Speaker 1Coca-Cola. For the big. For the small. The short and the tall. Peacemakers. Risk-takers. For the optimists. Pessimists. For long-distance love. For introverts and extroverts. The thinkers and the doers. For old friends and new. Coca-Cola. For everyone. Pick up some Coca-Cola at a store near you.
Speaker 2You can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com.
Speaker 3The story on the drums, how he got involved in vocals, and his little-known obsession with clowns. Starting this month, you're going to get a Q&A episode, and we're doing a giveaway for one of my ride symbols. That's available for the free tier as well, so go to patreon.com forward slash downbeat, sign up, and stay tuned. If you hate us, you don't want to give us support, you don't want to see us succeed, guess what? I've got good news, because a long time ago, Eve ate that apple, and now you have to wear clothes. You could go to www.downbeat.at, so it spells downbeat, and pick up some clothes. To hide your shame. It's Brian Daler, of Mastodon, on the Downbeat Podcast. So you lied to your girlfriend about being here, why?
Speaker 4No, I didn't. You said. Well, I just put it in sleep mode. Oh, okay. But I told her, I said, listen, I'm doing a podcast for an hour, don't panic. Don't panic. If you can't reach me, I'm busy talking about myself. I agree. And others.
Speaker 3I appreciate you doing this on a show day, though. Oh, I don't care. You wouldn't catch me doing that. Why not? Because I have a ritual before I play. Oh, okay. You don't have a ritual? I guess so, you know.
Speaker 4Come on. I mean, I try to.
Speaker 3What's the ritual? You just turn down a lovely tequila.
Speaker 4Okay, so yeah, no drinks. No drinks. Before the show. I've never had an adult beverage before a rock show. Never? Never. Not even a beer? American people love just a beer. No, I've not done that. Why? I sort of say. For me, anyways, I know that there's guys that can do it, but for me, it's akin to running a marathon and drinking a beer. This is true. So I'm like, why would you want to do that to yourself? And also, I like to own my mistakes. If I made a mistake, I'm dead sober, and I made the mistake, I screwed up, and it wasn't some substance that was helping with that. You can make an adequate penance for it later because you remember. I can say, listen, that was on me. I was dead sober. But if I had drinks or something. Then I'd feel even more bad, you know what I mean? Because you did it, and the crowd's watching on stage. Because that was me, and I decided to do that to myself, and then I screwed up. But if I'm sober, then I can just be like, hey, I'm just a human being doing my best out here. More forgiving. I mean, I screw up on every show at least once or twice, you know what I mean? I hit a rim, click some sticks. That's not a screw-up. No, it's not, but you're always chasing the perfect performance. You get halfway through something, and it's like a video game almost, and you just get, oh, man. Almost had it.
Speaker 3And then how's your brain for the rest of the set? Totally fine. Really?
Speaker 4Yeah. I got those duck feathers now. I've developed them over the years where it just rolls up and rolls off. Even song one.
Speaker 3Mistaking something. We should stop talking about this because it's going to happen.
Speaker 4No, yeah, it'll happen, sure. But I don't care anymore. I stopped beating myself up after shows. I had a mess up. I wish I was you.
Speaker 3I just go, eh? If I mess up in song one, I don't want to be there anymore. Really? Yeah. You got to stop doing that. I started having a margarita before I play. Okay. Because the first time I did it, I played Amazing, and then it became like a ritual. Like now I'm not going to play an OCD thing. I'm not going to play Amazing unless I do that. Unless you're Margard up. And then I pushed it too far. Okay. And then back to T-Total. Okay. Can you make mistakes singing and drumming?
Speaker 4Oh, yeah. I mean, that's- That's where it's going to happen. You know what I mean?
Speaker 3The mistake would be with the voice or with the drums?
Speaker 4Yeah, I don't know. Well, I mean, for instance, like the first show of this particular tour that we're on for our new album, first time playing a song called Snakes for Dinner live. Yeah. There's an end chorus that basically, it's a big drum fill, and as soon as the drum fill hits on the one, I need to be in the first syllable of the chorus. And I hit on the one, cracked a stick. No. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, and, you know, but I got to be, and I didn't miss a vocal beat, but in my head, I was like, you know, hanging on by a thread. Yeah. But it came out fine. Muscle memory saved you. It was fine. And I was playing with the butt of the stick on the cymbal, like, like choked way up and you know what I mean? Yeah. But that's the, them's the breaks.
Speaker 3Them's the breaks. With, I mean, you mentioned Snakes for Dinner there. One of the things I want to know. What does that mean, Snakes for Dinner?
Speaker 4You know, it was one of the two working titles that made the cut. Love that. Which I think is a good question for any band is like, what's your favorite working title that actually made the cut? Because working titles are always somewhat ridiculous, you know? Like one time, I think for the, for Emperor of Sand, every single working title was like some piece of farm equipment that sounded ridiculous, you know? Well, like the brand name. Or just, yeah. Or just what kind of equipment it was, like, you know, Beaver Annihilator was the name of, like, some farm equipment where you're like.
Speaker 3Steve Beether sounds like it could be one.
Speaker 4Yeah. So, what
Speaker 3were we talking about? We were talking about Snakes for Dinner. Snakes for Dinner, yeah. Yeah. You caught me early, so I'm on my game today.
Speaker 4It's like Beaver Annihilator. Is that even real? Did I just make that up? Probably. Snakes for Dinner. My parents, when, before they had me, they decided they were going to leave Rochester, New York, and go live somewhere else. And so they did the whole blindfold. They did the whole point to a place on a map, and they ended up outside of Phoenix, Arizona. Really? Yeah. They actually did that? They actually did it. That's fucking great. And they got out there. Apparently, they met somebody in the desert and ended up eating rattlesnake. Oh, so it's real. It's really literal. Snakes for Dinner. Yeah. So, they had Snakes for Dinner one night. And so, it just popped into my head when we were needing a title to name this track while we were in the studio. So, it's Snakes for Dinner. Snakes for Dinner. And as time went on, and I started actually naming songs, you know, I can't remember what I came up with for Snakes for Dinner, but everybody was bummed out. They were like, we like Snakes for Dinner. I said, well, it can be that. I mean, there's no rules. I mean, we have a song called Bedazzled Fingernails. There's absolutely no rules. But, you know, for me, when it's like an overarching theme or something, I like to try to have it tie in. So, I figured this one sort of tied in because it had my mom and, you know, a lot of the. But that song is about my mom and Brent. You know, they're kind of all intertwined. The two big losses in mine and the band's life are the record. So, Snakes for Dinner.
