< PreviousModern Drummer November 2021 36 Patrick Wilson Weezer’s Commander of Feel By Michael Molenda T he waiting must have been brutal on the ferociously industrious Weezer camp. Two albums done, dusted, and ready to go—the orchestral OK Human and the hard-rocking Van Weezer—and an epic Hella Mega Tour looming, and then COVID short-circuited the whole deal. Not exactly a prime situation for a band that always seems to be working on something, conceptualizing something, devising marketing strategies for something, or just doing something. But the delays passed and Weezer—vocalist/guitarist Rivers Cuomo, guitarist/keyboardist Brian Bell, bassist/keyboardist Scott Felipe LaverdeNovember 2021 Modern Drummer 37 Shiner, and drummer Patrick Wilson—stormed back with one of the coolest stage presentations I’ve ever seen mounted for a stadium show. Given the explosion of pastel-colored speaker cabinets and massive lightning bolts—as well as the often color-coordinated film clips displayed on the video backdrop—you wouldn’t be ridiculed for proposing the band had raided the prop storage for Miami Vice. And we haven’t mentioned Wilson’s drums yet. We’re talking turquoise sparkle. Three giant prop floor toms. Six kick drums—each one emblazoned with a letter to spell out W-E-E- Z-E-R. Quite a spectacle. However, Wilson doesn’t come off quite as, um, glittery. He’s funny, but soft spoken and humble—qualities that seem to tamp down his furious commitment to feel and his astounding creativity at crafting drum parts. He may not be as monstrous as the gargantuan, rainbow-fire spewing unicorn on the Hella Mega poster, but make no mistake, this guy is a colossus of the kit. I loved your tongue-in-cheek, 2011 YouTube video entitled “Pat’s Bad Drumming Habits.” But assuming you have more to offer than “slouching” and “not listening to what anyone else is playing,” what are some of the hallmarks of your approach? I would say just trying not to be too self- indulgent and doing whatever keeps the music moving forward. Trying to be a super-technical, trendy player probably wouldn’t translate well to the material I usually play. I’m kind of a laid-back-in-the-cut type of player who is super sensitive to making the music feel nice. The Weezer catalog is almost an encyclopedic omnibus of styles, hybrids, and dynamic shifts. How do you construct appropriate and sensitive parts when you’re repeatedly confronted with all these different song arrangements? I think about this stuff all the time, but hopefully not when I play. Honestly, that’s a weakness of mine—getting in my head too much. But it’s mostly about being an empathetic player, and always being in service to the tune—don’t step on the vocal, don’t get in the way of the hook, and so on. Rivers is such a good songwriter that the songs kind of play themselves. There’s not a whole lot of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. It’s usually obvious what the song needs. And probably more than anything, it’s the feel. Whenever I play with any group of people, I want to get into that thing where everyone is happy and looking around and smiling. That is literally magic to me. When I construct parts, I sometimes have a conception of what it is I’m trying to accomplish. Other times—and this is more of who Cheryl Alterman Cheryl AltermanModern Drummer November 2021 38 I am as a player—it’s pure discovery. I’ll think, “I have no idea what this should sound like, but let’s go have fun and see what happens.” To me, that approach is where all the good feelings come from. For some musicians, that blank canvas stuff can be scary, but the creative opportunities in front of you are endless. It’s funny that you said “endless.” Probably my favorite drummer of all time is Bill Stewart from the John Scofield Trio. He does his own thing, and he’s all over the place, but that guy is like Stevie Ray Vaughan—it all just pours out of him. He’s not even there. He’s just a faucet for all of these endless musical ideas. I love that more than anything about music. I think if you look objectively at your repertoire, you should pat yourself on the back, because you have a faucet, as well. Well, thank you for saying that. I’m a music nerd, and I love getting excited about playing, because when people are excited, that’s when it’s rad. I’m not someone you could hand a chart to, and say, “Here—do this.” I’d go, “You don’t want me, then. Why don’t I just hit the kick and snare a couple of times, and you can put the performance together in Pro Tools.” Putting tracks on a grid to perfectly quantize timing, or having a band play to a click track can possibly negate or diminish those funky little subtleties that define a musician’s relationship to groove. What’s your take? We recorded OK Human and Van Weezer without a click, and