After working as drummer and musical director for 98′, Teddy Campbell was asked to join The Backstreet Boys band by Ricky Miner, who put both bands together. Campbell and The Boys have been touring constantly, with dates booked well into 2002.

When Campbell got the gig, one of the first things he did was figure out how to expand his setup so it would adequately fill the stage space and catch people’s eyes. “I have three jazz-size rack toms – 8×8, 8×10, 8×12 – then a 10×12 on the left side of my hi-hat,” Teddy explains. “Plus I’m using 14″ and 16″ floor toms. I have three snares – a 5.5×13, which is my main snare, a 5×10 to my right, and a 4×10 to my left. I use two sets of hi-hats and about twelve other cymbals. And the rack for all of this is massive, it curves all the way around me.”

Then there are the electronics, which Campbell has managed to cut back since the first rehearsals. “In the beginning,” he says, “I had to play a lot of sampled sounds – kick, snare, rimshots. But I found a way to get rid of most of that stuff before we went out. I scaled it down to only having to trigger some snare sounds on a few songs. I was using a sampled kick on a few songs in rehearsal. But when we got on the road, the house engineer told me he wasn’t using the kick sounds in the house anyway, so I was able to get rid of that. Then I was able to get rid of the rimshot sample by using Yamaha’s Groove Wedge, which is like a cool-sounding woodblock that you attach to your rim.” Advertisement