Body Beats: Local Man Mixes Drumming, Massage

Local drummer, massage therapist and barber Max Callaway has invented a new kind of musical massage — or at least he's the first to go public with it.

Callaway, 59, drums on clients with his palms, fists and fingertips.

"Several years ago, I felt a strong desire to start drumming on peoples bodies," Callaway says. "[Other] people were doing it, but it was at an elementary level. People do the karate chop level, but I felt that nobody's ever used particular rhythms — rather than just right left right left."

The body thumper uses sacred, ancient and complex rhythms like Mozambique, badu kada, American rudiments and polyrhythms mixing the rhythms with traditional Swedish massage. He may slap the lower spine and trapezius muscles simultaneously, lightly tap the head with fingertips, or rumble his fists up the body like a hailstorm. Whatever he does, he generates rhythms.

"I'm really into the power of rhythm and everything is rhythms, whether it is the sun or the moon, and I feel like I am just a body who is playing it, but the rhythm, the rhythm is the magic, and it is the space between the rhythms where the healing seems to take place."

Callaway believes his rhythms have emotional and neurological effects. A student of cross-hemispherical brain research, the ambidextrous Callaway inverts beats and alternates the regions he plays them on to create patterns which he says link up either hemisphere of the client's brain.

For this balding, humble percussionist with a chin patch, the switch from wailing on animal skins to human skins has been a natural progression.

Callaway began drumming when he was 15 and once spent five years of his life drumming for eight hours a day. He now plays hand drum and sings in a local, Tenacious D-like duo called Von Callaway, named after himself and local guitarist Russ Von Bach. Max's father was a barber, and Max grew up massaging him for 50 cents an hour.

A few years ago Callaway completed his massage certification at Cypress Health Institute in Soquel, and tried out his budding technique on the school's founder, Larry Bernstein.

Bernstein says the rhythm therapy can enhance relaxation, "giving the body a chance to release tension in connective tissues, muscle fibers, or even bone structures." It also improves circulation, waste removal from the blood, and nutrient delivery to the tissues.

Bernstein heads up the education program for the Santa Cruz Integrative Medicine and Chi Center, and is certified in long list of therapies such as craniosacral, polarity, myofacial, somatics and zero balancing, to name a few.

"In using percussive technique, Max is exploring, as was Pasteur years ago, the edges of mainstream medicine," he says, adding that he would like to see more research into the drum therapy.

Percussive techniques like Callaway's have a long-standing tradition in body work and are part of the standard repertoire used in traditional Swedish massage, which names its body tapping "tapotement." Tapotement however, doesn't involve complex rhythms.

"You could look at the body as a series of rhythms — the heart, respiratory, digestive rhythms, even your nervous system has cycles that it goes through — so the percussive massage is an organic, tactile extension of natural rhythms of the body," says Bernstein. But how rhythms can affect the body is little understood.

Callaway "makes no particular claims" about what his technique can do for health, but he has received a lot of positive feedback.

Leon Kieding, 24, a journalism student at Cabrillo College, said Callaway's massage helped him get into "a state of zen."

"[Max] helped me get in a place where I didn't know I existed. A lot of people take morphine to feel that way."

Kieding says the experience is akin to becoming an instrument. "He was playing me and it was such a relief and a rush and a rapture to feel going from the base of the spine through the top of my head...I felt like I didn't even exist," Kieding said.

Local massage therapist Nazul Hernandez, who went to massage school with Max back in 2008, says he was skeptical when Callaway first mentioned the idea.

"The concept itself, it didn't sound good. In practice, though, it did work out," Hernandez said. He works at Spa Fitness in Capitola and has received two drum massages from Max. The technique serves to release stagnant "qi" or energy, he says, but in his opinion, is "better mixed in as a topping on massage" than delivered as a stand-alone treatment.

Lisa Lemucchi, who has known Max for years, calls her friend's rhythm therapy "enlivening."

"Different massages are good for different things, depending on what you need at the time. This is not a massage I'd have if I need to be still and calm, but it is a good massage to get circulation and blood flow," said Lemucchi, who works at North Bay Physical Therapy in Santa Cruz and has been a massage therapist for 14 years.

Lemucchi describes Max as a talented healer, and attributes this to years of drumming and massage.

"His hands are so full of energy; he's really gifted," she said. "Max is also a very loving and nurturing person. As a woman, I don't usually let men I'm not involved with massage me...[Max] is very much in his heart and very much in integrity. As a woman, I find him very safe."

Callaway's motivations certainly seem to be pure. Covered in sweat, he glows with intensity as he thumps on bodies, a faint smile frequently appearing on his face. He says he drums with the enthusiasm of a teenager, and peppers his language with percussive sounds such as "doosh" and "dooga-dum." Yet Callaway seems clueless when it comes to the business side of his practice.

He recently set his chair up at a long-boarding surf contest on West Cliff and took donations for his drum massage.

"I massaged one guy for an hour and a half and he gave me two dollars," Callaway said. "That taught me a lesson."

As more clients come in, Max plans to charge around $50 an hour. Clearly, for him, it's not just about the money. He actually loves doing it.

"I go into sort of a trance but I am very grounded and very connected, and I actually become in almost a state of bliss and don't want to be anywhere else or doing anything else."

If you go: Max Callaway can be reached by phone at 831-431-7014 or by e-mail at drumz@att.net.