to me, that provides a canvas with a lot of freedom to it. You can play the exact feel you want, instead of trying to keep up with a click track or being held back by it. That’s one thing I think makes a song a lot more musical. For example, I was super proud when our version of “Africa” got so popular, because there’s no click on it. I was like, “This is the best. Everybody else is cutting everything to the grid and we’re just playing.” Everything on the radio is Pro-Tooled to within an inch of its life, and, in fact, that approach has kind of killed the life of the music. We were just talking about this the other day in the studio because we’re not using a click again, and Rivers asked, “Should we try one with a click?” We all kind of felt like we didn’t need it. But back when we recorded our first album, I had never made a big recording like that, so the click became something we could all sort of grab on to. The next album, Pinkerton, was done without a click, and it sounds like the Who—out of control and bombastic and full of life and energy. I love it. Then, on our third record, we went back to a more rigid click approach. What this all means is, you can make everything work, but I honestly feel it takes a lot more effort to make a track feel nice when you are playing along with a click. How do you develop parts for something like OK Human, which harkens back to early-1960s rock records with totally brilliant Karl Koch Karl Koch Wilson’s Warriors Drums Ludwig Legacy Maple. Snare Ludwig Black Beauty. Pedal DW 9000 Series. Cymbals Zildjian 22" Oriental Crash of Doom, Zildjian 20" K Series Crash Ride, Zildjian 15" hi-hats (on right), sizzle stack (on left) with Zildjian Splash (top) and Wuhan China (bottom). Sticks Vic Firth 5A, Vater Recording.November 2021 Modern Drummer 39 but whack arrangements—strings and other elements flying in and out, grooves changing, and textures morphing from dense to stark? Well, we knew there was going to be strings on it. But the process dovetailed nicely with what we’ve figured out about Weezer so far—that we record Rivers singing and me playing the drums, and from there, other people come in add stuff to the feel we’ve laid down. In this case, I specifically did not want to hear the music before we went to record. I just wanted to react to it. When we’ve recorded before, it’s often the first take that has a special thing going on, and I was hoping to get that for this album. And, except for some overdubs or recording a different kit in a different studio, the drums were all done in one day at [album producer] Jake Sinclair’s house. It was just me, Rivers, and Jake. Rivers would play an acoustic guitar, and by the second or third time he played through the song, I was like, “Okay. I know the song now. Let’s go.” This record makes me laugh because it’s just me playing beats on the songs. I really enjoyed the sense of discovery and surprise on OK Human. I haven’t felt that for a while in the rock scene. I’m a little sad in some ways for where music is now. I like things to be looser and more human sounding, but recorded music has become very formulaic and factory-like. Sure, you can say many of today’s songs are perfect, but they aren’t correct. Someone might say, “Well, look—everything lines up on the grid. It’s perfect.” But if you’re not tapping your foot, then who cares? There was an era in rock music where nobody wanted to sound like anyone else. The factory-like approach you describe— and I’m not being judgmental, because success is success— has given us a period where popular music is derived from emulating or adapting the right elements from previous hits. Well, the pie is smaller today. And it’s not even about sales anymore—it’s getting on the right Spotify playlist to get the music heard. I disagree with that approach completely and, in fact, I think people should be doing the opposite of what’s popular. Who cares what’s popular? But, okay, society has moved on. Getting your music into a video game is now the way to get into people’s heads. My kids will say, “Oh, I love this song ‘Debaser’ by the Pixies. I heard it in Skate 3.” It’s weird getting old. What did you take away from the Hella Mega experience? I was super proud of the tour for normalizing life a little bit again. I think it made people feel good, and I didn’t sense there was a whole lot of anxiety out there. You can’t say anything about COVID without making someone mad, but I’m just happy that so many people got to come out and remember what concerts were like. Hopefully, it just keeps going. What was the deal with not using any rack toms for the tour? I know they were just for show, but you had a whole platoon of kick drums and giant floor toms up there. It’s funny, because throughout our entire career, the rack tom has