Welcome to the August, 2026 edition of The Art Parlor, brought to you by Friends in Art! In this episode, our guest is Kai Owens – a gentleman you may remember from our past showcase events! We hear about his path in music as a drummer and learn how he got started, including the mentors who encouraged him and pushed him beyond the boundaries of comfort. As you will see, he is a talented young man headed for even greater heights! Included in this presentation are some music tracks for your listening pleasure. AI-Generated Transcript Jason • 00:00 Opinions expressed on ACB media are those of the respective program contributors and cannot be assumed to serve as endorsements of products or views by friends in art, the American Council of the Blind, their elected officials, or staff. Friends in Art welcomes you to the Art Parlor, where visually impaired artists of all types will discuss their work. Pull up a chair, bring along your beverage of choice, and listen to thoughtful, stimulating conversations with visually impaired artists in all media and from all parts of the world. And now, here's your host, Peter Altschul. Peter • 00:48 Greetings! My name is Peter Altschul. I am the scholarship committee chair of Friends and Art, and this is our most recent edition of Art Parlor. And our guest is a scholarship winner of five years ago, Kai Owens. Hey, Kai. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. I want to spend most of our time talking about how things have changed for you in the past five years. But before we do that, talk a little bit about how you got into drumming and how it changed your life. Kai • 01:19 Yeah, no doubt. So I got into drumming in fifth grade. I was around maybe 10 or 11 years old. And my older brother was a drummer in high school, and he was in the marching band and in the orchestra and all that kind of stuff. So I saw him kind of coming up through that program. And obviously me being the younger brother, I wanted to follow everything he was doing. And in the midst of that, I had just gotten my vision diagnosis about two years before fifth grade. So I was looking for some things that were, you know, non-visual and my parents were looking for some things to put me in and, you know, let me get out some energy and some anxiety. So I got a drum set and I started playing in the middle school band as well in the percussion section. And then before I knew it, I hit high school and I decided to not continue with the school orchestra and everything, but instead joined a school of rock sort of program from my local music store where I was taking lessons. And after a couple years of doing that, I realized, you know, just how much I love performing and how comfortable I was on stage compared to most everyone else I was around. And that kind of led me to realize that, you know, music could be a very viable career path for me. So when I started applying to colleges, I decided that I was going to go for music, and I chose music theory to be particular because at the time I thought I might want to go further into the academia music sort of world. And then in the midst of getting that degree, I realized that I instead actually kind of had always wanted to do performance and just thought academia might be safer. And then I realized that none of them are very safe career options. So if I'm going to go for one of them, I might as well just do what I'm really wanting to do. So I took as many performance based classes and was in a band all through college and just graduated from my undergrad at the University of Georgia this past December and I'll be starting this fall for my Masters in Jazz drums at William Peter • 03:15 Patterson University in New Jersey. And we'll talk a lot about your college experience, but before we do that, I want to talk about how you were when you were applying for a scholarship five years ago. Let me tell you what I remember. I remember you sending these drum tracks that were amazingly complicated. I think there were meter changes and all kinds of cool stuff. What do you remember about your life at that time and as you were preparing for college? Kai • 03:43 Yeah, it was definitely a very different time musically for me than where I'm at now. But I think a lot of it carried over nicely. So I was doing a lot of stuff with progressive metal and math rock and death metal and all these very heavy, very technical genres. And I was really enjoying the just the challenge that that brought in through that, that kind of, in a way helped me get into a lot of these programs because I had a lot of this academic technical knowledge about drumming. And then I got into my program and I showed up to my first week of lessons. Peter • 04:18 And let's stop there. Because I want to talk a little about the scholarship process. So you apply for the scholarship. And I remember calling you, I think essentially talking about your scholarship. And as I remember, you had broken your foot in the hospital and you were in the hospital getting treatment for that. Do you remember that and how that sort of, what do you remember about Kai • 04:39 that whole process? Yeah, that was an interesting time. That was the summer right before college for me and I was on a trip with a bunch of other blind skateboarders, which I was really big into skateboarding at the time. And on day two of this trip, I broke my fibula in my lower right leg, which is obviously a very important limb for playing drum set. That's where you're playing your bass drum. And I had to take several editions for colleges and for this scholarship, I think all of them were recorded while I couldn't use my right leg at all. I was in a cast. So I had luckily had all this practice playing double bass drums. So I just forewent my right foot entirely and played all my auditions with only my left foot switching between the hi-hat and the That's that's good, I suppose, but it's pretty funny looking back at those. And what a time that was trying to, you know, juggle all those difficulties. Peter • 05:41 So I'm a drummer, too, as you know, and folks listening to this podcast know. Talk about sort of the complexities of playing bass drum and hi hat at the same time. Usually the bass drum is at the right foot and the hi hats with your left foot. That's the standard procedure. What was it like having to go back and forth and using your left foot all that with all that energy? Kai • 06:00 Yeah, I didn't find it too bad because when playing, you know, a double pedal on the bass drum, your left foot's kind of juggling those two roles already. So it was just kind of making that juggling a little bit more on the forefront of everything I was doing had to be that juggling. So I tried to just orient grooves and everything that I picked for my auditions kind of around, you know, not needing two of the voices at the same time on the kit. So like, if I needed to play a closed hi-hat, then I couldn't really play my bass drum unless I used my hand or something to close the hi-hat. So I would maybe go to the ride symbol and just let the hi-hats be open while I'm playing the bass drum. And then maybe I'd close the hi-hat for a few notes to get the sound I needed there before I switch back to the bass drum. So it's just kind of a funny one-footed juggling process. Peter • 06:48 As a percussionist, you often have to do those kinds of weird things just in general principle, whether you're playing in jazz or playing in orchestral or wind ensemble stuff, band stuff. That's all kinds of weird things as a percussionist that you don't know other instruments. So we were thrilled to give you the scholarship and you went to college and I interrupted your story. So you went to college, what did they tell you? Kai • 07:12 I went to University of Georgia. I showed up there, I was studying with Professor Timothy Adams, who's a great classical percussionist and was a orchestral timpaniist for years, but he also grew up playing drum set and played professionally in sessions and in jazz bands and everything like that. So I showed up on my first day of lessons and I was the first student he ever took on who was just a drum set student and not doing any sort of classical percussion. And he gave me the album "Workin'" by Miles Davis with the great Philly Joe Jones on drums. And he gave me this, or told me the record to get, And I went home and he said, "Learn this whole record." So I go home that week after my very first lesson. And this was still kind of during COVID. So I think he actually gave me the assignment, maybe over email or I'm not even quite sure how he did it. For a while we were set up on two opposite sides of this huge room with like 50 feet between us while we're playing drums. So he gives me this record and I go home and learn it. And I learned pretty much every song on there, at least the ones that I could pull off at the time. And I come back the next week I play along the record in my lesson. And ever since then, I pretty much haven't looked back and have been doing jazz as my main style ever since then. I had zero exposure to jazz pretty much up until that point. And in that one week, I fell in love with it and have now committed my whole career path and journey and music to it. Peter • 08:44 So let's talk about that. How was it the shift from heavy metal/all the stuff you were playing, pretty intense stuff that's not traditional jazz, whatever you wanted to find it, to playing Miles Davis? What was the shift like for you? Kai • 09:00 It was pretty huge. It actually cracks me up to look at, because I have some videos from those early lessons during COVID that I was submitting videos. And I go back to those every now and again and just see how I was playing and sounding. it cracks me up because you can tell I just it was so new and so foreign to me. But one good thing is that a lot of the, you know, the tech
