rock.

SpaceBear will be playing on November 7 at The Blind Tiger as part of the SuckFest event going on that night. Described as “three dudes who love hanging out and making fun music,” Lassiter will be drumming, because that is what he does.