HAY RIVER - Jim Constable's love affair with the drums began when he was a toddler.That was more than 50 years ago.

Jim Constable has been a drummer for more than 50 years. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

Now, Constable, 54, is one of the best-known drummers in the NWT, appearing every year with "instant bands" at music festivals.

While growing up in the Newfoundland town of Grand Falls, he got his first drumming lesson from his grandfather's friend, who was once lead drummer with a regimental band in the Canadian Army.

"He showed me how to play brushes when I was three years old," said Constable. "It's one of my earliest memories actually."

His father - Jim Sr. - was also a sergeant major in the Church Lads Brigade, a cadets-like organization in Newfoundland associated with the Church of England.

"I gravitated towards the band room because that was where the most noise was coming from," he said, adding, when he was four or five, he was given sticks to practise on the drums.

"That's where I started to learn how to play," he said.

Constable said someone with an ear for music might hear a military sound to his drumming.

His father also owned a club, where Constable first saw films of famed jazz drummers Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa when he was about six, while he stood in the doorway of his home attached to the club. Since then, he has played just about every kind of music, including marches, punk and rock.

"But blues and jazz is my love," he said. "It speaks to me."

After leaving his hometown, Constable served a few years in the army, where he listened to military bands and would occasionally jam with them.

After the army, he was a professional musician for 20 years while working various jobs in cities across Canada.

In Ontario in the early 1980s, he was a founding member of Just Alice, an Alice Cooper cover band.

He occasionally played drums around Nova Scotia with the famed Dutch Mason Blues Band in the early 1990s.

Along with drums, he can play guitar and harmonica.

In 1995, he moved to Hay River at the suggestion of a friend from the army. Constable recalls his first question to his friend was whether there was a band to play in and places to play in Hay River.

"There was a very healthy live music scene when I first arrived here," he recalled, adding he joined a band called Pressure Ridge and later Katz 'n' Jammers and The Outlaw Band

However, he described today's live music scene in Hay River as dismal, adding the community doesn't even have a music festival.

"That's something I'd like to rectify," he said, adding he has discussed the idea of a music festival with many people. "Eventually, those seeds are going to take root."

Constable said he has thought about organizing a festival himself, but he has a full-time job as a driver for Hay River Disposals.

Aside from performing live, he plans to record a demo of four or five blues and rocking blues songs with a grant from the NWT Arts Council.

He will play drums and sing, along with performing on rhythm guitar and harmonica.

"I want this to be a broadcast-quality demo," he said, adding he hopes it will be sold and distributed to radio stations.

He counts the work as his first recording in the North, even though he has played on other people's records.

Constable hopes to record the demo - which may be called Blue Ice Blues - before Christmas.