I don't want people to think that all I play music for is to make money, that isn't it at all. I love music. I love creating and playing music. I was surrounded by music when I was growing up. My father and older brother were both guitar players and they both introduced me to music that still affects me to this day. My dad loves all kinds of music; jazz, blues, "good" country (Willie, Waylon, Williams) and he loves 60's rock. He is the biggest Beatles fan in the world. My brother introduced me to Van Halen, Metallica and Led Zeppelin. Even though they were both guitar players, I knew my path lay elsewhere. I was a drummer long before I even owned a drumset. Drums are just primal. Not to mention that Animal was my favorite muppet.
When I first joined FAW, I was only supposed to be temporary until they found a permanent drummer as I was in another band at the time. But something happened that first practice. That rare instance when musicians play together and instantly have a connection, I knew I needed to be in this band. Everything just clicked and two weeks later we had our first gig opening up for 12 Stones at the House of Blues in New Orleans. It was a sold out crowd and I felt like a real rock star. The crowd loved us, we had our own dressing room full of partiers and the booze was flowing. The night was epic and I will never forget it as long as I live.
After a few months of quickly building a following along the gulf coast, we started to get some real attention. Our future boss (we will call him 'Ted Hammond') married a good friend of our bass player "Mickey." She was a fan of the band and wanted to do what she could to help us land a record deal. "Ted" and "Carl" a guitar player from his band decided that they wanted to be producers and help us hone our songs and produce a full album demo which we could shop to major labels. After a few months of pre-production we were sent to London Bridge Studios in Seattle Washington. For those of you who don't know, London Bridge was where the "grunge" sound was pretty much born. Alice In Chains "Dirt", Pearl Jam "Ten", and Soundgarden "Badmotorfinger" were all recorded there. I was still in high school when those albums came out and if I could have gone back in time to tell my teenage self that I would be recording in the studio where those albums were made, I would have had a massive heart attack on the spot.
After arriving in Seattle, we immediately went to the closest pizza parlor we could find and gorged ourselves after being starved nearly to death over our ten hour flight on Southwest Airlines, whose idea of an inflight meal is a bag of gummy bears and a quarter can of Sam's Choice cola. We left the pizzaria and arrived at London Bridge Studios. You would never have known it was even there. It just looked like a warehouse behind an office building. As I walked inside and stood in the huge open room that I would spend pretty much the next 36 hours behind a drumset almost nonstop, I felt the weight of it all. It was the feeling I had when I kissed a girl for the first time. The world absolutely stopped for about 30 seconds and I knew I had done something that thousands of others dream of. I walked into the lounge area and saw gold and platinum records all over the walls, drumheads with the signatures of all the members of those great Seattle bands. It was amazing. Next comes the marathon drum session.
To be Continued...
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