Speaker 3Is that the overarching theme of the album? Because you guys mostly, correct me if I'm wrong, but the exception of one album and maybe like Life's Blood, everything has a theme or a concept? Pretty much. The Hunter didn't? Am I wrong?
Speaker 4The Hunter did not. Yeah. Okay. Brent was adamant that he was tired of concept albums. He's like, why do we have to do. Why does every album have to be this grand concept? And he's like, half the time when you're talking, I don't even know what the hell you're saying. I'm like, okay, fair enough. Yeah. Fine. I was like, dude, you know what? We don't have to have that. We don't. We can go with a different artist for the cover. We can have more fun with the songs and the song titles. It can be light and fluffy. And so, that's where you get the Dazzled Fingernails and Curl the Burl and Stargasm and all these kind of things. So, we took a break from the stories. But then you're back on the stories. Is there a story here? For me, there's a ribbon that ties everything together with using the three fates of mythology, Greek mythology, to have the cover art. I just looked at the similarities between Brent and my mom being. These are two people that sort of. We thought they had nine lives, you know what I mean? And they did. My mom was in and out of the hospital constantly. She was pronounced dead four times and brought back. And was always in the ICU and just dealt a real shitty hand in life. And. Brent was uh was just one of these guys that was constantly walking into the deep end and wanting you to come with them and you're like dude I can't go in there I got I got stuff to do and he would just be kind of a free spirit and but you know he just got away with a lot of things that um other people wouldn't be able to so we always thought that these two individuals um and for me what they had in common was they were these um you know Keith Richards type of people where the the big bomb could go off and it would be Keith my mom Brent and some cockroaches and the rest of us would perish you know because Brent would always come out the other side of his smell like roses you know we'd be like how is he doing all this you know it's a magic trick but uh unfortunately it catches up with us all in the end the the final the last the scissors and snips but uh and so um that's basically the theme I mean it's really everything was so fresh when when we got into the studio uh a lot of the music was already written but it wasn't um we hadn't finalized there was almost no lyrics for anything so when we went into the studio we only had lyrics for I think um out like a lamb and uh poisonous weapons coca-cola
Speaker 1for the big for the small the short and the tall peacemakers risk takers for the optimists pessimists for long distance love for introverts and extroverts the thinkers and the doers for old friends and new coca-cola for everyone pick up some coca-cola at a store near you
Speaker 4um and so the rest of them were like a blank piece of paper for us to kind of dig in and figure out what the hell we were feeling you know but it was real fresh you had to do that that fresh like in the studio and well we went into the studio probably seven days after Brent had passed oh my god but we are we had the time booked we had everybody's flights it was like um you know it's uh and I definitely questioned going in because I just wasn't in a good a good place mentally physically you know I felt heavy and I didn't feel good I felt ill you know uh but it was the best thing for me in hindsight like just working through just working and like going in and being with the guys and just instead of rotting in bed you know which is what I wanted to do or I wanted to dig a hole underneath the house and go lay there for you know however long it took me to feel better yeah you know I just wanted those feelings to be over you know I was I was over it I don't want to feel like this anymore because I just got I was already in it with my mom and then and then with Brent there was a lot of turmoil which was painful that as well you know what I mean because I didn't want that to be I didn't want that to be our relationship you know what I mean but I knew it had sort of just it had gotten to that point and there was nothing else anybody could do except for hopefully take a break and then maybe we can reconvene and hugs and kisses in a little while and then he you know passed away which was just horrible and uh I didn't know what to do with it um so we got in there luckily I got in the car I drove to the space got in the room and uh started working and then I got in the car and then I got in the car and then I got in the car and started with song one barbarian's blood and we started digging in on that and I was like you know what I feel better at the end of each day I felt a little bit better I was gonna ask was it cathartic go home and have dinner with the wife and be like okay feel productive I feel like um I feel like this is the right thing to do is to be in there and just play through it you know you at least get an escape for yeah x hours and you know having your mind occupied by the the minutiae of like a the inner workings of a bridge yeah you know what I mean just be like okay maybe that could go like this and you know the the record itself is um you know if you really pay attention to it that's it's very intricate and it's very proggy yeah so there's a lot going on and that and that was very helpful to sort of uh really like overwork those parts and just make absolutely sure and just pour over them every single day all day long and just be like okay no we can do a and having João and and Nick there was really awesome too because they were like you know they're not as as dug in as we are with with a 25-year relationship that is now gone and all this newness yeah but it was good because they were like a and João had a close relationship relationship with Brent as well um so I don't want to negate that but not as long obviously as we have and so they were like two golden retrievers in the studio with their tails wagging and like really excited to get in and work on stuff and it's their first time writing
Speaker 3with you yeah how much influence did the keyboards bring because there's some parts of it where I'm like I see exactly the song that's being not not like mimicked but like I see where is in this brain there's like bits from opeth in there there's bits from yes yes from Rush like was it good like what was it like to have like a keyboard I've never I've never worked with the keyboardist to write a song like right drama I don't I'm not even a singer you're too up from me but like what do they bring to the
