What’s in a Name

The story behind Waterdrum Films

There is an instrument in Cherokee tradition called the water drum. It is one of the oldest and most sacred in Indigenous music, a small vessel partially filled with water, its membrane stretched tight across the top. The water inside represents the earth. The circular motion of the shake represents the never-ending cycle of life. And the beat of the drum itself, that steady insistent pulse, represents the human heart.

When I was trying to name this company, I kept coming back to that image. Not just because of my Cherokee heritage, though that connection runs deep and matters enormously to me. But also because I grew up playing drums. The drum was never an abstract symbol to me. It was something I understood in my hands, something I had always felt as a physical language before I had words for what it meant. When I found the water drum, it felt like a name that had been waiting.

Because at its core, that is what we are always searching for in the work. The heart. The thing underneath the thing. The reason a story is worth telling in the first place.

Waterdrum Films was founded on that search.

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I spent nine years building a production company in Oklahoma City called 1577 Productions. They were formative years. The work was meaningful, the relationships were deep, and the things I learned during that chapter shaped everything that came after. The highlight was directing Eddie, a feature documentary about Hall of Fame basketball coach Eddie Sutton.

I set out to make that film because I was fired up. Eddie Sutton was one of the greatest coaches the game had ever seen, and for reasons that never quite made sense to me, the Hall of Fame kept passing him by. That injustice is what got me motivated and got the project moving.

But somewhere in the middle of production, the story changed on me. As the film came together, the Hall of Fame started to matter less and less. What took its place was something I was not expecting. A father and a son. The relationship between Eddie and his son Sean, the tenderness and complexity of it, was what brought the film to life. It was a human story that had been sitting inside a basketball story the whole time, waiting to be found. The film took four years to make, was acquired by Lionsgate, and premiered on ESPN and ABC.

That discovery became the foundation of how I approach every project since. You have to listen. You have to stay open. You have to be willing to let the work become what it needs to become, even when that means releasing your original idea of what it was supposed to be. The best version of a film is often not the version you set out to make.

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A couple of years ago, my family and I made the decision to move to Austin, Texas.

It was not an easy decision. My two kids were heading into the 9th and 11th grade. That is about as hard a time as there is to ask a family to pull up roots and start over somewhere new. Oklahoma and Oklahoma City gave us so much, and those roots run deep. I still work there, still carry those relationships, still think of it as home in many ways. But there comes a point in an artist's life when growth requires new ground. Austin was that ground for us.

I am glad we trusted that instinct. My kids have thrived here, and my oldest is now getting ready to head to college. And what I found professionally exceeded what I was hoping for.

I became part of the Austin Film Society, one of the most respected film organizations in the country, a community of filmmakers who take the craft seriously and support each other the way creative communities at their best are supposed to. I have had the privilege of working out of The Bear, a collective of some of the most talented filmmakers and creatives in Austin doing production work at the highest level. Being inside that building, around those people, has been genuinely invigorating. It has pushed me.

Waterdrum Films was born out of that energy.

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The early work has set a tone I am proud of.

We are currently in production on a documentary about Clearhouse, an extraordinary end-of-life care facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma that operates on what is called the social model, a profoundly human approach to dying that this country urgently needs to understand. With the baby boomer generation aging, we are approaching what demographers call the silver tsunami, and we are not prepared for it. This film is not just about Clearhouse. It is about empathy. About community. About how we choose to take care of each other when it matters most. I spent six months observing and listening before we ever turned on a camera. That is the process.

I am also directing four short films for the Atlanta History Center for their upcoming exhibit exploring the Trail of Tears, specifically Cherokee and Muskogee Creek removal. It is an honor I do not hold lightly. These are stories that deserve to be told with care, with precision, and with deep respect for the people and nations at the center of them.

On the brand and commercial side, we have been building a relationship with Mevion Medical Systems, the world's leading manufacturer of proton therapy equipment. What began with editing a film about the father of proton therapy has grown into a full brand film production and an ongoing content partnership. It is a model for the kind of long-term client relationships Waterdrum is built around.

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Every project is different. Every subject requires its own kind of listening. But the question underneath all of it is always the same one, the same one the water drum asked me before I even knew I was building a company around it.

Where is the heart of this story?

That is what we are here to find.