always been a point of contention among the other people in the band. If you open up our first album and look at the inner sleeve, there’s a photo of our practice room, and you’ll see that I didn’t have a rack tom even at the beginning. That was because they gave me so much sh*t about it. What do they have against rack toms? I don’t know. Honestly, there was a thing about trying to be sassy. Being sassy was considered a positive attribute, and they would say stuff like, “Less tom, more sass.” It sounds so stupid now. But this was back when people gave a sh*t about stuff. I love that a floor tom can be sassy, but a rack tom cannot be sassy. Well, yeah. It was more like the rack tom was a black hole of sass. Felipe LaverdeModern Drummer November 2021 40 Andy Hurley Fall Out Boy’s Disciple of Discipline By Michael MolendaNovember 2021 Modern Drummer 41 A ndy Hurley is ripped and super healthy. He committed to self-care early in life, becoming straight edge when he was 15 years old (no drugs, alcohol, tobacco, or any other such poisons), and going vegan when he was 16. He adopted a CrossFit regimen in 2013, and constantly challenges his stamina, strength, and agility. His body is an altar to tattoo artistry. Intense stuff. “I’m always chasing perfection,” he told Karli Petrovic of Alive—a natural health publication—in 2018. “I have an addiction to getting it right.” Everything appears to come into play when Hurley navigates the massive, pop-edged, multi-textured, stylistic hybrids of Fall Out Boy. There’s often a lot going on in a FOB track, and keeping up takes discipline, focus, and creativity. A full-time member of Fall Out Boy since 2003, (the band was formed in Chicago in 2001), Hurley joins songwriter/rhythm guitarist/ vocalist Patrick Stump, lead guitarist Joe Trohman, and bassist Pete Wentz in an act that has sold multi-millions of albums, delivered countless music streams, and garnered numerous industry awards, including two Grammy nominations. Despite his charismatic and powerful visage and his band’s remarkable success, Hurley maintains a rather quiet public persona. But that doesn’t mean he hides out to binge-watch CrossFit videos. Instead, the “always playing” drummer involves himself in myriad side projects with friends and like-minded musical cohorts. Obviously, the pandemic was difficult on someone who lives to play, and even a musician as fit and engaged as Hurley found he had to woodshed to get his live-performance chops where he wanted them for the Hella Mega Tour. A bit of a People magazine question to start, but what was it like to get back on a huge arena tour after the COVID lockdowns? It was amazing. I mean, there was definitely an odd feeling with how ever- shifting things were regarding the pandemic at the time, but it was really nice to be able to play again, and you could tell that, after a year-and-a-half of everything being completely out of our hands, the people appreciated the shows more than I’ve ever experienced before. Felipe Laverde Felipe LaverdeModern Drummer November 2021 42 Did the COVID precautions enacted to keep the band and the crew safe ever seep into your performance or feeling of comfort? It almost gave the playing more focus. The backstage was shutdown. No one except direct family was allowed back there, so I had a lot more time to practice and warm up for the shows. I definitely needed that, because having not played for more than a year, I had some rust to work off. Playing live is a completely different thing than practicing at home. You obviously keep yourself in great shape, but even so, did you find yourself saying something like, “Oh, man— where’s my oxygen tank?” before the first few shows? Oh, yeah. It was tough—a lot tougher than I thought it would be. For me, it has been years and years of pretty much nonstop touring, and I do a bunch of side projects for fun. I’m always playing, so I thought, “No problem.” But this was the first time I’ve had more than a year where I haven’t played with friends. That came off bad. Again, it was clearly obvious that practicing in a space by myself is just not the same thing as playing with a band. Was it a challenge then to get back with Fall Out Boy and rehearse material that none of you had played as a band for almost two years? It was pretty seamless. The first few times we got together, we filmed the rehearsals, and it really was like riding a bike. It felt amazing to get back in a room with those guys and play. But there was definitely an aspect to it of like, “Do I know how to play songs anymore?” Time had passed... One of the things that delights me about your style is it’s almost like Cheryl Alterman Felepe LaverdeNovember 2021 Modern Drummer 43 you’re putting together classical themes for your drum parts. It’s not just a groove all