My Twenties Pt. 4 - Chance of a Lifetime

As much as I loved going to music school (it wasn’t really school to me) I was very eager to move on and get a real career started. I didn’t really care what I played I just new that I wanted to play. In hindsight it wasn’t the best of strategies because I had absolutely no plan whatsoever. None, nada, zilch. It’s very hard to get anything going when you don’t have any sort of plan. Which is probably why it took me several years to really get anything off the ground. Not that I didn’t work after I graduated MI but I didn’t work very smart. Remember I had no plan.

So I spent a couple of years thinking that I needed to practice 8 hours a day on top of working (I worked at MI so it was easy to go and practice after work). Not that there is anything wrong with practicing because there isn’t, but when you spend all of your time in a practice room it makes it a little hard to get a gig. Although I got a lot better at playing drums I wasn’t getting a lot of gigs and the gigs I did get during that time were not the gigs I really wanted. They were fun and I made some money but I wanted something bigger. Long story story short I was missing one key ingredient to success…Networking. This I knew almost nothing about.

So I spent a few years playing small clubs in LA but not a whole lot came of it until a good friend of mine, Curtis Skelton, called me to come try out for his band. Speak No Evil.

For some stupid reason I wasn’t interested at first so I said no. I mean they were signed to Universal Records so why would I want to play with them… but Curtis kept calling and calling me until I finally said yes. I knew the other guys in the band (Greg Weiss, Lee Rios & Danny Gill) and they were all great musicians and the new album was down right awesome! Well I ended up getting the gig and all of a sudden life started to look a lot better. I mean I’m playing with a band signed to a major label, what could be better? I got to do my first major photo shoot which is about as much fun as going to the dentist, we did radio interviews, played shows with other big bands and, at the time, our futures looked bright.

Since we were supposed to hit the road within a few months we started rehearsing our asses off at Sound City in Van Nuys, CA. The label got us a huge rehearsal space and locked it out. It was awesome! Plus there were so many other cool bands at that complex recording; 40 below summer, Slipknot and a few others I can’t remember. The guys in Slipknot were cool as hell. The clown use to come sit in our rehearsals while the other guys were recording and at night they would have these huge parties in the studio. We had our own little community there and got to hear all the tunes from the “Iowa” record while they were recording them. All in all it was a blast except for one thing. Our tour kept getting pushed back. We didn’t hit the road until October about 6 months later than we thought. To add to our frustration the year was 2001 so we hit the road right after the 9-11 attacks. Not exactly the best time to be on the road and we were out for 3 months!

Needles to say there were a lot of rough times on that tour but there were some good times too. One of my favorite shows was in Minneapolis when we played with Alien Ant Farm and Apex Theory. The place was packed and everyone was so cool. Years later, when I was teaching at MI, I ended up working with Sammy Watson, the drummer for Apex Theory. We didn’t remember meeting each other then but now we see each other every week at MI. Pretty cool.

Once again hindsight is very enlightening because I think the reason why I didn’t want to try out for the band was because of the drummers they had before me. Toss Panos, Ray Luzier and Chris Fraizer. I new I could play but I don’t think I really had the confidence I needed and that’s something you don’t get by sitting in a practice room 8 hours a day. That comes from getting out and playing gigs and the more we played the more confident I became in my playing. I stopped worrying so much about “if” I was playing good and just started playing. That’s a very hard lesson to learn sometimes but it’s a very important one! Joining Speak No Evil turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life.

The run with Speak No Evil didn’t last very long. We got off the road right before Christmas 2001 and then had a few months off. We played a few shows in LA but things weren’t looking to good business wise for the band. We did one more tour that was just under a month long in March of 2002 and although that tour was freaking awesome we found out the day that we hit the road that Universal had dropped us. It was a bittersweet ending but one of the best learning experiences in my life.

After the break-up of Speak No Evil I decided I didn’t want to be in a band anymore. Too much work. I decided I just wanted to be a sideman and not have the responsibilities of being a band member. That led to a whole new chapter but that’s for next time

Previous Musical Headspace Entries:

25 Years of Drumming Pt. 1
25 Years of Drumming Pt. 2
25 Years of Drumming Pt. 3
25 Years of Drumming Pt. 4