Today we’d like to introduce you to Randy Beasterfield.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
This is a long and drawn-out answer, but a lot has happened to get me to where I am today with music. I was born in Idaho Falls on February 26, 1986. My father, Ray Beasterfield, worked at Idaho Fresh Pack as a warehouse manager, and My mother, Julie Beasterfield, was an Alcoholic stay at home mom. My parents had a friend who was an amazing musician whom they would gather with to play bluegrass music when I was a kid. It was a specific jam session when I was 3 years old that let everyone know in the room that I had a hidden musical talent, or at least that I had rhythm in me. I can remember, I was sitting by the kick drum of a drum set, and I could hear when the “big part” of the song would happen, so when it came, I started pushing the kick pedal with my hand to the beat perfectly. Everyone playing got excited and smiled at me with encouragement to keep going.
I grew up in a very low class poor family. We didn’t have money for instruments. I have lived in a single-wide trailer most of my life.
My parents would fight constantly as my mom would spend my dads hard earned money on alcohol and have drunken fights that would sometimes get physical.
It would seem my musical endeavors would end at the age of 3 with no support or money to invest in that kind of thing. So I continued to grow up, not even thinking about music.
Mom and Dad divorced when I was 6 years old, and Mom took my sister and me as far away from my dad as she could possibly could. We made it as far as Canon City Colorado where we live in a trailer park for 4 years, if I can remember right? My mom stayed drunk the whole time while my sister and I took care of ourselves, cooking mac and cheese and roman noodles for dinner. I relied on school lunches for the rest of what I ate. The whole time, there was no music in my life besides what I heard on the radio. I fell in love we bands like Oasis and Seal at the time.
My dad and mom reconnected and my dad convinced mom to move back to Idaho when I was in 4th grade. But still no music.
It wasn’t until there was a pep rally in school where the high school band came to our school to play pep songs. The drummer was great. As soon as he started playing I was completely inspired! I wanted to play like that kid. He didn’t play like any of the other kids. He had swag, he was playing hip hop style beats to the pep songs which completely changed the way the songs grooved.
At this time, my parents re-divorced and I stayed with dad. I had learned my lesson this time.
I came home to dad and asked him if we could get a drum set. But of course, the answer was no. Dad being a single parent, we were barely getting by financially. So getting an instrument at all was out of the question. But I knew when I got to junior high, I wanted to join the band.
I got to my first day of band class, and half the students wanted to be bass players, the other half wanted to be drummers. I could tell the teacher, Mrs. Sterlin, had dealt with this before. She pulled out a bucket and said, “Not everyone can play the same instrument if we are going to have a junior high school band, so in this bucket are pieces of paper with different instruments on them, and you all will be picking from it. On the paper you pull from, that will be the instrument you will be assigned to learn.”
So when I got the bucket, I pulled Trumpet. The school had a program where I could rent an instrument for the school year for cheap. So my dad was able to let me get a trumpet and from that point I started learning how to read music and learn the trumpet.
But the trumpet wasn’t where my interest was, it was always the drums, but I never got the chance to even show Mrs. Sterlin I had the rhythm I knew I had.
There was one day, Mrs. Sterlin was allowing other students who wanted to get up on the drumset and play a song of their choice. This was my chance! But I’ve never actually played a drumset, I’ve only air drummed and beated on surfaces. But I had to try! I got up and played “Land of 1000 Dances” and you know what? I held me own, but it was not, let’s say great.
After that I knew I wanted to play again, but not until I trained for it. I didn’t have drums to practice on though…. I had to get creative. My dad was a huge coffee drinker and he would buy these big metal Folgers cans of coffee. So I started saving the cans and slowly started to build my own drumset with them. I used the metal side of the can for a snare, the lid side for a tom, and add water to each to can to change the tone so I had that I had a “Hi tom” and a “Low Tom.” I used a box to kick with my foot for a kick drum and used a can opener to cut out the metal part of the can and drill a hole for a pencil to go throw the middle to mount it like a cymbal. With a little bit of tape to hold everything together, I had a drumset!
I used pencils for drumsticks and started practicing. It didn’t take me long to be able to start playing your basic drumbeats. And when I was ready, I walked into band class and asked Mrs. Sterlin, “Can I play Land of 1000 dances on drums today?” and she replied “After practice we can”. I got up there and started playing. Everyone was blown away! I was already better than any of the other actual drummers in class. Mrs. Sterlin would let me play more often after that and I kept getting better. At one point, she stopped the band and asked me, “Randy, are you taking drum lessons?” and I told her “no.” everyone in the class was in aww.
I had a natural gift for drums, and after my dad heard me make Coffee cans sing, he bought a $30 toy drum set for me to replace my coffee can set.
It wasn’t much, but at least it had all the parts to start learning how to play properly. I started learning how to play Metallica, Pantera, and other rock music. It wasn’t until I was in Highschool dad got a loan, and bought me a CMC Drumset. It was my first drumset ever and I was soo excited! My skills blasted from that point and I played every day. I started bands with friends and kept honing my skills.
I moved to Utah to join a band that would help take me to the next level. I was always looking for bands that were better than me to help push me to get better in return.
I joined Never Cast Anchor which got me to my first Studio experience. We were working With Matt Winegar, a grammy award winning Producer that produced Primus and Royal Bliss. This guy was amazing! And he was a hard ass. I’ve never been yelled at for sucking until this guy. I knew I never wanted him to tell me I sucked again, so I practiced to a click and worked my ass off, we came back in for a second batch of song, and Matt was much more impressed this time. He said “I can work with this!” seeing how Matt Produced inspired me, I wanted to learn how to produce like that.
I started buying studio equipment one piece at a time with my hard-earned money. And started recording myself, then my bands, then it went to recording other bands. Word of mouth started to spread, and soon I had a band in my bedroom every month. The more I did, the better I got.
Now I’m still producing Local Artist, but also mixing and Mastering for artist all across the world.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Time was a big Obstacle, working a full time job just to pay bills and then on my free time I would record. Time is still a challenge to this day as I’m still part time with this Career path.
The other Obstacle is my studio space. We just bought a new house so I’m stuck in a temp situation for recording. but there is a silver lining. I will be remodeling my external garage into my dream studio to record my clients. But that will take TIME!
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Beast Recordings LLC?
Beast Recordings is a recording Studio where we Record, Mix, Master and Edit Audio of all types for musicians and artist
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I was a hyper kid who loved to play Army out in the sagebrush with my friends. Music became my life once my Dad bought me my first drum set.
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