Extreme Metal Roundtable
Chris Adler, John Boecklin, Justin Foley, And Dirk Verbeuren
Date December 5, 2007.
Location Congress Theater, Chicago, Illinois.
Background The seventh show of a 17-gig, six-week
winter tour.
Danger Level High. Very high.
Foley: First off, John, it’s bull that
you’re 220 [pounds].
Boecklin: Hey, I hit the gym
hard for this tour. I beefed up.
DRUM!: Which begs the question: With all the
traveling you guys do, how do you stay in shape on the road?
Adler: I’m up to 2,100 sit-ups a day.
Boecklin: No way. That’s ridiculous.
Adler: And I wake up early every day, no matter where
we are, and try and find a gym. In 2006, I realized that if you get
drunk at night, then wake up in the morning and feel like crap, you
don’t put on your best show, and that’s not fair to the
people who come out and pay money to see us. So at the same time I quit
smoking, I started going to the gym. I replaced smoking with doing
something good for myself, and I’ve completely become obsessed
with it. It’s not that I need to be either trimmer or bulkier. I
just know that the better I treat myself on a day-to-day basis, the
better I’ll be behind the kit.
Boecklin: I
don’t find myself doing a damn thing at all. But the shows have
been tight for me, so why try and fix something that’s not broken?
But I will say that some nights I party a little too hard, so when that
starts to affect my playing, I back it off for a few nights.
Verbeuren: I’m like John. I’m lazy on tour.
I just warm up before the show a little bit, and I’m ready to
go.
Foley: Yeah, I just warm up too. I also try
and eat the opposite of what [Killswitch guitarist] Joel [Stroetzel]
eats. If he has a triple bacon cheeseburger with extra meat, I’ll
have a salad.
DRUM!: Your bands all play a ton of fast tempos. How
can you keep that up night after night?
Adler:
Ask Dirk. He makes us all look slow.
Verbeuren:
Speed is addictive, I guess. That’s what attracted me to drums in
the first place. I think the first beat I learned was a blast beat. It
didn’t make much sense at the time, but that’s what I was
into. Nowadays, speed isn’t my main focus at all. I just want to
serve the song. Sometimes [a song] requires you to play simple, while
other times you have to come up with some crazy stuff.
Foley: The rest of us can’t keep up with him,
probably because he measures his body weight in kilos. If we switched
over, we might be able to catch up.
Adler: When I first
started playing, it was all about being faster or hitting harder than
the next guy. But you become a better drummer by not trying to outdo
everybody else, by sitting back and letting the song breathe, by
becoming part of the band rather than making it a one man show.
Everybody starts off wanting to be the next Eddie Van Halen, but when
you really find your place in a band, that’s when the work you do
seems to last a little bit longer.
Boecklin: In the studio, I don’t have nearly half the problems I do in a live environment. I really need to focus in on relaxing on stage. With the adrenaline in the live show, the feet just don’t work as well as they do when you’re hanging out in the studio, kicking back with your friends. Even when we’re playing in front of 4,000 people, I try and keep the state of mind that I’m going to a rehearsal, so I can play tight.
Foley: I try to approach playing the same way in both instances. I’ve never really noticed a difference.
DRUM!: Do any of you use clicks during the shows?
Verbeuren: Yeah, I use them on the songs that have
backing tracks, and also on songs where it’s more comfortable for
me to play with a click. It’s a matter of feeling.
Adler: I rehearse on my own at home with a click, but
we never use it live. I’ve suggested to the guys that we try it so
we could be more consistent, but they really don’t want the live
show to be anything like the record. And actually, I kind of agree with
them. If somebody messed something up — if somebody goes too fast
or too slow — well, that’s why a lot of those kids come to
hear us. They want something different than what they’d hear at
home when they crank up the albums.
DRUM!: What else do any of you do differently
during live gigs?
Boecklin: Some of our older
material is a lot simpler, but now I add a lot of new fills. As I play
the songs more and more, I find different things I can do in them.
It’s like Chris said — you hear a band live, you want
something different.
DRUM!: But there are some listeners who do want to
hear precisely what’s on the record.
Boecklin: Well, I do flashier stuff live, so they
won’t be that bummed.
