October 15th, 2005
by Thomas Høyer and Kenneth Bremer
The last concert on the Los Lobotomys 2005 tour was at Fatter Eskild in Århus, Denmark, and after the gig we sat down with John Peña in the club's brand new studio.
This extraordinary drummer just moved back to L.A. after 10 years in Australia. He played with many of the guitar greats and used to sub-in for Jeff Porcaro back in the 80s. We talked to Chad Wackerman after the last gig on the Los Lobotomys 2005 tour of Denmark.
- Chad, what do you think about the Los Lobotomys tour?
It's been amazing and we've had a blast. There has been such a great vibe and feeling with everybody, so it's been fantastic. We really don't get together that often and in L.A., David plays with a lot of different musicians, so I always look forward to it. This combination is really special, I think, and I'm just thrilled to play with everybody. To play with Lenny Castro, Brandon, John and Søren, and of course David is great.
- You've got quite a rhythm section with this band...
Well, that's the thing about this band, everybody's time is so good and it makes it really, really easy to play.
- If you look at the band's history, there were drummers like Jeff Porcaro, Vinnie Colaiuta and Carlos Vega, there's something to replace there...
I lived in Australia for ten years and I just moved back to L.A. last year, but before that I used to play with Karizma or Los Lobotomys once in a while. A couple of times Jeff Porcaro called me and said 'I've got this Baked Potato gig and I can't make it, do you mind subbing for me...' Of course I said 'Absolutely!' I've known David for a very, very long time, and before we had a band called 'The Pounders', with Cliff Hugo, Carl Verheyen, David and myself.
- Do you remember your first gig with Los Lobotomys?
Well, that was a long time ago, but I think Lukather was playing and then another time Dean Parks was playing with Jimmy Johnson on bass. That would've been sometime in the eighties...
- You do a lot of clinics?
Yes, I do a lot of clinics and a lot of drum concerts with Terry Bozzio as a drum duet. They are drum concerts booked through our drum company with corporate sponsors and also there'll be a music store as a co-sponsor too, normally in theatres, not in music stores. There are no explanations on how to do any kind of drum licks, so it's truly a concert, there's lighting, there's P.A., and it's presented that way.
- What do you get out of doing clinics, like the ones at the Copenhagen Conservatory?
Well, this was really unusual. Normally I'm teaching drummers when I'm doing a drum clinic, guess that's my expertise. But this was about taking the students and make them sound like a band. It was great and really, really interesting. I learned a lot and I was pleasantly surprised that the level of the students was so high. I was really really surprised that they could play as well as they did, I guess a lot of them are actually professional musicians and go to school as well...
Yes, it's always been a thing that I really love, from the first time I heard Jimi Hendrix...
- Do you think it's important as a musician, in order to develop your skills?
It is to me. Some musicians may not be interested in that, but that's a big part of what I love, like the connection between two or more people when you're improvising, like with this band...
- You're also a producer?
I have produced records, yes. I've produced my own records and I've produced a couple of vocal records and one rock band, an Australian band called Orange Horse.
- Could you mention a couple of your main influences?
As drummers, those would be Tony Williams, Jack DeJohnette, Elvin Jones, Mitch Mitchell, Terry Bozzio, Vinnie Colaiuta, Peter Erskine, Steve Jordan, to name a few..
- Do you think these influences come across in your playing?
Yeah, probably. But I always thought it was really important to have your own voice, so I've been very careful not to directly copy people. You can take maybe an attitude, as opposed to a lick, because I don't want to sound like somebody else. Luckily, the people I've worked with, like Holdsworth and Frank Zappa, they've always encouraged individualism and wanted bring your personality into their music, not wanting to copy somebody else.
- Looking at your discography, it's striking that you've played with many of the really great guitar players, like Alan Holdsworth, Steve Vai, Frank Zappa, Andy Summers, and John Patitucci. Is that a coincidence or a preference?
It just kind of happened. You know, none of these things are usually thought out ahead of time, like when I was younger and thought 'I have to play with Alan Holdsworth, and I'm going to do what it takes.' That never works. Sometimes you find yourself in situations where a friend knows a friend of a friend. Alan needed a drummer because his drummer went back to England and he had a tour coming up. I was working with Zappa, and Frank had met Alan, and so he actually recommended me to Alan.
- This tour was kind of a small one with relatively small audiences, compared to the stadium gigs that you do. How does that affect your playing, and would you prepare for these gigs in different ways?
