What's up gang! On the show this week, we are talking snares, social media, and podcasting with my man Nate Testa!

We all love gear. I think that goes without saying. But Nate Testa from Testa Beat Drums may like it just a little more than we do. Since I first started taking my Instagram page seriously, I've noticed tons and tons of drummers. But there weren't too many guys out there talking about the gear side of things. Sure the drum company pages might show you how to use their latest piece of equipment, but there wasn't really anyone showing you how to fix it if it broke.

When I first announced the launch of this podcast, Nate was one of the first guys to jump at the chance to come on the show. As I dug deeper into his background, I quickly realized that Nate was yet another man of many hats. Out came the pen and pad for one hand and my thumb to scroll with the other. I'm excited for you all to hear Nates journey along the way, and what he's up to these days!

My conversation with Nate Testa starts out with us discussing our love for cheese and Monster Energy drinks. I consume both frequently but never together. According to Nate, these two items go great together! I never really thought about it, but was immediately trying to imagine both tastes in my mouth at the same time. I figured hey, they are already unhealthy apart from each other. Might as well try them together!

Only a mere 5 minutes into the conversation and I already felt like I knew him for a lifetime. We wrapped up our cheese talk and got down to business. I asked Nate a bit about growing up and how he got into drumming. He is originally from Pennsylvania which is where I live. I found it ironic that he now lives in Florida because I had also moved to Florida a few years back. In between these two states, Nate spent some time in Nashville, Tn where he went to college. We talked about his experiences in the city and what it has done for him as a musician.

When you are a musician, there is a good chance you have played in some bands. Nate tells us about some session work he has done, and how he landed a sweet gig being in a highly produced music video. These days, Nate focuses more on the drum repair side of the job but does play drums in church from time to time.

One thing I learned through my research was that he has also worked alongside of some other familiar podcasters in the drum game. Nate has done interning with Drummers I like and managed the social media page for The Drum Showroom. He has also taken over repost pages on Instagram and boosted their following number by the thousands. Which leads us to the next topic of our conversation. Nate is currently the man behind the "Official Snare Geek" page. A page dedicated to sharing pics, tips, tricks, reviews, demos and much more. At the time of our recording, he was still kicking around the name for this snare drum page. But it is official and all the links are down below this post.

As you can already tell, Nate gets involved with quite a few different things. If you head to his website (listed below) you can find all of the other services he offers. I asked Nate to tell us a bit about each of them including Hired Professional Drummer, Drum Tech, Drum Lesson, Business & Marketing Consultant, Drum Repair, and Social Media Strategies. That's a pretty impressive list of job titles and services. I had to pick his brain a little bit to see what goes into being some of these things.

With social media always being a hot topic on this show, I, of course, asked Nate about some of the strategies he offers clients. As I mentioned before, he has taken other pages and gained them thousands of additional followers. Nate was kind enough to tell us his approach to platforms like Instagram and what folks should be doing to grow their accounts.

We finish off our chat with some gear talk before...