Lake Zurich teen brings ferocity and passion to The Hannah Ford Band
Hannah Ford has been hitting the bars from age 12 - and is still three years away from being old enough to order a beer.
But the Lake Zurich teen isn't making the rounds to run a bar tab. Instead, she's onstage with her namesake band, pounding out drum solos with a ferocity that listeners might expect from a burlier, more intimidating figure.
Ford, 18, mans the drums and delivers the vocals for The Hannah Ford Band. With her dark brown hair and slight frame, Ford seems a bit of a contrast to her older bandmates. Bassist B. Taylor, 45, of St. Charles, and guitarist Dan Koby, 31, of Carpentersville, are tattooed and look ready to rock.
In fact, the unlikely trio came together in unlikely circumstances.
Ford's sister, a professional dancer, wanted to do a performance with live instruments. Hannah and her father, Dave Ford, obliged and someone in the audience asked both of them to audition for a Chicago band called Universal Slim and the Blues Kangaroos. Taylor, Koby and Ford split off from that group four years later to form The Hannah Ford Band.
"She auditioned people her own age, but they didn't have the same interests she had," said Dave Ford, who is also Hannah's manager.
The group is in the process of recording a debut album at Planet 10 Studios in Palatine. Paul Wertico, a Grammy winner who has also spent time teaching Ford at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, is producing the album.
Ford's age has not kept her under the radar. In 2007 she became the youngest person to win the best drummer/musician category of Suburban Nitelife Magazine's Best of the Burbs awards.
"(That award) shocked me, I actually got emotional because I'm going against people who have been doing what I do for longer than I've been alive," Ford said.
Ford started playing the drums when she was just 7. The following year, Santa brought her a drum set for Christmas.
A lot has changed since then. More experience with more teachers has pushed her technique forward. And her gigs bring her to stages across the area. This weekend, she'll also compete with a solo drum performance at the Chicago Drum Show in St. Charles.
"What's stayed the same is my passion for it and my love for it," Ford said.
That passion plays out on stage. In the spirit of one of her favorite drummers, Led Zeppelin's John Bonham, Ford recalls hitting the drums a little too hard at a competition when she was 15 or 16.
"I was finishing up my drum solo, going kind of crazy, and in my last hit I hit the cymbal and the high tom in one hit and it sort of rolled around the stage. I got a roaring applause," said Ford, a Lake Zurich High School alumna.
She is obviously comfortable with her instrument. The mammoth drum kit she uses now may actually qualify as several instruments.
Her full drum kit, which she said she does not use in venues like bars because of space issues, includes 12 cymbals, three rack toms, two floor toms, two snare drums, congas, cowbells, wood blocks and, for good measure, a gong.
It can take up to two hours to set up the full production, which may be another reason not to bring every piece out to the bar shows.
"People come up to me and say, 'Your drum set is huge,' and I say, 'This is the little one,'" Ford said.
She does set up the full kit for her Peace, Love & Drums shows, which are half-concert and half-clinic. She takes these shows to schools to try to get students interested in doing something musical.
For the concert portion, she plays everything from jazz to funk to Latin to metal. She then takes questions and teaches as she plays for the clinic portion of the show.
Lake Zurich Middle School North was the first place she took this show, and she was upset to hear of budget cuts in District 95 that could do away with the fourth and fifth grade band and orchestra program.
"When schools don't have a budget, the first thing to go is the arts programs and that's not how it should be at all," Ford said. "Had I not had music when I was in elementary school, I probably never would have started playing the drums."
These days, she splits her time between school, where she is a drum major, and performing.
"I've always thought I can't get busier than this, but there's always something," she said.
<p class="factboxheadblack">The Hannah Ford Band: Upcoming shows</p> <p class="News">• noon, Saturday, May 16, solo drum performance at Chicago Drum Show, Kane County Fairgrounds, 525 S. Randall Road, St. Charles </p> <p class="News">• 9:30 p.m. Saturday, May 16, The Chicago Loop, 7 Streamwood Blvd., Streamwood</p> <p class="News">• 9 p.m. Saturday, May 23, Gasthaus, 15 N. Grove St., Elgin </p> <p class="News">• 9 p.m. Saturday, May 30, Jimmy D's, 3965 W. Algonquin Road, Algonquin </p>