On June 8, Pullman Strike drummer Daniel Beckham's daughter, Miller, was born — and he became the only dad in the band (though he jokes the others may have "something they don't know about"). Accordingly, the Americana-rock outfit stopped practicing in his basement and are taking a few weeks off. They'll be back July 4 for a Plaza Midwood Pig Pickin' gig at Diamond restaurant, and then they'll go quiet again to put the last touches on their second LP — tentatively due out this fall. Creative Loafing caught up with Beckham to see how he's handling the dad rock lifestyle so far.
What's the plan within the band? How are you moving forward?
Daniel Beckham: We decided to take the month of June off. That gave me the room to sort of figure out priorities and schedules, and those guys could focus on doing a little bit of writing. They did a few acoustic gigs here in Charlotte, which was fun for them and a new challenge.
How did they react when you said you were going to have a kid?
Everybody was super stoked. And it's also important to keep in mind that I'm a few years older than the rest of the guys in the band. I just turned 38 on June 5, which sounds a whole lot older than I actually feel. Some of those guys are married themselves but haven't gone down the kid route yet.
Do you know any other musician parents around Charlotte? Do you play with any who you've seen pull it off, where you've been like, "All right, it's doable?"
The drummer of Motel Glory [Stan Gibson], he's got a bunch of kids. I participated in a video shoot with our brother band, Amigo. And [Gibson], his little boy who was about 6, he was part of the whole video shoot. It was cool seeing him — [Gibson] was able to figure out these two types of things that, on the surface, would seem kind of opposed to one another. He's been able to figure it out and keep everybody happy and have a hell of a lot of fun doing it.
I know it's only been a few weeks, but what's been surprising so far?
You can read books until you're blue in the face, but when it all comes down to it you've just got to figure it out for yourself. Every kid's different, every parent's different and you just have to go through a pretty intense trial-and-error process to figure out what works best. I didn't realize they pee as often as they do.
