Christian Welter is living his dream: playing music and working on motorcycles. Welter is one of the mechanics on the popular Orange County Choppers show. He’s also their band’s drummer.

Welter has been drumming since he was twelve, playing music with his family and taking private lessons for seven years while growing up in Oakhurst, New Jersey. At an even earlier age, he was fascinated by motorcycles, fixing discarded dirt bikes. “I’d learn from breaking them and then fixing them up,” says Welter, who worked at motorcycle dealerships after high school. “Sometimes it would work out and other times it wouldn’t.” Later he attended the American Motorcycle Institute in Florida, where his roommate Nick Hansford turned him on to OCC.

“That all fell into place for me,” explains Welter. “The general manager, Steve Moreau, who plays guitar, heard I played drums. So we decided to get together and start playing downstairs in the boiler room, which is where we still practice.” That practice began just over two years ago.

The band has a self-titled, ten-song album, which Welter describes as “a blues-rock type thing. It’s nothing complicated or extravagant, and it was kind of put out in a hurry, so it’s not what I would consider representative of our full talent. But it has some good music on it. There’s definitely more to come.” Advertisement

For more on Christian Welter and Orange County Choppers, check out www.myspace.com/occtheband.

Robyn Flans