DRUMS
I grew up in the Seattle area. Duvall, WA to be exact. The first couple of years that I lived in Montana I’d return home and hang with my buddies during the summers. They’d always refer to me as their friend from Montana and it would piss me off something fierce. I just hated the idea that I was “from Montana.” It sounded so back woods to me at the time. Like I was chasing sheep and fixing fences or something. Now, many years later, I’m actually quite proud to be “from” Montana. There’s a vibe here that can really only be understood by Montanans.
When I was sixteen I was living in the Seattle area at the height of the grunge scene. I actually had no idea that grunge was popular everywhere else too. It just seemed so local. I was in a band called “Sanity” with another sixteen year old buddy and an eighteen year old dude and we wore Doc Marten boots with flannel shirts just like Eddie Vedder. We smoked pot, drank 40′s, and sucked down Marlboro Reds while listening to Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Soundgarden and STP at the eighteen year old’s Cherry Hill apartment in downtown Seattle. We managed to record an entire 6 song tape and I designed the cover & insert with Mac clip art and printed a few copies with a dot matrix printer. Come to think of it, I was the one who “mixed it” using a sweet four track recorder. I think I actually turned up the drums a couple times when I’d play a rad fill.
Things slowed down with Sanity once my Mom caught on that I was on a three month pot binge (seemed like three years at that time). I graduated high school, moved to Red Lodge, and promptly entered into a four year run with a weekend cover band called The Hound Dogs from Outer Space. My Dad was the bass player. The round mound of sound is what we call him. Otherwise known as the Round Man with the Square Deal (he owns a Kawasaki dealership so that slogan is insinuating that his deals are good).
My beautiful daughter, Kennedy, is definitely the coolest thing to come into my life since the day John walked into my life. Actually, he phone called into my life. It was the series of filibuster phone calls that convinced me to move to Bozeman from Red Lodge and start The Clintons with him. The cool thing is, I’ve got him down to a 4.5 minute average phone call now. Progress takes time, but we’ve finally reached the promise land of short and to-the-point phone conversations.
My other band is called Golden Grenade.
Favorite Clintons song to play live?
-Undercover World. Sick groove, man!
Most embarrassing record in your collection?
-Too many to count. Seriously. I have a wicked eclectic taste in music though so it could be Katy Perry straight into System of a Down if the iPod is on shuffle mode.
Most embarrassing onstage faux pas?
-I hate doing drum solos. One time, about 8 years ago at the Cat’s Paw, John yelled “drum solo!!”. My nerves got the best of me and I choked part of the way through a pretty decent solo. Most of the time if you screw up nobody would ever notice. This wasn’t one of those times. It was bad. The only thing I could think to do was stand up and run around my drum kit then sit back down and return to the beat. I think the confusion of the situation took the focus off of my shitty solo. I’m a fan of confusion. When it doubt, confuse everyone around you.
Most memorable road story?
-As much as I don’t want to write about this in a place where other people will read it, the most memorable of the many, many road stories is the infamous Boise 3am Burger King parking lot naked piss round off. Without going into detail, I was simply trying to do a humorous round off while naked…through the middle of about 7 people standing in a circle. That was going to be really funny. It was. Trust me. I guess it did seem odd that there was a mud puddle in the middle of a parking lot in the middle of summer. That was a REALLY long time ago though. Seriously.
If you weren’t a musician, what would you be doing?
-I’d be the CEO of a billion dollar corporation but I’d spend most of my time on vacation.
Any songs you’d like to cover that your band mates will refuse to play?
-No. These whores will literally play anything.
If you had your own TV show, what would it be called?
-”The guy who lived entirely inside his head”.
If you could be in any other band, what would it be?
-Muse. Mutemath, The Chili Peppers, or Incubus.
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