Speaker 4table I mean I listen to a lot of music that has keys and you know like a lot of old Genesis and yes and and King Crimson and Rush and uh Emerson Lincoln Palmer and Pink Floyd and so I love all that Moog and all that and especially um uh like with the roads um like reminds me of like Stevie Wonder you know which I'm a huge Stevie Wonder fan and so it kind of you know and I have like a full keyboard band called Arcadia that's like my side project and uh or one of my things I do you know on the slide so I love that yeah we always had sense and we always flirted with it you know and and we were always into that kind of small window of Prague in the early mid-70s um that incorporated a lot of that stuff so when I hear it it's uh it it it makes me happy do you like shout like do do the yes thing or like it no I mean we we will say like uh there's a lot just a lot of dirty organ in there so it's like like purple it up or uh or sticks yeah you know blue collar man you know so it almost sounds like a it almost sounds like uh like another guitar it's just kind of got that that very uh saw blade sound to it uh that sounds heavy to me and like and adds this cool texture to something that's already like ferocious you know and can just up it and I think it was really it was between Kurt and uh and uh Patrick uh they uh and Andy in the mixing you know if you put something in you're taking something away you know so it was there was a lot of that because in the past you know we we have a tendency to just layer layer layer layer layer layer you know and uh sometimes you lose some heaviness when you do that and so they were good about sort of um picking our moments and and having little surprises you know that poke out and the keyboards were uh integral for for those kind of things where you're like well I didn't expect that and like what's thanks for dinner I didn't even know he was going to do that solo like I had no idea and I just came in one day and I got there and it was it was on there and I was like what the hell is that you know and I took took me a minute to get used to it because the part that's underneath it is this very uh ethereal you know it was like very open and I thought that that's what I wanted to maintain yeah it was like and I thought I was going to come in there and be like hey man play something that goes along with that guitar line but he just went and did this crazy solo in the back of my mind I was like well that's not going to be in there you know I'm like hey that sounds great that's something that's going to go you know and with anybody in the band or anybody that we work with you know I trust everybody that they're gonna bring you know something that if they like it and I'm just not used to it I need to at least give it uh a chance and everybody's like that in the band you know nobody's like first time you hear something like no absolutely not um if you're passionate about it I want to check it out and let's see let me wait a couple days and then I started listening to it with the solo in it and then when they took it out I missed it yeah and I'm like dude that needs to be
Speaker 3in there did you originally fight to get it gone no no no it was just like it was in the back of my
Speaker 4mind that I thought that it was probably going to go that everybody was going to be like what the hell is that it's too it's way over the top and and now like the song it made the song so much better with it and it's just a cool to me it's a cool surprise thing and then having Josh come in and do the his vocal thing at the end was like the the cherry on top when you
Speaker 3like you mentioned you know you came into the studio with all the music written for the most pretty much yeah I
Speaker 4think barbarian's blood was the only thing that wasn't uh done and and there was a there was there was a few question mark songs and there were songs that got completely rearranged um like your ghost again was a completely different arrangement when we went into pre-production and we took a riff that happened for like happened one time and we made it the main riff of the song and replaced like three other riffs and and took them out of the song and now those things are those riffs are somewhere in the computer yeah and they're homeless for the time being yeah that's always good though to have a bank oh we always have homeless riffs or unhoused Bill said I have to say unhoused and I'm like they're riffs they don't have feelings brains yeah
Speaker 3with um when was Lifestyle I should know this like 98 no 2001 2001 all right
Speaker 4when life's blood came out life's blood was a relapse so when we signed with relapse they were at the time still like a very much like a mail order type situation where you would call them on the phone and look you'd be looking at a catalog and you'd be like hey i want the new pig destroyer and i want the new caucus yeah and i want the you know whatever neurosis or something and they would say okay uh for five bucks do you want to try out this new band that we just signed they're called mastodon and they were that's when they put together this five song ep off of our we had recorded a nine song we called it nine song demo wow i didn't know that yeah so the thing nine song demo it was called nine song demo working title yeah and we had like little inserts of of some frank frisetta art that we pilfered and uh we would make these little you know we'd be sitting in the van cutting them out and put them in our the cd jewel cases just so we had something to sell on tour yeah but it was that was the nine songs that are on now what's called called the mastodon right yeah was the original first in my eyes it's our first album because it's nine songs it's like 40 something minutes and so it should be considered in our first album that's why i say we have 10 albums out but most people say we have nine but i'll i could argue that that is 10 a perfect 10 no so uh so anyway yeah we started with life's blood and we also had like two songs on a a split or a seven inch that was through reptilian records that was out of baltimore and then there was one leftover song so it was the other band on the split no it wasn't a split it was just too split with you it was split with yourself the mastodon split no it was just as a it was a seven inch picture disc yeah and and then five songs were on the the relapse life's blood ep that was five dollars and then uh there was other song uh the other song i can't remember but it was it was split up and then it later on put back together uh a few years after maybe it was like five years later and then it was like 2000 after after leviathan came out yeah stop
Speaker 3don't go anywhere i promise this is for you you like heavy music you're here perhaps you play the guitar i'm talking to you about neural dsp neural dsp make guitar and bass plugins for your computer all you have to do load up one of their little suites a veritable suite of tones into your computer and you're gonna sound like anyone from gojira to tim henson tosin abasi misha mansour they even got the guy that sang gravity he's got his own thing some if not all your favorite bands are using neural dsp plugins whether it be in the studio whether they're writing demos just practicing even bands like 156 silence they use that gojira plugin on stage i got it loaded up and it made me feel like i could play the guitar i can't play the guitar the default sounds are just so good listeners of the podcast can get in on the deal by going to neuraldsp.com use the code down but you can get 30 off any neural dsp plugin check it out back then songwriting like technology to write songs wasn't anywhere near what it's like now right how are you guys writing these songs before you go into the studio like are you a jam band are you in front of a computer well it