Foley: I definitely
have come up with parts for older material that I wish I’d thought
of when we recorded it. It’s like, “Why didn’t I think
of that two years ago?” I have some live parts that I play each
night the exact same way, but then I have other parts that I play
whatever fill I feel like.
DRUM!: Do you learn anything new from watching each
other play every night?
All (practically in
unison) Absolutely.
Verbeuren: One of the best
ways to learn new techniques is to watch other drummers. It’s
essential. It’s inspiring to see how people get through their
shows, and how they move. It’s the little things.
Adler: In general, since I started gigging, touring has
made me a completely better drummer. When you’re at home
practicing, you’re living in your own little world, but when you
go out and see these guys night after night, you realize, “Wow,
every other dude on the block is better than me.” That inspired me
to make each record or show better.
DRUM!: Do you all like multiband touring, or do you
like touring alone, or would you prefer playing with only one opening
band?
Boecklin: Touring alone sucks. The more the
merrier, I say.
Verbeuren: Also, different bands
draw different crowds, and that’s what it’s all about.
It’s great to play to your own crowd that’s already in love
with your band, but it’s also great to play for people who
don’t necessarily know you. For us to open on a tour like this,
it’s a dream.
Boecklin: (motions to the
roadies struggling with the tons of gear) It’s murder for those
guys, trying to figure out how to fit four bands on stage. But I love
it. I’ve been a fan of all three of the other bands on the bill
for a long time.
Adler: Backstage and offstage
are a lot more fun, too. We’ve all been in our respective bands
for quite a while, and we’ve all known each other for a long time,
so we’ve got all these practical jokes, and games, and fun stuff
that keep things from wearing thin. I’ve been touring on and off
for 13 years, so any other band you can have around is a blessing.
DRUM!: Even if you don’t like their music?
Adler: Yeah. Even DevilDriver.
Boecklin: Daaaaaaaaaaaaaamn!
Adler:
I’m kidding, John. Seriously, we’ve been touring with those
guys since 2003, and we’re all really good friends. One of the
most enjoyable things we’ve come up with is a game called arena
ball.
DRUM!: Please describe arena ball for our
readers.
Adler: You can play arena ball either
before or after a show in an empty club or arena. You pick a section of
the place — like any one group of seats — and take a
football, and kick the ball into the stands. Whatever row the ball lands
in, that’s how many points you get. If the ball ends up outside of
the section, you lose points. But the rules are always evolving.
It’s turning into a pretty popular game on this tour.
DRUM!: Do you stick people up in the stands to
retrieve the balls?
Adler: Yeah, we have two guys
that we make wear referee shirts, and these really stupid hats and
whistles. It’s a real production.
Foley:
One of the refs snuck on stage the other night. We penalized him for
offsides.
Boecklin: Chris and I are on the same
team. We’re called The Dudes.
DRUM!: Are The Dudes doing well?
Adler: Not at all. I’ve earned a nickname:
Foul-out Adler. I seriously need to practice.
DRUM!: What are your favorite cities to play in?
Boecklin: Here in Chicago. The crowds are always on
fire. And Detroit has always been one of my favorites.
Foley: Wooster, Massachusetts. It’s practically
home. The shows there are always incredible. We also had a lot of fun in
Australia. The shows were terrific, insane. The crowds were really into
it, singing along with everything. It was so much fun.
Verbeuren: Justin’s right. We played in Australia
with Killswitch a couple years ago, and the shows were definitely
insane. They were all packed. People always look forward to tours there,
because I don’t think too many good ones come through.
Adler: We’ve played a lot of places.
Philadelphia, New York, and San Diego stand out, but like these guys
were saying, Australia’s a pretty special place. Every show
we’ve all played there is something we’ll never forget,
probably mostly because going into it, we didn’t know what to
expect. Really, we didn’t expect much, because we didn’t
know how the records were doing down there, and half the guys in the
band can’t even find Australia on the map. But when we got there,
everything exploded.
DRUM!: How do you keep from getting bored after
playing the same material night after night?
Boecklin: There’s no way around that one. I admit
I sometimes get pretty bored, but you have to play the popular songs
each set. But hey, we wrote them, so it’s our fault.
