Senior Alice Tibbetts hasn’t missed a beat, snaring the hip opportunity to apply a percussionist’s passion, rhythm, and overflowing energy to tapping on plastic buckets. As a member of one of Minnesota’s rare and nameless bucket drumming groups, Tibbetts exhibits her talent for keeping rhythm by tapping, thumping, and pounding on “whatever plastic buckets we can get from Home Depot.”

The door to Tibbett’s bucket drumming career was opened by her habit of tapping her foot on the floor.

“When I sing or play viola, I’m always really twitchy anyway. I just sorta tap out a beat with my foot; it helps me keep a more consistent rhythm,” she explained.

Bucket drumming turns everyday, industry-standard, five-gallon plastic buckets into vessels for exceptional, globally-connected, multi-part rhythms. When the buckets are inverted, the bottom becomes the drumhead ready for reverberations and the outer edge becomes the rim ready for a rim shot.

Tibbetts said, “I like having one green one and one orange one, or both blue.”

However informal the main musical apparatus, “We do use actual drumsticks, and occasionally someone will accompany on cowbell,” Tibbetts assured.

Like the instruments bucket drummers beat, the music they play is unusual and universal.

“We don’t play pop or rock, but really weird world music that has a lot of complicated sounding rhythms. A bunch of people play different simple rhythms that twine together and sound cool.”

For Tibbetts, the best part of bucket drumming is watching her listeners.

“We see guys bike by and give us a thumbs up. Sometimes people are like ‘Oh, can I join too?’ We always have a couple extra buckets for them to play,” Tibbetts said.

Tibbetts reminisced,“There was this one guy, in his seventies, who used to be in a rock band. He just came over to our group and started wailing on the buckets. It was the best thing I ever saw.”

Seeing is learning, according to Tibbetts.

“It really helps if I watch other people. I am a visual learner, so I can’t listen to drumming and know ‘that’s what you do with this hand and that’s what you do with that hand.’ That doesn’t work for me. I just watch other drummers and see what they do, then I pick it up,” Tibbetts said.

Tibbetts found the bucket drumming group through her guitarist father’s friendship with percussionist Marc Anderson, who is titled the “Zen Master of Ambient Percussion” by Drum! Magazine.

“It started with Marc saying let’s just a get some other kids in here and just wing it and see what happens,” Tibbetts said, describing how the group got started. “He teaches one of us one rhythm, another one a rhythm, then he tells us to play them at the same time,” she added.

In addition to inspiration from her father and Anderson, Tibbetts was welcomed into the world of music by other drumming icons. Stephen Morris, member of English post-punk rock band Joy Division, tops the list of Tibbett’s favorite drummers.

“He is really good at keeping the beat and a consistent rhythm. That is something I need to learn how to do so I can drum consistently for a long song.”

Tibbetts’ other favorite percussionists hail from England as well. She likes Keith Moon from The Who and Ringo from The Beatles “because he is a total goof-ball, but also a really good drummer.”

The unpretentious bucket drumming band can be found anywhere from Saints games to the St. Paul Farmers Market. The uninhibited nature of the bucket drumming performances adds to their charm, and the value of rare opportunity of seeing them perform.

“It is pretty spontaneous. Shows happen whenever Marc says ‘Hey guys, get ready for a show next week’,” Tibbetts said, “Not that I’m saying there is a show next week.”