Speaker 4happened a few different kind of ways so like i'd say we jammed we would we would practice every night after work you know break a leg or something like that rent worked like construction i worked at like a retail place uh bill worked at a burrito bar i don't know what troy did doesn't matter now doesn't matter now uh but uh we would meet up at like you know seven or eight and jam for like three hours four hours and uh basically when we first got together we already had what that nine song demo was going to be pretty much from two halves because bill and i were had been writing we were in that band today's a day for yeah a few years and we lived in like a recording studio which was steve austin's recording studio oh i didn't know that yeah i slept on the couch and bill had like a futon on the floor and whoever recorded there was our you know roommates for the duration like uh the burn a priest yeah record that was recorded there was like i was sleeping on the couch and they could only record at night because there was two other businesses on either side so there's like a glass cutting place on this side and like a recording studio and i was like i was sleeping on the couch and they could only record there was like a precious moments uh chachka's type of place that was on the other side like so you know trying to sleep and chris adler's right there just blasting away and there's a marshall stack next to my head and yum yum yum but uh anyway when we got to atlanta we had written like three or four songs and then we met with uh brent and troy they had recorded a whole demo with four hour fogger their other band but they were going to scrap it because they're singer was like moving to la and they were going to disband and so when we came together we had all this material and we just started combining it all and and writing all together and you know wrote like mother puncher in that in that time span just from you know coming up with the beat and then somebody playing along so it was a lot of that a lot of just remembering it for the next day when we go down hey what were we what were we just working on okay let's work on that further so it was more jamming than than uh anything else but also i had this little like dicta phone and i would hum riffs into it classic and then i would go to bill's you know i lived with bill at the time and so i'd just be like dude or like when i wrote blood and thunder i wrote it on the actual guitar but i'm not good at guitar so it's a lot like one finger stuff that's why i hear if you hear like iron test it's like that's you as well yeah yeah wow wolf's loose or crystal skull it's a lot of like some guitar playing and then if it got to a part that i couldn't do that was in my head i'd just hum it yeah and then i would sit there and i'd be like oh my god i'm gonna do this with bill and get it into his fingers and then you know they would always obviously make the songs better and make them come to life but uh so that was another way that that we wrote was from that or brent would come in with the whole thing or brent would come in with like three parts and then we would like put something together that finished it you know because you come in and you say hey i got i got like these three guys and we'd say these three riffs are friends yeah but it needs one more friend to
Speaker 3put the two together
Speaker 4yeah and that's how we end up with a lot of like the big ending riffs you know what i mean because we do that a lot we'll be like okay here's the song here's the song here's the song and you think it's over and it's like oh no we got them we saved the best riff for last or whatever but that's the best
Speaker 3that's the school of neurosis give me that right at the end yeah so how does that compare to like how you write now because i can't in my head because a lot of people that come in here and we talk about it and they're like oh i just write it all on my computer but you guys don't strike me as a if you're writing demos for the new record right are you still jamming it's a little
Speaker 4different sometimes you know i mean i'll write stuff at my house and then it's a lot it basically starts with bill and i and bill lives around the corner from me and i can walk to his house and so i go usually go over there in the morning when we say okay we're gonna start writing go over there in the morning drum kit there drum kit they're all mic'd
Speaker 3up so it's jamming but
Speaker 4still jamming there's obviously other ways to tell but like if i don't have like the feeling from the riff you know like the hairs go on up on the back of your neck or or just like i don't know it's that uh intangible kind of space that you yeah you that you're like oh this is i love this you know this is awesome like you've right off the bat you can feel it you're like that's worth you know chasing yeah and let's see what else we can do with that because that's what we want to work on you know um so just every day going over to bills for weeks and you know some days are more fruitful than others sometimes you're banging your head up against the wall because you can't find yeah like oh man we need like a we need like we need something else for this yeah this is yeah we need a big riff at the end yeah so it's just a lot of like going down and doing the work and just sitting there for like eight hours and and just riffing and then uh if we find something cool you know bill and i'll go into the other room and and rip through it and then put it down record a very basic bare bones version of it you know um and then kind of pan out and see what we got yeah like okay we have six really good ideas i think that are worth like continuing to water and try to grow these ideas as much as we can and then you know sooner than later sooner or later you got an album's worth of material
Speaker 3at what time do you know okay let's bring this to a producer well
Speaker 4there's a stage two of demoing which we take to our studio which is in the basement of our practice space that we we own a building in atlanta that's uh that's practice spaces for a lot of bands practice in there oh cool but in the basement uh we have our studio where we recorded hush and grim and then we recorded this record uh so we'll do phase two of demoing and get them in there where they say it's going to sound a lot better and we can start sort of working more on the nuts and bolts like hey this needs a pre-chorus or this the bridge is clunky and we need it to be you know we need a chord changer or you know just kind of get into the intricacies of everything uh so then yeah phase two is you might start to hear some vocals uh if not vocals just mumbling melodies you know uh to see what works and see where troy's singing where i'm singing yeah you know so from that point then we might produce then we might show a producer i don't know no but you mentioned three
Speaker 3names there when you were doing the record yeah so we knew
Speaker 4kurt was going to be a producer and then we might show a producer and then we might show a producer and then we it's going to sound awesome. It's going to sound huge. you know great fucking choice yeah because and we've been wanting to work with him for a while but i don't know it just didn't happen um but i remember when the new high on fire came out i was
Speaker 3like god the drum sounds he gets are amazing and on this one in particular just unreal yeah i mean
Speaker 4we worked really hard on the drums my boy norm who's been my tech for years and years um he just makes the drums sound better than i ever could yeah and my drum tech's way better yeah just make
Speaker 3it sound good to the point where when i try and do it myself i'm like i can't remember how to like
Speaker 4how to undo things i'm so i'm i feel terrible like the the drums in my own basement at my house the heads have been on there for it's like i'm a kid you know what i mean the heads have been on there forever and it shows and it sounds i'm just too lazy to like sticks all over the floor it's terrible i don't ever want anyone to see it what kit did you use on this record it's tom a full-on bobinga some of the randy rhodes uh bobinga the crazy one and then the and then the uh birch bobinga shells for the toms and my signature snare won the shootout the bronze shootout what
Speaker 3else was in the shootout that's high praise yeah i mean is saying this
Speaker 4one won't it was pepsi challenge all the way we're blindfolded shootout and i i didn't want to know either you know i'm like listen if it wins it wins but i'm you got to put it in there and uh and it won it was went up against uh two donets a noble and cooley another tama and a uh a black beauty i think damn that's
