My dennis davies, drummergood friend Dennis Davies from Calgary was a “poster child” for a drum company out of Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, a small bump on the road as you leave Alberta on the way to Saskatoon.

Canwood Drums were - and still are to a certain extent - shells that were built and finished by a farmer named Fred Pepper 30 miles southwest of Lloydminster on what was once a cattle farm. Between 1986 & 1990 when Long & McQuade stores across Canada handled his drums exclusively.

Fred worked with 6 ply shells for toms, 8 ply shells for bass drums & 6, 8 or 10 ply shells for snare drums. He also would sometimes do 8 ply toms but these, as Dennis admits, were not a huge seller. Fred also wanted Canwood to be special, to be separate from other drums so he came up with a bearing edge that was cut from both sides at a 66.3 degree angle making the contact point of head & shell right in the middle of the ply set up.

Pepper was also very creative with stains & finishes & produced some amazing colours even matching things like hotrods in car mags & one dudes coffee mug. In fact Fred had an incredible knack for picking snare shells. With the elongated Tama type snare beds & the somewhat unique bearing edge, his snare drums were truly awesome.

Canwood actually may have reached the point of too much success. Like many manufacturers who have early success Fred had trouble keeping up the output & quality control started to suffer. Issues with finish materials & the environment (resulting in some subquality finishes durability wise), & some health issues forced Fred to back off & seriously reduce production.

Fred still runs Canwood but the main thing they do there now is PA rental. Dennis says Fred sometimes does a custom order and keeps a limited supply of raw Keller shells on site. He no longer does any spray finishes but does some nice hand applied oil finishes.