Take A Stand!!!

A few days later, Jordan emailed me and thought that it was a good idea to do a little interview with my fellow countryman, Patrick Slaats, who built the keyboard stand. Well, that’s no problem for me of course. So I did and here you have the other side of the story on Jordan’s keyboard stand.

EH: When did you get the idea to build a stand for Jordan and how did you get in touch with him?

PS: The idea started as a joke during the Bospop festival in 2000 where Dream Theater was the headliner. I said to my friend Coen van der Zanden, who had been using such a stand already for four years at that time: “We should try to talk Jordan into such a keyboard stand”. Coen is also a forum member on Jordan’s website and when Jordan started discussing the use of 2 keyboards it was time to react. Coen sent different pictures of his stand to Jordan and explained him how it all worked. At the end of November Jordan replied an email with the words: “I want to have your friend build me a stand, no matter what happens with all this”. That’s how it started. After a lot of hard work, a lot of emails and phone calls, the stand was ready to be shipped to New York in January 2002. As Dream Theater was already rehearsing it was transported directly to the studio where they put it all together. This was the first time that Jordan saw the stand as he had only seen the pictures that Coen had sent him. His reaction by email was: “It really is visually attractive and it works for me, it makes the “look” of the band that much stronger and the lighting guy was very pleased with it indeed”.

EH: What are the specifics of the stand?

PS: The biggest and most beautiful part is the vertical pipe with a diameter of 205 mm, made of stainless steel. On top of this pipe I welded a lid, which contains a block of steel with a nylon bin. This bin contains an axis to which the vertical bar is screwed. The wires are also in the pipe.

EH: What will the new stand look like?

PS: I got the idea for this stand at the Dream Theater show in Amsterdam earlier this year. Jordan, Coen and I had a little chat in the afternoon at the time when the crew was preparing the stage for that night’s show. I noticed some crewmembers that were lugging with these trusses, where the spotlights will be hitched. These trusses are aluminium tubes, which are as a triangle linked by little bars. We didn’t use aluminium but once again stainless steel. This was easier said than done as we had a lot of problems with smoothing away the turn system and getting the legs straight and secure under the stand. Not to mention the time we spent on sanding and filing. The final result only came after 200 hours of thinking, drawing, Grolsch beer and building.

EH: Do you make stands for other keyboardist besides Jordan Rudess?

PS: No, actually I don’t have the time for it and the one for Jordan was not great timing either. But hey, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity that you don’t want to miss. Everything was arranged by email and phone and it’s great that such a world-class musician like Jordan tells you how great the stand is and takes it around the world.

EH: Yes, that is very cool and you did a great job on the stand. I look forward to see the new one in October.

Erik Hulsegge