Speaker 3a lot to win against yeah your drum is awesome by the way thanks i won't worry i spoke to sam and he was like yeah you need to get brown to to say that you can have one okay so can you just say that down the camera there
Speaker 4we go that's fucking done get in one
Speaker 3of my drums what are you doing is it bronze what's what's it made of bronze it's bronze but it's not the
Speaker 4what color is it it's like blue yeah i wanted to see foam yeah i wanted it to look pretty you know how did they get that paint oh they painted it yeah it looks fucking awesome yeah it's awesome and i and i i don't play anything else really i mean it made all the rest of my snares kind of obsolete but neither
Speaker 3will i if i get one uh you touched on something earlier that i just i there's one question i've had for you probably forever and anytime we've met you didn't ask her yeah because we meet we have a couple of drinks at a tamar event or whatever i'm not gonna be like punish you about your band a bit however now all right yeah this is this is me punishing you about sick let's go one of my favorite riffs of all
Speaker 1time coca-cola for the big for the small the short and the tall peacemakers risk takers for the optimist pessimists for long distance love for introverts and extroverts the thinkers and the doers for old friends and new coca-cola for everyone pick up some coca-cola at a store near you this
Speaker 2episode is brought to you by palm olive family time isn't just the big moments it's weeknight dinners sitting around the table everyone talking all at once so when the plates are empty and the sink is full use palm olive ultra palm olives most powerful formula removes up to 90% of your body weight in just a few minutes it's a great way to get rid of your weight in just a few minutes it's a great way to get rid of your weight in just a few minutes it's a great way to get rid of your weight in just a few minutes it's a great way to get rid of your weight in just a few minutes it's a great way to get rid of your weight in just a few minutes leaving your dishes sparkling clean and the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together shop now at palmolive.com is at the end of
Speaker 3sea beast oh yeah i wrote that riff you wrote it yeah that wasn't even gonna be my question oh okay my favorite drum thing of all time is the turnaround in sea beast where is the turnaround in sea beast where is the turnaround in sea beast where is the turnaround in sea beast where is the turnaround in sea beast where did that come from you might as well if you wrote the riff you might as well tell me in that riff right at the end where i don't know you don't know
Speaker 4where it came from it's just that's what happened i remember i left it out one time and bill's like where's the cool thing that you do i'm like oh yeah forgot but where did you just pulled
Speaker 3out a thin air because i'm sure someone can tell me it's some kind of metric modulation i have no idea it makes the riff go from six eight to four four you know you just did it out of thin air yeah you have no idea what it is i don't know what it is no i don't know damn
Speaker 4that's not a story more
Speaker 3by the riff you
Speaker 4wrote the riff yeah i that's a myself and bill wrote sea beast and so he came up with the the arpeggiated part in the beginning and the and the kind of
Speaker 5and then i came up with that what a fucking song and
Speaker 4then the band just kind of came naturally after that part it's pretty funny that that song you know it was joey jordison's favorite song from us you know and i would always go when i would go up to play but i'd go up to play there'd be like a note there'd be like a piece of paper taped to my uh hi-hat and it would say please play sea beast or at least the last riff it
Speaker 3must be it must be a drum brain thing like i guess it's up there in my top three i probably won't be able to give you a third for the top three off the top of my head but like parts where the drums change the riff to the point where it just slaps i do i
Speaker 4mean i've done that and uh i do it in mother puncher as well i just try to it's a it's a just and also i do it in uh colony birchman yeah but you don't know where it came from no it's just a natural thing because i'm not i'm not a i'm a self-taught dude pure innovation i guess i don't
Speaker 3know i was expecting and i'm i'm sorry but i was expecting you to be like oh i ripped that off from something i'm sure i did i just don't know where the only other one probably billy cobham or somebody you know
Speaker 4it's possible like a mariah vishnu orchestra thing i think all i am is an amalgamation of you know all my favorite players you know what i mean completely self-taught yeah well i had i had a drum lesson when i was pretty young i was probably maybe six years old six or seven and i remember i was in my dad's car and we were listening to the police and i was drumming along and my dad was like oh you can do that like you can keep a beat and i was like yeah i had already been playing my uncle's drums over at my grandparents house i would always go up in the attic and there was a up there and he would put headphones on and put like uh you know deep purple or montrose or or uh rainbow on he'd be like play along i'm like okay you know but uh so i was definitely drawn to him and when we would go back to my house with my mom i and i would be in my bed just thinking i can't wait to go back over to uncle mark's house and play his drums again so that's all i thought about was the drums until i finally got a set of my own but when i was seven or eight i went i went and had one lesson at this uh music school in rochester called hockstein and um i went in there was two kits set up next to each other and the teacher wasn't in the room yet so i just got up on one of the kits as i thought that that's what we're going to be doing and i started playing a little bit i was doing like uh the theme to george of the jungle which is one of the first beats i learned when i was a kid what's that beat oh yeah i know classic jungle watch out for that tree oh i remember yeah he came in and he goes wow hey you already know some stuff and i was like yeah you know and uh he's like okay let's go over here now and we went over to this dimly lit corner oh no i know and uh and there was a snare drum with a towel over it and a music stand and we did right left right left for an hour yeah and he goes okay here's your book and here's your sticks and i want you to practice this all week and uh and i didn't practice it no you didn't come back and my dad was like how'd you like the lesson you know he's very excited and everything and i'm like man i'm i really didn't like it it felt like school which i um despised yeah and and drums were fun for me it was an escape and a and a really fun thing and i did whatever i wanted to there and it wasn't a school thing and so i think i was too young you know um you know obviously i can't go back in time and see how my progression as a drummer would have ended up with a lifetime of lessons but i mean you're doing all right you're doing quite well it's fine i know there's limitations that i have that because i don't because i didn't take lessons but i don't care no i don't think you do at all i think that's part of the magic right it's fine because there's all sorts of different kinds of players and and drums are a beautiful instrument no matter what i don't care if you're you know uh have just started out and you're just banging away on something and it's more about your feeling and about you know connecting with your own creativity and you know it's it's i try not to get too hung up on the technical stuff but i but i really like the technical stuff you know and i want to be able to do it you know so i do practice you know i'm i'm on there on youtube looking for cool nifty tricks to try are you are you watching youtube sure of course who doesn't yeah but i go oh man i'll try that you know that's that looks pretty cool that's awesome you practice then still yeah now what are we talking i practice every day except for the weekends how long i take the weekends off yeah you deserve i mean i try to do like an hour to two hours a day that's awesome well yeah i mean they're down there yeah i mean