Well, you know, every gig is so different. With Zappa, we prepared in a completely different way. We'd rehearse for two or three months before we did the first gig and that was all stadiums, especially in Europe, those were like huge football stadiums. Probably a bit different in the states, there it would be theatres with 5-6000 seats, but it Europe it would be theatres with around 10.000 seats, so that was really different. And also dynamically, it's completely different. We'd play some hockey rings, and the way he used to organize dynamics was by how many people were playing. There were three guitar players in the band, percussion, two keyboard players and a horn section on the last tour that we did. So if you want some mezzo forte, he'll go 'OK, guitar, bass, drums, one keyboard and nobody else.' And he'd build the dynamics that way. 'I want forte, so I need one more guitar player and I need you to add to this,' and if he wanted it really big it was like 'OK, let's organize the horns and orchestrate that,' knowing that the acoustics in that place were terrible, that you really couldn't have much subtlety. It all had to be pretty convincing, so your only chance was to organize dynamics that way.
If you were in an intimate jazz club, you have the potential playing at a whisper and hopefully, if people are listening, that'll work in the right situation and you can go really wide dynamically, but at a rock gig, you can't. You have a smaller dynamic range, you're louder but you don't do the subtle stuff, because it doesn't read. Also, when you're on one of these big stages, you're really isolated. As a drummer, you're usually on a riser and ten feet away from the bass player and then you have to completely rely on these monitor speakers as opposed to having everyone around you, like tonight. It's like being on an island. It's a very different feeling, but you need to get comfortable with both.
- Does it mean anything that you can actually see the people you're playing for...? That you get more of an instant feedback?
My first concern is with the musicians around me, it's not looking at the audience, definitely not. I mean, if everything is going so smoothly and we're all connecting on stage, maybe at that point I might be able to look out there. But usually, no, not for me. And if you're playing a rock gig, you can only see the first ten rows anyway, and then you just see the faces...
- You've made four solo albums. Do you think there's a progression there, about where you're at musically?
I'm too close to it. I really couldn't say. I work really hard on my solo records and spend a long time on them. I don't engineer them myself, I always hired a great engineer to do it. But I can't judge. The music has changed and I also like to write for the people in the band, that's something I got from Zappa. He'd figure out what people could do well, and use that in the music, and it makes sense to use that...
- You lived in Australia for ten years, how would you compare L.A. and Australia?
I did some recording work there, but it was not like L.A., because that's a kind of recording town with the movie industry and Hollywood and all that... But it was my home base and I'd go to L.A. about four times a year, and maybe Europe one time a year. Plus Japan, with Alan Holdsworth. I just worked on my own music quite a lot, and also did some writing for some other companies, produced a bit...
- Actually it's mostly guitar players and drummers who have these sponsorship things. The companies do a lot of marketing, does that help you in any way?
Absolutely. The companies that I've worked with are supporting the arts. Both Paiste and BW are supporting Terry Bozzio and myself to go out on tour, and they're booking the tours, actually. They really believe in what we do and they think it's important that we go out and play for, well, mostly drummers, and in a business sense it's direct marketing to their customers. They know that it's a good selling...
- Guitar players and drummers are the lucky ones?
Yes, that's interesting, because if you go to a drum clinic there's a lot of playing. If you go to a synthesizer clinic, there's a lot of talk about the instrument itself, about the sounds, the loops and all this stuff. But a drum clinic is about playing and the personalities and just talking about life, basically, how you deal in a band, all the things you go through, the negotiating of playing and so on. It's all quite fun. But maybe drumming is more tribal, you know, it's a great club to be in. It doesn't matter if you're a beginner or if you're a professional, if you play drums, you're in the club and you're like a brother. The drumming community is like that, incredibly supportive. I mean the first solo record I did, immediately I was getting calls from great drummers from all over the country. Larry London, a great country drummer from Nashville called up, just raving, he said 'What was that bass drum sound? You got to tell me what that microphone was, what the head was, what the drums were...' And Vinnie Colaiuta called me up and said 'Congratulations, man, I'm so proud of you, it's great music...' It's just total, total support.
- Do you have any new projects in the can, any plans for the near future?
I'm doing a trio record with Jimmy Johnson and Alan Holdsworth. That was started three years ago after we were touring in Japan and Australia. It won't be out for quite a while because it's not finished yet. But there are six improv tracks that are completely different. Alan is playing so differently on these. I've played it to a few guitar players, and they said 'who is it?' He's playing with a completely different sound, and it's really surprising stuff, so I can't wait to get it out and for people to hear this. At the end of this tour, we'd played for three or four weeks together, every night, and by the end of that period I just got Jimmy and Alan into my studio in Sydney, and it was just like 'hit, record, go' and was just complete magic.
A phenomenally skilled jazz and rock drummer, Chad's professional career began in 1978 with the Bill Watrous band. Since then he has amassed a remarkable body of work including a seven year association with Frank Zappa, with whom he toured the USA and Europe and recorded 26 albums including the London Symphony recordings.
Los Lobotomys was basically born as an off-shoot of Karizma, a band that had already been playing at The Baked Potato for years. Although the two bands would share a few of their members, this new group would musically be quite a different entity..
The last concert on the Los Lobotomys 2005 tour was at Fatter Eskild in Århus, Denmark, and after the gig we sat down with John Peña in the club's brand new studio. 
