This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own. 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.
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. 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.
