THE FORTRESS AT THE VINEYARD

My daughter recently uncovered this very old photo of the original "Fortress," back when I used it at a church called "Vineyard Christian Fellowship."  This was in the very early days, when the church met at Piney Grove Elementary School.  Originally we held services in the auditorium, which was one of those circular amphitheaters with a floor that stepped down to a small stage near the center of the room.  Back then we had to set up and tear down all the instruments and sound equipment before and after every service, which wasn't exactly easy or convenient.  Everything was stored in a utility closet a fair distance away from the auditorium, so all the speakers, microphones, sound board, etc., had to be dragged out of the closet and lugged across the school every Sunday morning before it could be set up for the service.  Then afterwards we would pack it all up again and haul it back to the closet to be stored until the next Sunday.  It was a lot of work.

When this photo was taken, we had begun experimenting with setting up in what was known as the school cafe-nasium - or perhaps it was called the gymna-teria - a huge room with a high ceiling that served as a combination cafeteria and gymnasium.  This proved to be an even less practical venue.  We had to haul all the equipment even farther to reach this room, and naturally the music sounded horrible in this location, very boomy and loud.  I don't know whose dumb idea this was (certainly not the sound guy), but soon thereafter Vineyard left the school completely and moved to a new building, so this terrible arrangement didn't last long at all.  The new building had a normally-shaped auditorium with a good-sized stage, and we were able to leave everything set up from week to week.  This was a much better arrangement.

As you can see, this was a very large drum kit for me to haul out and set up every Sunday: double bass drums, seven toms, lots of cymbals and some percussion items as well.  This was very near the peak of the Fortress' existence, as I can tell by the spare snare (the old blue-sparkle Stewart) that I was using at this time.

Included in this set up are the orchestra bells, bar chimes, bell tree, cowbells and ice bell.  What's strange is the sight of the ice bell on the cowbell stand where my 8" splash should be.  I'm not sure why that is.  My second set of chrome bar chimes is also noticeably absent, and the single crotale had not been added yet.

Other than that, all of the drums are there like they should be, and the cymbals, for the most part, would remain the same.  I do notice, however, that their left-to-right arrangement here is different.  For some unknown reason, in this picture I have the 18" Medium Thin Crash over the high toms, two 16" Medium Thins on the kick drums, and a 14" Paper Thin above the ride.  These same cymbals were eventually rotated around to this order: 16, 14, 16, 18.  I must have still been experimenting with my cymbal setup at this time. I just can't figure out where the heck my 8" Splash is!  I thought I had purchased that little gem long before these other cymbals.  I guess not.  The photo don't lie.