the way through. How do you typically develop those parts? Wow, I appreciate that. I just try to play what the song calls for, while adding some interesting dynamics. I love simplicity and dynamics in rock songs. Dave Grohl often plays simply, but the dynamics are amazing. Chuck Biscuits, who played with Danzig, is another drummer who is one of my favorites for that reason. Also, I am lucky to be in bands with other people who are drummers—or who were drummers—so there’s a lot of collaboration. But I think it’s more than just dynamic interest. It’s almost a cinematic rendering of drum sounds. What informs your decisions to, say, do tom patterns or go nuts on the cymbals in certain song sections? I don’t even know if I could put a finger on it. I guess I’ve never thought of it that way. I mean, I listen to a lot of film scores, but I don’t know if that plays into it or not. I’ve always been a first- inkling-type player. The first feel I have for a part is what I usually go with. But, like I said, there is a lot of collaboration—especially with Patrick. He’s the band’s main songwriter, and he is also a drummer. Sometimes, there are specific patterns or rhythms he wants because of his vocal parts, or whatever he’s thinking for the song’s production. Any tom or cymbal work is usually my addition to it. I also hear a fair amount of ghost notes in your playing. I think that happens naturally. I love ghost notes, and the whole [Bernard] Purdie shuffle approach where he adds them in as counterpoints and accents. With a lot of heavier music, ghost notes tend to go by the wayside, because the drummer is trying to pound through loud guitars and dense band mixes. I definitely have to amend my ghost notes to fit whatever the band is playing. But they often work in Fall Out Boy, because there are moments of silence or transitions where we break things down. What do you go for when you tune your kit? I’m not the most technical nerd about tuning, but I’ve had a drum tech for years who brings to life what I want. I always go for a low resonance. I want the sound to be booming and I want it to be big. For the massive stages on the Hella Mega Tour, how did you set up your monitor mixes? Fall Out Boy plays to a click track, so I need the click pretty loud— especially in stadiums where the crowd noise is wild. Then, a little bit of drums—mainly kick and snare—and Patrick’s guitar and vocals. I try to keep the mix as limited as possible. So, you didn’t need the bass in your mix? There are some songs where the bass pattern is the thing I follow, so for those tunes, I’ll add in the bass. But Patrick is such a rhythmic songwriter that there are things in his guitar playing and vocals that I like to focus on. To me, that’s where the song lies. You mentioned the crowd noise earlier. Can that throw you off, even if you’re using in-ear monitors? Absolutely. There can be a second or two of delay in arenas and stadiums. For example, whenever we stop playing to let the audience sing along, I have to cover my ears, because it’s so out of time. I can’t even look at the video screens we have onstage if the camera shifts to me playing drums. If I catch it in my peripheral vision, I can see that the hits on camera aren’t lining up with what I’m playing, and it throws me off. Hurley’s Crew Drums DW: 18x24 kick, 9x13 rack tom, 14x16 floor tom, 6.5x14 Collector’s Series black titanium snare. Cymbals Sabian AAX X-Plosion: 21" Ride, 19" Crash, 19" Fast crash, 14" hi-hats. Sticks Vic Firth. Drumheads Remo Emperor Clear. Accessories Roland SPD-SX Sampling Pad (for 808 snare sounds and effects). Cheryl AltermanModern Drummer November 2021 44 Tré Cool Green Day’s Gear Geek By Michael MolendaNovember 2021 Modern Drummer 45 T ré Cool has a drum warehouse. Few people outside of the Green Day family likely know exactly how many drums are in there, but after talking to Cool about his collection, I’m kind of thinking it looks like the vast “Hangar 51” at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. After all, this is a musician who is constantly on a quest for better tone, more consistent tone, and more appropriate tone—which is why he needs some massive, mystical warehouse chock full of options to help manifest the sounds he hears in his head. Happily, for MD readers, Cool is also very specific about his tonal approaches in the recording studio and onstage. In fact, this interview became a sort of seminar on finding the right sound—which you can absorb and revise to accommodate your own adventures in audio production and tone matching. Beyond the intricacies of gear and sound, Cool is someone who loves to play/lives to play, and after locking down during the pandemic, it was an immensely beneficial life event for Green Day to be able to get back in front of audiences