Foley: You get bored playing the most popular songs,
but you play them so much because they are the most popular, so that
makes it a bit less boring. It works itself out.
Verbeuren: You have to get creative with the songs,
whether they’re old or new. If you really get bored, you can
switch stuff up, try different stuff.
Boecklin: Like
cowbells?
Foley: More cowbell!
DRUM!: Do your songwriters or bandleaders get upset
when you switch things up?
Verbeuren: As long as
it’s tight, everybody’s happy.
Foley:
I think in my case, if I really screwed something up, everybody would be
thrilled. They’d think, “The untighter, the better.”
They mess around so much, inverting stuff into major keys, that sort of
thing. I think if I played an entire set where I was swinging
everything, the guys would probably … okay, they might not like
that.
DRUM!: Any good tour stories you’d like to
share?
Boecklin: Arena ball, man! (general
laughter)
Foley: No sex and drugs stuff. Been
there, done that.
Verbeuren: When I first started
playing drums, I once fell off the back of a riser in the middle of a
song. It was a tall riser, but I didn’t get hurt. That’s one
of those things you always remember fondly.
Boecklin: Once we were in Iowa, and it was our first
tour, and it was the first song. It started out with a snare roll, then
went right into some tom stuff, and I went for the toms hard, and just
knocked the whole rack over. We weren’t even 15 seconds into the
set, and I had to stop playing, go around the kit, and pick my toms up.
The crowd had no idea who we were, and they barely noticed.
Verbeuren: There was one time when my right beater
broke, and I had to do a double kick part with my left foot. That was
fun.
Foley: Oh, I’ve broken my right beater
multiple times on the exact same song, on the exact same note.
Adler: I have one good story. It’s not
necessarily a backstage thing, and it’s not insightful or musical,
but it’s really disgusting and funny. We were playing at the club
in Phoenix a few years ago, and there was a large photo pit and a bunch
of security guys in front of the stage. At one point, I looked over to
stage right, and there was this guy standing there who had managed to
get past the security — which wasn’t that unusual at that
point, but fortunately now it’s more difficult. So he’s
right next to our guitar player Mark [Morton], and Mark isn’t a
very touchy-feely person. For that matter, he doesn’t like being
around anybody. But this guy had his arm around Mark, and I thought,
“This is just going to turn out badly, and Mark’s going to
haul off and hit him, so somebody’s got to get this guy out of
here.” Security finally made it onto the stage, and I could see
they were trying to get him off. We were in the middle of a song, and I
didn’t want to stop playing, but Mark had stopped — the rest
of the band was still going — and I saw that this dude was hopping
… because he was missing a leg. And he must have lost the leg recently,
because he still was wearing a colostomy bag. But they couldn’t
get him offstage, because the colostomy bag got tied up in Mark’s
cable. Suddenly, the song ground to a halt while they untangled this
disgusting bag from Mark’s cord. We still couldn’t figure
out how this guy got on stage. I mean, there’s this rabid crowd of
fans in the front row who couldn’t get up there, but this
one-legged dude with a colostomy bag made it. Fortunately for everybody,
the bag didn’t explode.
DRUM!: Anybody else have anything to add?
Boecklin: No, man. It’d be impossible to follow
that.
Chris Adler
Band Lamb of
God
Latest album Sacrament
Height 6' 0"
Weight 150 lbs.
Primary influence Steve Shelton
Style “I play drums like I would want to play
guitar.”
Dirk Verbeuren
Band Soilwork
Latest album Sworn To A Great Divide
Height 6'2"
Weight 65 kilos
(“I’m from Europe, and we don’t do pounds.”)
Primary influence Dave Lombardo
Style “Groove matters the most.”
John Boecklin
Band DevilDriver
Latest album Last Kind Words
Height 6'1"
Weight 220 lbs.
Primary influence Vinnie Paul
Style “I’m a beefy player. Lots of
power.”
Justin Foley
Band Killswitch
Engage
Latest album As Daylight Dies
Height 6'1"
Weight 180 lbs.
Primary influence Kenneth Schalk
Style “I just try to groove.”
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