Speaker 3I just got an e-kit. i could do it and i'm
Speaker 4getting back into it but i've i having drums in your basement like acoustic drums in your basement and i can and i have like a room in a room like situation soundproof and so i can just go down there and and do whatever for for however long and so i'm super lucky because when i first moved to atlanta i didn't have that situation and i was there for probably 10 years without that situation and i got i had a v drum kit and i'm like this is doesn't do it for me but i can practice i can go through the set and everything but as far as like really wanting to feel like creative and and and rip and sweat and do the thing and like you know it needs to be acoustic for me personally i
Speaker 3was the same and then i got like a really good kit and i was like oh this is they've come
Speaker 4like they've come leaps and bounds from from the kit i'm speaking of it's an
Speaker 3it's enough to get me to want to play every day okay cool i definitely like fell off with practice but so it's inspiring you to hear someone you know you're you're fucking out there doing it still practicing every day it's fun
Speaker 4i love to play the drums have
Speaker 3you ever taught anyone else the drums
Speaker 4no because i don't i don't know what i'm doing no but you know what
Speaker 3what made me ask that question is because you know not you know what not to teach because i had a similar experience to you my first drum teacher same thing here i want i want to play drums because it's cool my story was it was in whatever in america is before high school what's before high school middle school middle school okay we call it six seven eight so i was in middle school and the teacher from the high school came over there was a drum teacher and was like who wants to play like learn guitar or drums and they were like you get taken out of your lessons in school to go over to the big school to play one of these instruments and i was like drums are cool like yeah i'd like to play drums maybe i'll be cool and get girls and then i went over there and then it was the same thing as you but then i started teaching drums for a while i don't do it anymore and i just taught what i didn't what happened to me to make me hate it which was just like even with what you were telling me there that single stroke right left all it would have taken that guy is to then take that to the drum kit and go and if you do this right left right left you'll be able to play a blast beat yeah
Speaker 4and then show you the blast beat and then that's it so this is going to lead to this yeah if you if yeah if i've had been told that like this is this the reason we're doing this is because of this because of the um but so i don't know but i did i actually had because my uh you know my mom was in a band when i was a kid and uh the drummer was uh my stepdad but he was a bad person so but the guitar player who was my second stepdad um after he was gone his best friend was a guy named felix who was like uh an awesome drummer and he told me he showed me a paradiddle and uh a double stroke roll and he was like hey man all you gotta do is if you have a pair of sticks you're sitting around the house watching tv you just you got a built-in drum pad on your knee and you just yes just practice your paradiddles and practice your flamadiddles and practice you know gave me a few rudiments to check out that's a drum lesson and this guy he was so cool you know he had like he had long hair his name was felix he played like a big uh ludwig uh chrome rap oh that's just so cool yeah and uh he had a dangle earring and he wore you know cut off shirt and he was like so i was like man that guy's cool i'm gonna do paradiddles on my leg and i still to this day i'm always on my knee doing paradiddles warming up is that how you warm up that's i usually on my knee there's no pad there's a tama like practice kit in the backstage right now for me to mess around on and i do mess around on that but i'm always on my knee and i'm always on my knee and i'm always on my knee and i'm always on my knee and i'm always on my knee and i'm always on my knee and i'm always on my knee but when it comes down to it i'm usually just on my knee to the point where danny carey came over one time and saw me doing this and he saw this huge red patch on my knee where this the skin it's just dead right there dead inside just like me and uh he was like here dude and he had this like um drum pad that had velcro on it it goes around your knee oh for just the occasion just that occasion but of course we just put you know we're on the bus later and we strapped it to our heads and pretended we were like scuba divers and that's what it got used for so it didn't get used
Speaker 3so on the damn danny's here today yeah i know i can't wait to give him a hug today is a fucking drum show oh yeah gene hoagland's coming in here oh awesome i'm having i love gene today's my perfect day hey we're birthday twins oh my god we are forgot about that yeah hello birthday twins march 19th march 19th you remembered that yeah that's so nice let's see did i did i tell you when it was your birthday i was like we're birthday twins i think you did yeah this no you you we both know we discussed it i think maybe i don't know maybe it's yeah he's a superhero from one of those things pisces do you cry a lot not a lot but you know madison my girlfriend they're just nodding her head no i wouldn't say it's a it's a probably i mean you've had some circumstances recently but i but i
Speaker 4you know i've been through all that and a bag of chips since i was a kid so you know trying to think what else what traits what traits does that mean
Speaker 3that we have birthday pisces i feel
Speaker 4as a water science just feel every emotion deeper than the other side that's my personal why can't i sing then well you can when did singing happen i've been singing since i was a kid my mom was a was the singer in her band and uh and um soon i want to unearth a video of one of her one of her uh her band shows like four hour long thing and you can totally it's like i hear my own voice within her singing oh wow well i can hear this like a very similar timber but um my grandmother sang and she did like jazz standards and played the bass and my grandfather sang he he uh played guitar and and sang i come from a long line of musicians and singers and since i was a little kid i was always in like select choir and all that good stuff and my first band that i was in called covenant we i was the lead singer named after morbid angels covenant or just no covenant okay continue which i hated oh i didn't want to be the lead singer i want to be the drum the drummer did you have long hair i had long blonde hair so they were like you can stand in the middle like vince neal and i was like yeah i don't i don't like i don't want to do that i want to be the drummer but my buddy jeff he also played the