We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Gina and Allen Blaxton. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Gina and Allen below.
Gina and Allen, appreciate you joining us today. Can you tell us about a time where you or your team really helped a customer get an amazing result?
SnareSkirt is designed to reduce the impact of higher harsh frequencies that come from a snare drum. Often those unhelpful frequencies compete for acoustic space with very desirable vocal and other instrumental inputs. Additionally, the harshness of the snare drum often results in an unpleasant situation for an audience and others on stage. To reduce snare bleed into vocal and other microphones, the adverse snare inputs must be minimized through equalization (EQ). This has led to many drummers using SnareSkirt to help control those frequencies and their stage volume for those closest to the snare drum. It helps sound engineers build more natural-sounding front of house (FOH) and monitor mixes, as microphones that point towards the snare drum are able to capture more vocal and instrumental nuance. It has been used by a drummer on the Roots and Boots Tour with Sammy Kershaw, Aaron Tippin, and Collin Raye, the drummer for Jo Dee Messina, and several other name artists. It has been amazing to get feedback from drummers using SnareSkirt playing at different venues and having the FOH tell them that they are able to now put the snare in the FOH mix! You can read more feedback on our Testimonial page on our website at www.snareskirt.com
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
We are Allen and Gina Blaxton and we met when we were 8 and 9 years old. We have been married for 32 years and we have two adult children. Our son, Isaac, lives in Nashville with his fiancé and our daughter, Cara, who recently got married, lives in New Zealand. Throughout Allen’s military career as an Aviation Maintenance Officer, we lived in five states and moved nine times.
We made our last move to Nashville in 2016, when Allen retired from the United States Navy as a Commander after a very successful 25 year career. We knew that pursuing a more “traditional” second career wasn’t his first choice, and we realized that music was where his heart was, which helped lead us to Nashville. At his last duty station, Naval Air Station, in Patuxent River, Maryland, he auditioned for a local cover band, Tonight’s Alibi, and got the gig! It was the first time in his military career that he didn’t have to travel and didn’t have 24/7 responsibility for people and equipment, which gave him the time to do this. Our daughter, Cara, made a unique stick bag for him to use. He loved what she created and was amazed at how easy it was to use and carry all of his sticks.
The stick bag was the conversation starter for SnareSkirt!
In 2019, I posted a picture on Facebook, of the latest stick bag I had made for Allen. A local sound engineer saw the stick bag and asked if I could meet with her. We met in the alley between The Ryman and Legends, and she told me she had been looking for something more refined than a bar towel to hang from the bottom of the snare drum to mitigate unsavory and often harsh frequencies. She saw the way I had designed the stick bag to hang from the floor tom, and asked if I could make something similar to hang from the front of the snare drum and attach to the tension rods at the bottom. She thought it would be a much better way to help her fix the frequency problem with the snare. I went home and researched fabric, bungees, and made many trips to fabric stores and home improvement stores. I made several different prototypes and through these iterations and adjustments, the final product is……SnareSkirt. It has been patented and trademarked. (U.S. Patent No. 11,004,431) Allen and I are now the full owners of SnareSkirt, LLC, since January of 2021.
Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.
I had only sewn rag quilts and finished some sewing projects my Grandmother left me. So my sewing experience was small, but that little bit of knowledge came in very handy! When it came to sewing the quilts, I had to work really hard to understand what to do. But when it came to starting from scratch with SnareSkirt, I think because I understood how to make the stick bag, my confidence with sewing really grew! At the beginning of our business, I was doing everything but the embroidery to make the SnareSkirt. When my business partner asked to be bought out, I then started doing the embroidery as well. Every SnareSkirt that exists has been made by me!
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
From the Navy to Nashville!!! That is a very succinct statement that describes how we had to pivot! My husband had been in the Navy for 25 years and nine months when he retired. We have always loved music and we had some amazing things happen when we were trying to figure out what to do after the Navy. My husband was on the Blue Angels Flight Demonstration Squadron in 2000 and 2001 and in May of 2015, we attended the Naval Academy air show/reunion, and Wounded Warrior Golf Tournament. While there we talked to an Honorary Blue Angel, Russ Holden, who was the Caddy for Bernhard Langer, and he told us his story of how he started his charity, Caddy For a Cure. During this conversation he shared a song that helped him know he was on the correct path. It was a song that I grew up listening to and was one of my favorites, “Pieces” by The Imperials. Russ listened to our story about our upcoming retirement from the Navy, important life decisions we would soon have to make, and Allen’s love of drumming. He strongly suggested we go to Nashville and check it out. He said we would love it! That was on Wednesday. Two days later, on Friday, Memorial Day weekend in 2015, we got in the car and drove 11 hours to Nashville! It was our 25th wedding anniversary, so we made Nashville our celebration destination. We had so many amazing moments happen to us that we knew this was where we were supposed to go after the Navy. Just a few examples of special moments were at the Studio B tour where the tour guide played songs recorded there that (not coincidentally) had very special meaning to our lives. We attended a songwriter seminar where Rodney Clawson explained the origin of his very fruitful songwriting relationship with Luke Bryan, and learned that Bryan’s interest in collaborating with him began with Luke hearing and loving the song “Sweet Southern Comfort.” Rodney Clawson wrote it, Buddy Jewell recorded it, and it has been my favorite song and to get to hear him sing it had me in tears. We found a table at Robert’s Western World on a Saturday evening and had a conversation begin simply because Allen put a lot of napkins on his lap and the gentleman next to me tapped me on the shoulder and said “I like him, he likes napkins!” This conversation led to a lasting friendship and his girlfriend becoming our realtor. So many big and small things happened that weekend that it was undeniable that we were supposed to come here to start our next chapter!
Playing drums is definitely not your standard job after the Navy but it led us to my husband playing for an Elvis Tribute Artist, playing 6 days a week on Lower Broadway, and still working to achieve his biggest Nashville goals, and SNARESKIRT!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.snareskirt.com
- Instagram: snareskirt
- Facebook: SnareSkirt
Image Credits
Gina Blaxton