Charleston-based drummer Jay Ferguson is also founder and owner of Home Grown Drums.



Jay has been playing the drums since his youth, when he received his first drum set in sixth grade. He played percussion instruments for school bands in his hometown of Mattoon, where he graduated from high school in 1998.



After high school, Jay Ferguson pursued his higher education in music at the University of Illinois in Urbana. Ferguson said he received undergraduate degrees in percussion and jazz performance in 2003 and earned the U of I's first graduate degree in jazz studies in 2005.



Jay Ferguson's passion for performing music continued as he attended law school at Northern Illinois University, where he graduated in 2008, and then started working as an attorney.



Jay Ferguson made his first drum set in 2001 while he was finishing his undergraduate degrees. He needed a professional quality instrument and found that it would be more cost-effective to build his own. It was the start of his own company: Home Grown Drums.



Jay Ferguson started with general woodworking skills that he learned from his grandfather Wallace Bingaman and he outsourced some of the more specialized drum-making tasks to other tradesmen. He said his skills have continually advanced since then, and now his drums are made completely in-house.



Other than taking part in online workshops and exchanging ideas with stringed instrument makers, Jay Ferguson is essentially self-taught as a drum maker.



With Home Grown Drums, Jay Ferguson focuses on making custom snare drums, custom drum sets, and some Middle Eastern hand percussion instruments. He added that he can produce a drum set in an average of six weeks and a snare drum in three to four weeks.