1st Bath

For Jacob Summers, the solo artist behind the entity Avid Dancer, it always comes back to drums. Picking up the drums as a high school elective after a neighbor left his drum sticks at Summers’ house, he went on to win two national championships playing the snare drum in the Cavaliers Drum & Bugle Corps, then joined the Marine Drum & Bugle Corps for four years as a platoon guide. It’s only natural that drums are the starting point for the songs on his debut album, 1st Bath. Summers’ drum parts are inspired by drums he hears in other songs. For example, album closer “Up Against A Wall” has MGMT’s drums on “Electric Field” as its inspiration point. But then, Summers gets as far away from the inspiration drums as possible. Finding his own beat, he puts that on a loop to aid in the songwriting process. “When I first started playing guitar to write songs, I seriously thought I was creating new chords,” he says. “I use the drums to make sections in the songs, to structure the songs