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TOPEKA MAGAZINE | Winter 2021
married, but being on the road meant it was more tension than love.” Robinson says he knows the exact day and time he decided to get out of California— August 10, 1979, just a few minutes after an earthquake. “Now they said it was a tremor, but I was standing in front of my mirror in the bathroom and could see the palm trees outside swaying like crazy. And by the time that had passed, I had a crack in the bathroom wall that I could put my fist through. I had made up my mind, California was not my cup of tea.” It was hard to leave the adrenaline of the road tours, but he went to Denver for a while and resumed playing without touring. Eventually, he followed a day job with Polaroid back to Kansas, met his wife, Mary, in May 1980 and settled in Topeka, where he began playing with local and Kansas City bands, including the Boulevard Band, and then Tony DiPardo’s band—the official band of the Kansas City football team. Robinson had heard they were looking for a drummer, so he came to an audition that turned out to be a live children’s Christmas concert in the Overland Park Convention Center. With no rehearsals, DiPardo took up his signature red trumpet and signaled Robinson to play. It went well, because Robinson continued playing with the band until it folded in 2011. “He was a generous person,” Robinson says of DiPardo. “He always did a lot of fundraisers for various organizations around Kansas City. I still have the leather béret and black jacket with my name on it. We wore those at all the football games when we played,” he recalls. For the past 10 years, Robinson has been playing with the PenderBlast Red-E-Mix Trio. He also wants to assemble a senior citizens musical group to play around Topeka. “We would play music that you’d like to hear—jazz, swing, pop, a little bit of everything,” he says. Robinson says his years of playing haven’t dulled his excitement for music but have taught him a lot about working with musicians, being a drummer who plays to rather than along with others. “At this age, I am concentrating more on making sure a song is delivered properly,” Robinson says. “I am more aware of the musicians around me. The best compliment from another musician is, ‘Wow, you got into me.’ Listen to what the soloist is doing. Listen to the levels. Don’t overpower them, but push them just a bit. When they are building excitement, build with them. And when they are coming down, come down with them.”
Electric Drummer For the past years, Jim Robinson has been an allelectric drummer, playing on his Zendrum, a versatile guitar-shaped percussion instrument. Each button on the Zendrum produces a different type of drum sound: bass drum or snare or cymbal or any of hundreds of other types. The amplifier and speaker in the background amplify and condition the sounds. “To carry all those components around with me as individual instruments, I’d have to carry a semitruck,” Robinson says. “Now I have an array of percussion instruments and as a singing drummer I can actually hear the band and see the crowd.” He says another advantage of the Zendrum or instruments like it is that it frees him up from some of the physical exertion of the drum, playing can be just as intense and exciting, but more finesse striking than pounding. But it does have its critics. “My buddies say they love the sound, but they don’t like me playing it. When I ask them why, they say it’s because they don’t see me sweat anymore,” Robinson laughs.