drums uh and so like listen there's two drummers in our friend group and no singers and you can sing and you can hit the high notes and you're like oh my god i don't want to be the lead singer i want to be the you know so uh i reluctantly gave in just because i wanted to play a show and i wanted i wanted to be in a band and so we had our band we played like two shows and then i said that that's enough i don't want for me i don't want to be out there trying to i don't know what to do with my hands you know it's a problem and you know i just really wanted to be behind the kit so back behind the kit no more singing for me which is good but i would sing in the van all the time yeah which i never done uh so those guys knew that i could sing to along to like stevie wonder and iron maiden and all this stuff and judas priest and nazi uh and so they knew i could sing but it didn't really fit the early stuff and but i would always go in because i would write a lot of lyrics you know it kind of took it took all of us to none of us wanted to sing none of us wanted to write lyrics but we knew that we needed vocals to go over the music you know uh and so i'd write lyrics and i'd come up with an idea of how to lay them over the track you know and i was like oh my god i'm gonna do this you know so i'd go in the vocal booth and i would sing so i'd sing over top of something the words and how i think that they should lay over the track and then either troy or brent would go and sing over top of it and try to match my cadence but use their vocal timber uh fast forward to crack the sky oblivion i had an idea for the verses um and brendan o'brien had me he's like go and go and sing it i'm like all right so i went in and sang it and then when we had the whole song laid out um we were listening playback and i'm like okay let's get troy in there to you know sing over my verses and just you know let's do the thing we normally do yeah yeah and he did it and and brent was like can we hear what with bronze vocals in there again and brendan's like yeah sure plays it back and he's like dude that's it i'm like it can't be and brendan o'brien did not want this really he did not want this and he's like i'm gonna sing it and he's like i'm gonna sing it he was like the last thing i want to have happen is have the first voice that anybody hears on the new macedon record that i'm producing be the drummer a voice that no one's ever heard before that's discrimination it was discrimination but i understood his point yeah he was like he's like he's like imagine you're on david letterman for the first time and and all of a sudden who's singing oh it's that guy back there it's a drummer no it needs to be troy and so that we got we got it really close like i could like we they worked on it and i was like oh my god i'm gonna sing it on it with troy to get it like exactly so it would appease brent basically yeah and get me off the hook because i don't want to start doing that you know it's hard yeah we did that we worked really hard got it got it so it was like you could barely tell you know that it was troy and not me but again played it back and brent was like sorry dude you got it it's got to be you and i'm like damn it okay let me see if i can even do it so i went home and and tried it and i was like i think i can do it so i committed it makes sense that it's you on that record right i mean i i wrote probably a majority of the lyrics on that record about your sister yeah
Speaker 3and the concept and the in my brain my producer brain it's like it should be him i i have like yeah but nobody wants to i mean you know it's i do
Speaker 4it's off-putting i
Speaker 3think it was people get upset i know your life your life is infinitely harder now because of that but it's definitely the right move speaking of that song again i'm gonna glaze you too much it's gotta be top three tempo changes of all time after that intro when that verse comes in oh yeah was that recorded to a click uh no you know we record to
Speaker 4a click at all oh yeah but we kind of faded in and out and that was the first time i ever played to a click was uh crack the sky mainly for like um last baron because it's like 14 minutes yeah and it's bookended so that original feel of the beginning thing if you don't go into the whole thing if all that craziness in the middle like there's no way i'm gonna be able to do it the same tempo by the time we got to the end you
Speaker 3know and also no click for 14 minutes could be 11 minutes yeah could be 18 you're like i don't know what's going on we're trying to plan a set list here and it's like this song could be 20 minutes and i thought that we did record to a click for oblivion but it turns out no there's no way you did for at least that tempo change because it's so well i was trying to
Speaker 4figure it out we have video that like goes along with the song perfectly that was like you know crafted um to the song like the recorded version obviously and um so i'm like well we got to put this back on the click what do we record it i don't remember and so now there's like a click to it but it's so bizarre for live there's a live there's a click but it's it's following the ghost of myself what do you mean bizarre like because it's so like it pushes and pulls oh it's a it's like a program click you know so i'm just like oh my god this is terrible i'm getting used to it but but and so it'll go into these sections you know because the switch is like six eight and uh so the click is like click click click click you know what i mean while you're
Speaker 3playing sounds fucking and then you're trying to sing yeah you're trying to play the drums a nightmare you're an octopus yeah famously called seth meyer as a bitch on tv yeah how was that that was fun i did it as well it was like yeah probably number one experience yeah i
Speaker 4got to do it like four or five times and it was really fun and i got to call him a bitch i was in the little you know uh the little jam room yeah they write everything in the morning and uh one of the writers came in and he said hey how do you feel about calling seth a bitch on tv tonight i was like yeah i'm all for it that sounds great if he doesn't mind of course i'll do respect you got a pre-planned bit pre-planned bit yeah you know i'm pretty
Speaker 6sure it's either niche or niche let me just check with the band ron daylor from the band mastodon bitch ron you think it's pronounced bitch no seth i was calling you a bitch bitch cool cool cool that makes more sense i got an accidental bit
Speaker 3okay the queen had just died oh and uh john oliver was on there and you know you're like the first person who sat here that i can actually who will know what i'm about to say okay you know you write the songs in the morning with the band right and then while the guest is getting interviewed you've got the earphones in you're listening to the song you just have to play out right the next thing yeah because you have no idea what you did what you recorded six hours ago yeah royalties were kind of nice for writing on tv but like so i'm there and i'm listening john oliver's talking the queen's just died and then suddenly i just like look up glance up seth john entire audience everyone's looking at me oh they have they've tried to speak to you and i went what which wasn't on tv like okay sorry to ruin it but like there's edits i take up my ears and i go what and then john oliver just looks at you you're british right sorry for our loss and i'm like so just you know gobsmacked by the whole thing i just go you know what i didn't really know her well it's a difficult it's a difficult day craig you're you're from the uk right i am yeah sorry sorry for our loss you know what i didn't
