Dale Flanigan gives great drum.
Everybody from Tommy Amato of Lita Ford’s heavy-metal band to Robert Booker, drummer for veteran Cleveland jazz organist Eddie Baccus Sr., uses a Fortune drum or drum set from Flanigan. World beat master Jamey Haddad (pictured below) works with several Fortune sets. Skip Hadden of Weather Report supports Fortune. Jerome Jennings, the new drummer for the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, is a Fortune man. Bill Ransom, a Cleveland rhythm king who worked with Levert, uses a Fortune set. Johnny Vidacovich, a New Orleans legend who has worked with everyone from Professor Longhair to Willy DeVille to Harry Connick Jr., owns several.
Fortune Drums is more than a brand. It’s a network. It’s a circle of friends. It’s sound and chemistry.
A professional drummer, Flanigan runs Fortune from his Willoughby Hills basement. It’s work that began as default. It’s also a love affair.
“I have good antennas, because there’s nothing like having a lot of experience and finding what does work and doesn’t work,” says Flanigan during a relaxed interview at Fanucce’s, a pizzeria in downtown Willoughby. ”If someone can describe what they’re hearing in their head or how they want a drum to feel and play, I generally know, using the elements I have control of, how to give them what they want. My niche is giving that person their own personal voice – not what I want, not what another company makes, but what they’re describing to me they want.”
James Gang founder Jimmy Fox, another satisfied customer, says: “Dale knows as much about every aspect of drums and drum making as anyone I have ever met. When you combine that knowledge with a positively anal dedication to making every component as good as humanly possible, Fortune Drums is what you get.”
Each Fortune drum and drum set is unique. “I have enough experience and reference points, be it in different woods or different properties of the drum shells, or different bearing edge contours (the edge, where the drum head touches the shell, affects development of the drum sound and “the way the vibration of the wood is transferred”) and inside finish formulas can change the waveform shape of how the sound develops.”
