Guests Alex Shumaker & Ami Dolenz on the Melissa Billie Clark Show

Melissa Billie Clark Show Podcast

Guests Alex Shumaker & Ami Dolenz on the Melissa Billie Clark Show

Ami Dolenz:

Ami was born January 8, 1969 at 7:05 am, in Burbank California. Her parents brought her home the next day. Micky’s mother, Janelle Scott, was there to help the new parents.

In 1980, Ami, her mother and grandmother moved back to their townhouse. Ami attended a private school nearby, and made lots of friends, many of them remain her friends today.

Her parents arranged for Ami to talk about acting with a friend of theirs, who was in the business. The friend spent two hours with Ami, talking to her about how difficult it is to get an agent, how hard it is just to get an appointment, and how many she would have to see, with no guarantee she would be signed-up by anyone. Ami left with a list of agents to contact.

She was also a co-star in many other films, including: “Can’t buy me love”, “Faith”, Rescue Me”, and several horror films, such as: “Children of the night”, Ticks”, Witchboard II”, and Pumpkinhead II”. On the lighter side, is “Stepmonster”, a very cute movie about a kid that is sure his stepmother is a monster.

“Miracle Beach” is the movie most often mentioned by her fans as their favorite. She still has the genie costume from the movie.

Alex Shumaker:

Alex Shumaker was born May 16, 2006, he resides in Punxsutawney, PA.

Alex was interested in Classic Rock bands such as Journey, Foreigner, Reo Speed Wagon and Styx since age 4.

While most 5 years were headed to the Toy section at Walmart Alex would ask to go to “look” at the CD’s. On February 10, 2012 while browsing the CD’s Alex found a DVD of the band Journey with their new lead singer Arnel. Alex became fixated on drummer Deen Castronovo, he went and got an exercise ball and put it in front of the TV and grabbed some kitchen utensils for his make shift drum set. He watched the video over and over again and broke every kitchen utensil his parents had so when his dad came home from work he cut a pair of plastic coat hangers for him to use.

That evening Alex’s mom posted a picture of his drum “kit” on Facebook with the heading “you gotta do what you gotta do when your parents won’t buy you a drum set!” The phone soon rang and it was Alex’s Nana wanting to speak with him. His parents weren’t all that thrilled when he started screaming “Nana and Papa are buying me a real drum set on Saturday”. Alex received that little drum kit and played it for hours on end, at least 3-4 hours a day watching the Journey DVD over and over trying copy Deen’s every move.

Every time Alex went to Walmart he got a CD. One day another DVD appeared, this time it was the band Foreigner with then drummer Brian Tichy. Alex became obsessed with Tichy’s theatrics of stick throwing/bouncing.

After a few months of playing Alex’s parents enrolled him in drum lessons once a week with teacher Brian Rowan with whom he is still under the instruction of.

To date along with Castronovo and Tichy the most influential drummers for Alex have been: Todd Sucherman of Styx, Brian Hitt of Reo Speedwagon, Chris Fraizer of Foreigner, Peter Criss of Kiss, John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, Neil Peart of Rush, Sean Fuller of Florida Georgia Line and Rich Redmond of Jason Aldean, Lucky Lerner of the Circle Jerks, Glen Sobel of Alice Cooper, and Troy Luccketta of Tesla to mention a few.

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