during the summer’s Hella Mega tour. It wasn’t without risk. COVID was far from being a done deal when Green Day, Fall Out Boy, Weezer, and the Interrupters arrived at the first stadium show in Arlington, Virginia on July 24, 2021. However, the tour played out like a feel-good Hallmark movie with no horrific incidents to mar the joy of seeing great bands perform live in a communal setting. Cool is also a fervent supporter of drum makers, music, and musicians in general. Let’s dig into the fab existence of a player who is totally committed to the drumming arts. In your November 2017 MD cover story, you said that until you find your drum sound in the studio, you’re kind of at a standstill. How do you develop your drum arrangements from a tonal standpoint when you’re working on a song? It starts with the kick sound, really. I try to base everything around the kick because that’s the bottom—that’s the booty of the whole record. It’s the driving thing that makes you shake your hips. Next up in the bullpen would be the snare. Depending on where I’m at in that particular timespan, I’ll usually have a three-snare lineup for an album. The Noble & Cooley maple snare that I used on Dookie [1994] has made the cut on every single record for at least one song. That thing is my workhorse. It has been around forever and it’s my favorite. If I could only save only one drum in a fire, that’s the one I would save. But I’ve been getting more into metal snares in the last 15 years. I played wood snares almost entirely up until 21st Century Breakdown [2009]. I think that’s when I started using metal. Now my favorite snare metal is aluminum. What prompted the change from wood to metal? It was a drum. I came across the Dunnett Classic Titanium, and it was badass. It had great articulation, a nice crack, and good body. It’s probably the one that made me think, “Maybe there’s something to this metal thing.” I don’t use it anymore, though, because the bearing edge is far too thin. It doesn’t stay in tune that long. It’s great for a session, but it’s not really useful in a live setting for me. So, I worked with SJC—trying different metals, lugs, bearing edges, and things—and we came up with a real workhorse of an aluminum snare that I use. It’s kind of the go-to. I play it in the stadiums, I play it in the studio, and I play it in the clubs. It’s just amazing. Can you specify what makes the aluminum snare so amazing? It’s very versatile, so I like to use it in different applications. For a stadium show, it’s consistent. You don’t have to hit it directly in the center to get the same sound. Even if you hit it a little off to the side, it will sound fine. There’s a bigger striking area—or a bigger sweet spot like they say in golf. Also, you can tune it pretty damn high or pretty damn low. Do you have a typical tuning for it? I like to tune it so that it has a lot of knock to it. It’s not all timbale-ish and it’s not like an ‘80s pop record. It’s somewhere in between. I want attack and knock and balls and booty that fills the space. It’s great in a studio application, because just hearing it in the room, it sounds like it was put through a Neve mixer and a compressor. It sounds like a record! So, you’ll have a few different snares available to audition for sessions. What about the kick drum? Do you bring in a selection, or stick with one kick and just tune it as needed? I’ll use different kicks. To me, kicks are a little more one-dimensional. A kick will do one thing good, and you figure that out pretty fast. For example, I was using Ludwig for a time, and those kicks had a lot of attack and a lot of boom. But it seemed like some of the midrange was missing. They didn’t push enough air. The SJC kicks that I’m using now push mad air and sound hella good. I have a couple of different depths of kicks, so I’ll fart around with different sizes and different heads until I find what’s working in the room I’m recording in. I’ll start there. But then the problem is that it’s hard to hear what the kick sounds like when you’re playing it. Your ears are nowhere near it. Also, you’re behind the drum, and they’re miking it from the other side. Reality is out of phase in a way. But when you listen to the playback—that’s where where you’ll get the truth. You’ll know what you’re dealing with. Do you put any muffling inside the drum or on the head? There are some fun products you can mess around with. I’ll put pillow-like things inside, and I’ll duct tape the pillow away from the resonant head if I want more ring, or let it rest against the head if I want less. I hardly ever use an extremely open kick sound unless I’m doing a power ballad or something. You identified a lot of kick and snare options. How do you decide these are the sounds for a Felepe Laverde Greg SchneiderNext >