Drop Knee Tribute
D rop knee master 1: Dewey Weber
With comments by Wingnut and Kevin Miske
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This turn is a journey back to when the drop knee turn was young and crazy. Dewey Weber was one of the great style setters in the history of the drop knee.
There are two very pronounced elements in Weber's style, the use of force to get rotation and extreme leaning and arching to draw out the turn. Wingnut offers some explanations for why Dewey rotates his drop knee turn so hard.
KJ With Dewey Weber's turn, it's pure lean, he's actually arching with the turn.
Wingnut Weaver: The big deal with Dewey and when you're looking at any of those old guys that makes it really different is that they have to use the momentum and the centrifugal force 'cause their boards were so heavy. They really-- and Dewey was a little guy. Although he was a wrestling champ and really strong and really powerful he was also a little guy. And so when you have little guys, like Mickey Munoz, the same thing, you'll watch how much body english goes into a turn. That's what they have to do to make the thing work, is to whip their body into it.
KJ Ah, so he's getting a lot of windup and some force getting into it.
WW Yeah. He's using, that point on the board where his feet are, that pivot point, you know, it's like a teeter totter, that's where you've got to put the weight on it to swing the rest of it around.
KJ Could some of it be because it was so early they didn't really know what was possible?
WW No, it's just the equipment, they had no choice. That's how they did it. And Dewey figured out how to turn, how to whip his board really fast. And he was able to whip the board real fast and he was able to design boards with wider tails that would facilitate turning. Those were the Velzy Pig boards. That's where the Pig boards came out of in the Malibu area when Velzey was shaping there.
KJ Like the later turns, like your turn for instance has more like a modern shape, more like a skiier. You're still leaning or arching but sometimes your lean is going the other way.
WW Well, it's so different now 'cause the boards are a lot lighter. You know, when we have the, we have an old board contest in Santa Cruz at the end of April. And when we're doing that contest I'll spend the entire month riding a sixties board just so that it becomes natural to me again. The different timing, the different weight that you have to go through when you're riding one of those boards. Then it looks more natural, and you'll see a change in my style when I'm riding one of those boards.
KJ So what's the shape, some of the features would be like, round rails?
WW Well on the old boards they definitely have fifty-fifty rails, you know real soft rails. But they also tend to have a really rolled bottom.
KJ Rolled bottom. That's big.
WW Those are real shitty to ride.
As observed by Wingnut, the force used by Dewey had a lot to do with the board's weight, his size, and something to do with his energetic personality and training as a wrestler.
I think there's something about evolution there as well, which I kept trying to allude to in questioning Wingnut. My point is, if you're a pioneer, trying out sports technique, you don't really know what can be done so you do what comes naturally. When Dewey turns, he cranks the board hard, and leans. After his turn he often has trouble rocovering.
Many years later, it became clear that it was possible to turn a heavy board without so much rotation, by carving. The technique used would also involve less leaning. In my interviews with Wingnut and Kevin Miske, it came out that Kevin learned to drop knee on a heavy board. The technique he developed was entirely different. Like Dewey, Kevin is a strong guy who wants to use some force in turning a board. But he had some surfing drop knee role models to look at, thus he had more to go on when developing his own style than simply experimenting.
KJ Things like Kevin's turn, Kevin Miske.
WW Yeah.
KJ Say where he does that deep drop. Probably wouldn't work so well on one of those boards, right?
WW Actually it does, it works really really well because you've got to get your weight back on the board. He developed that turn because one of the only boards he had when he moved up to Humbolt University was a late 50s Johnny Rice. That thing was just a heavy, heavy dog. I remember it was actually one of Peter Van Dyke's old boards. And the only way he could turn it was that big drop knee turn. That became such a trademark that you know, even when he was riding lighter boards. And I even watch him when he switches to one of his short boards, he still does that turn for the first three waves. Till he remembers he doesn't have to.
Kevin Miske on Dewey's drop knee
KJ It's interesting cause, you know, when Wingnut and I were talking he mentioned you were using this very heavy board.
Kevin Miske: Uh huh.
KJ I think he said it was a fities Johnny Rice.
KM Exactly.