Speaker 1know her coca-cola for the big for the small the short and the tall peacemakers risk takers for the optimists you're british right sorry for our loss and i'm like so just you know gobsmacked by the whole thing i just go you know what i didn't really know her well it's a difficult it's a difficult day craig you're from the uk right i am yeah sorry for our loss you know what i didn't know her coca-cola for the big for the small the short and the tall peacemakers risk takers for the optimists pessimists for long distance love for introverts and extroverts the thinkers and the doers for old friends and new coca-cola for everyone pick up some coca-cola at a store near you
Speaker 2this episode is brought to you by palm olive family time isn't just the big moments it's weeknight dinners sitting around the table everyone talking all at once so when the plates are empty and the sink is full use palm olive ultra palm olive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 percent of grease leaving your dishes sparkling clean and the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together shop now at palm olive.com and he he fucking
Speaker 3lost it seth lost it and the whole time i'm like holy fucking shit this is crazy yeah but for that moment i like look up and it was like one of those fever dreams where it's just like right everyone is a live studio audience is just staring directly at me it's
Speaker 4more than intimidating it's such a different uh it's it's so not about playing the drums and so much more about paying attention yeah because you gotta watch steve and you gotta watch there's all these producers all these people running around and and like i mean eli's running the show but yeah you're also you have to count people in you have to get in the air in the chair yeah oh my god there air in the chair is the hardest one of the hardest things because you just never know when they're gonna sit down and you don't want it to be awkward you don't want to stop too early and then you don't want to play too long because then everyone's looking around like hello yeah it's a different skill set and if they sit down in the middle of a measure you have to wrap it up with a big fill and but uh i i feel like um you know i did pretty good at it you did pretty good at i
Speaker 3watched all your shows it's funny from talking to them we could say it now because unfortunately they're not on the thing anymore yeah how many people blow it like i'm not gonna name any names no first thing i did when i came in there and went who was the worst yeah all of them immediately just told me i was like oh interesting same so you know if you get asked back five four five times like you've nailed it when people that don't know the derriere on the chair thing is you start the song as the guest is walking on and you have to watch them and predict when they're about to start the song they're about to land on that chair and put a fill in a musical place so that you ideally end when they sit down but it could be halfway through the bar yeah it's just yeah it's a different skill set i loved it it was so much fun me
Speaker 4too yeah i loved it too but you know you got like tracy morgan will come out and he just starts dancing then he fakes sits down gets back up yeah the stuff like that so you're like ah that was
Speaker 3my other talk to was tracy morgan oh no kidding he
Speaker 4he tried to talk to me he wanted to he wanted me to give him the drums he's like yo drummer give me them drums uh so yeah that was pretty fun that's he's amazing
Speaker 3i got one last thing and then there you go and warm up on your leg yeah what's the deal with
Speaker 4the clowns when i was a kid my grandfather was a shriner in the shrine circus which is shriners are like uh um they have children's hospitals all over the country in the u.s and they wear fezzes and they sponsor a circus okay for the kids and so it was at the rochester war memorial at the time now it's like blue cross arena or whatever it's called uh and we got to go meet my sister and my mom went and my grandfather had us backstage and we got to see the clowns like putting their makeup on this probably five years old at the time and i just remember meeting these clowns and seeing them put their makeup on and i was just totally fascinated wow and so i think my sister was petrified but i was i was all in on the clowns and then i'd say maybe around maybe early 90s 91 or 92 i got my first apartment i um scored a velvet painting of a clown yeah and then that just sort of grew there's a lot of uh in the kitschy uh velvet painting world of of thrift stores and all that kind of stuff that was really popular in the early 90s i found a lot of clown paintings and i just like the aesthetics really and then it just grew and grew from there and then clowns just became a really big part of my life that's awesome yeah you got a book about clowns yeah i drew during the pandemic i drew a clown every day for 101 days amazing and i would send them out to a very long list of of people just friends just friends and clowns and so they'd get the clown every day and i'd send it to them each individually it would take me like an hour and a half to send them out to everybody and then you know it just kept us connected physical mail no no no email email text texting text clowns the picture of the clown that i had drawn okay yeah you know and then you know it kind of let everybody in on like my mental state you know some clowns would get more like hey are you okay you know do we need to check on you and we need to come over
Speaker 3so what if you're having a bad day there'd be like a quite
Speaker 4dark clown yeah wow there's a lot of dark ones but uh it was it just gave me something to do and uh you know watching the death ticker yeah roll down up on the tv and i'll just sit there and draw my clown and and then i would send take a picture of it and send it out to everybody and joey had joey jordison had the most like um new ideas for me oh like do this clown or do that clown and i did one for i i was like listen i have i already have enough that i'm gonna do like i don't need more ideas but you know he's clown producing he's trying to produce yeah he's like listen dude if you do this one it'd be so sick you know but i did a clown king cobra and it was one of his ideas all right i did your king crow your king cobra or whatever so when he unfortunately passed um i had that one framed and i gave it to his sister at his memorial and so she has it hanging up on the wall there for that's
Speaker 3joey clown that's cute yeah i love joe and i miss him i'm so sorry for your multiple losses i didn't even say that at the start
Speaker 4everything's good yeah that's life man i'm happy to have loved all these people and been loved by all these people so much and and and you know where would be we be without all that love and so i'm fortunate to be to to feel those losses i i feel fortunate that i got to know these people in the first place and call them my friends and i'm so sorry for your multiple losses my friends and people that i've loved for my life and i always carry them with
Speaker 3me i'm happy to know you and share a birthday with you and now i'm gonna let you go warm up on your legs thanks buddy brian dana thank you
Speaker 1so much thanks for having me coca-cola for the big for the small the short and the tall peacemakers risk takers for the optimists pessimists for long distance love for introverts and extroverts the thinkers and the doers for old friends and new coca-cola for everyone pick up some coca-cola at a store near you finding
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