We recently connected with Cameron Sather and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Cameron thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear the story of how you went from this being just an idea to making it into something real.

The first drumline I recorded was Coppell High School in 2018. A little prior to that I met back up with my own high school instructor Doug Bush, who became a percussion director at Coppell along with his wife Patricia Islas. Doug invited me out to make a video of their drumline show that year and every year since then I’ve been back. I’ve also gotten to visit Highland Park, Forney, McKinney North, and a few others. Since doing music in school I’ve loved being involved, and it’s awesome getting to relive drumline days through the performances. Luckily the growth has been mostly organic through word of mouth in the percussion world. I started up Rimshot Media around 2020, which wasn’t anything different besides registering a DBA and a squarespace website. At the moment I’m working with about 6 schools a year, I’ve started bringing some other crew members on to help with filming, audio, editing, and I’m hoping to get to see more schools shows!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Rimshot Media is essentially just a company that makes videos of drumming in schools. Each year, students learn drumline shows, group ensembles, solo performances; my goal has always been to capture the effort that goes into that process. One drumline show is worked on for months by dozens of students and becomes an emotional experience as a young adult. I just think how cool it would be to have a video of that to look back on. Along with the benefit of having material to improve from as a musician! Drumming is a personal passion of mine so making these videos is kind of a way of giving back for me. I’m pretty proud now that I can expand the business enough to include some friends on projects. Alx Wyzy and Zalen Cigainero help out a ton. Crew shirts on the way!

Have you ever had to pivot?

Actually Covid was a pivot for me. When it hit I was coming off a hard time in music and I struggled for a while trying to figure out what I was going to do. Since it didn’t seem like it was going away anytime soon, after maybe six months, I decided it’d be a good time to focus on the video side of my work and to take it a little more seriously. The government offered a relief payment for freelancers affected by the pandemic, it took a while to get, but it came in all at once. I took a chunk of that and invested in better video equipment, did the official registering, and got websites up and running. It’s also felt like a pivot recently too. Bringing other people onto projects has brought it’s own benefits and challenges. The growth is exciting!

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

Reading some of the Analects of Confucious has actually had a big impact on how I think of work. The parts specifically that relate the relationship of a government and it’s people to parents and their children, or in general, of thinking about “ruling”, or managing, in terms of a family relationship. An employee would then be seen in the same way as a son or daughter, aunt or uncle. So I really try to think about peoples well-being, especially when they’re helping me out with work. I just want us all to be well supported.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rimshotmediaco.com/