KJ Yeah. And he said it's almost the same weight, I don't know, forty pounds or something, as the board that Dewey Weber was using. But he's whipping, I mean, maybe his was heavier, but he's, he's really whipping his body, pivoting his body.
KM Dewey Weber had a unique style where he really liked to whip it around. And I looked at his, of course he's an incredible surfer. I just think that the whipping of it, I would tend to more lean towards the-- Lance Carson style or the Phil Edwards where it was just a fluid style carving turn, instead of a whip. And Dewey was real good at that. He whipped his board. Look at his facial expression. It was a real muscle, Dewey was a wrestler, and you know, he was all muscle, and he whipped it around. But if you looked at his facial expression he was, every bit of him was used to do that whip. Where if you watched Phil, it was a whole set up, glide, power turn. And like Hamilton, Billy Hamilton, all those guys, it was just this fluid, smooth thing that was still a carving turn. It wasn't you know, I'm just gonna glide and half turn it. It was this ripping turn, but it was very fluid.
KJ I think of it as almost like evolution.
KM Uh huh.
KJ Maybe he felt like he was doing what he had to do to move this board, but later on people realized that it was possible to let the board do more of the work, if you just set up your body in the right way.
KM Yeah.
Photo sequence 1: Dewey Weber: arching and rotating drop knee
followed by recovery turn
The hardest thing about Dewey's style to imitate is the unusual amount of lean and arch. As alluded to by Wingnut, he has some sports training and clearly was able to lean back like a gymnast doing a back bend. His knees hardly bend, rather they flex, giving the surfer a very tall look on the board. This tall, arched shape would surely help the lean, but it would make the balance very precarious. Sure enough, in film footage, Weber is seen pitching forward to the opposite rail to correct his over-leans, and sometimes he falls right over. The next turn out of the drop knee is a sudden lean in the other direction, which I will show in the skating sequence.
Dewey's arm styling adds to the effect of a very eye catching movement, the way he reaches his foot back, leans, and brings his right arm up quickly. These movements show he was perhaps the first to show off the "matador" hand and arm jive seen often in longboarding.
Dewey's drop knee turns rarely bring the board around more than 90 degrees, dispite the amount of force being used. Part of that is the boards he rode were so heavy, and part is that then, as now, it's simply harder to turn sharply to heelside than toeside.
Doing his turn on a long skate is a true challenge, and doing it on a bank is downright gravity defying. This sequence shows the Dewey drop knee on flat ground. What I'm mostly going for is a tall stance, a big arch through my legs, spine, and rib cage, plenty of lean into the turn, and solid rotation to the left.
In frame one I've got my back foot on the tip of the tail. This is the cue to start the turn to the left.
There's hardly any drop to this turn. As a matter of fact, I like to think of going up on tiptoe more than dropping. My right arm is coming up as it's going to aid the arch in a second.
In frame three, I reach overhead with my thumb leading. My back toe drives the tail of the board away in an arc, and there's good rotation with the torso into the turn. You can see the board is already on its way to the 90 degrees I'm going for. It's a quick, violent motion.
There's a lot of lean in this turn, which is counter balanced a little by the arch in my rib cage, which pushes my hips toward the outside rail. It doesn't help the balance much, and it would be beside the point to balance this turn perfectly. The idea is that the body swings like an inverted pendulum, first leaning one way in the drop knee, then flying across the board the other way in the cutback. The dance on the edge of control is the fun part of the Dewey arch drop knee.
In frame four I'm standing up out of the lean and ending the left turn. The arm falling in front of the face is very typical of Weber's styling. My shoulders are still wound up to the left, and releasing them is going to initiate the turn to the right, the second part of the cutback-like turn sequence.
It looks like this pitching forehand turn is a mistake, but actually this is what I was going for. Dewey usually follows his leaning drop knee with a leaning turn to his right (toeside), often pitching forward with the force of recovery. His linked turns are a recoil from one to another, and it's pretty wild to imitate this pendulum swinging motion from one side of the board to the other.
I realize after working on this turn that my skateboard, heavy as it is, is too light to get the feel of a Dewey turn. To use the whipping force that he uses, if I used the standard kick carve, would easily whip it into a 360. I chose to keep four wheels on the ground and to force the carve using lean, arch, and body rotation.
