musicMUSICmusic: Tornado Rider
forward and interview by michelle
March 2, 2010
Have you guys ever skateboarded?
Well, Scott, the drummer, used to skate a bunch with my brothers, Zubin and Zarosh, who are life-long diehard awesome skaters. Zarosh, sometimes known as Roach, is kindof a legend, he's been featured in tons of magazines and videos and is sponsored... He goes to Japan and England and India on skate tours, and makes his own boards, called Plattypus, and is building an awesome huge secluded skatepark. We used to watch lots of old skate videos of Bones Brigade and H-street and contests w Neil Blender and Christian Hosoi and stuff. I tried for a bit, I'd try and ollie a hose, or do a weak boneless, and used to go w my bros and Scott to a nearby parking garage, but that shit is hard, and i always sucked at it. Also, I was too obsessed with playing cello to do pretty much anything else. I think skaters are the toughest people around, more so than football players or any other athlete. To have such an intimate relationship with concrete and not be afraid to slam, is amazing. Zarosh slams on purpose, he loves it. I still am totally entertained to follow my brothers down a hill in a car and watch them shred.
What is your story with the evolution of the cello? Has drinking Drano have anything to do with it?
Only in a metaphorical sense, yeah. Maybe the drinking of metaphorical Drano forced me to take all of the pre-established historical expectations and ideas of the cello and throw them down the drain. The cello is a very powerful and flexible instrument, it turns out, and is really well suited for other kinds of music besides just classical. And over time, this has become more and more clear to me, as I've gone from classical to folk to bluegrass to the wildest neolithic caveman Rock. I feel like the cello was meant to rock just as much as the guitar, all instruments have to start somewhere, the cello just hit puberty later. It definitely helped that i played guitar, too. I always had this battle in my mind between cello and guitar, and because of a scholarship to music school, the cello won, but i always had the dormant desire to rock. And eventually i realized i could strap it on and run around and plug into a Marshall stack and the inner lightning underworld mythical rock power of the cello was finally achieved.
Where are you guys from/how did you meet?
Scott (the drummer) and I grew up together in Carmel, CA. He used to come over to skate with my brothers and would see me playing music and practicing all the time. Once he started playing the banjo we started hanging out more and jamming together. Graham (the bass player) met Scott at a summer camp and were in a different band together.
How did you decide to form a band?
I had been a touring musician since i was 21, i traveled all over the US and some of the world with various folk bands, which was cool, cuz i still had a pretty original style, and it was usually kindof energetic music, but i was getting bored cuz it was so traditional, and i wanted to do something new and crazy. So i had started a few different bands that played my own music, but they all fell apart eventually, cuz people couldnt handle my wildness. But then I decided i needed to be in a band with Scott, a very fun solid not afraid of weirdness person, who I'd always fantasized with about starting a rock band. And he brought in Graham, an amazingly talented musician and fast learner. When we started playing together, shit was kindof chill, but our collective vibes led to playing stuff higher and faster and louder and with lots of distortion, and its been just getting more powerful as we've progressed.
Musical influences?
Rushad - AC/DC, Nirvana, Metallica, GNR, Bach, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, Bluegrass, Romanian folk music, Indian music, Robert Johnson, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Charlie Parker
Scott - Bela Fleck, AC/DC, Guns 'N Roses, ELO, Newgrass Revival, Ween
Graham - Queens of the Stone Age, Elliott Smith, Stevie Ray Vaughan
Where is the Land of Sneth and how do I get there?The Land of Sneth is in my brain, but I'm kinda like the Ambassador, I give tours of Sneth, so you gotta ride the Tornado to get to the Land of Sneth. When we play, we want to take you somewhere where you forget about all the b.s. and stresses of the world. My goal in performing is to lead everyone including myself into a wild Snethy trance where the iron blanket of reality is lifted, and pure unreasonable fun is had.
How did AC/DC, goblins, Appalachian music and barnyard sounds become so intertwined?
Well, when you're a creator of music and you have a wild imagination, the music you create, is naturally going to reflect all your influences to some degree. Things you've been into are your ingredients, and you get to mix them and stir them and chop them and cook them and ferment them and combine them any way you please. And then what kindof cooking equipment you have also affects the end result. I like making muffins out of AC/DC, vivaldi and Romania, for example, all blended together real nice so you cant quite tell whats what in there. There's also a tasty way to do it and a crude way to do it. if you took potatoes and milk and cabbage and molasses and flour and peanut butter and mustard and jam and garlic and eggs and put them on a cookie sheet without much mixing, you'd end up with a pretty crusty batch. You've got to get into the art of subtle mixing and balancing, if you want to be a good baker of music.
How do you write a song?
For me what has happened, I think, is that I have trained my brain so that it's always writing a song. Like there's never a time when I'm not writing a song. Sometimes it feels like my life is a Musical or something. Someone says a few words, and soon in my head, for example, i'll hear something like a chorus of 300 men singing those words, with bassoons and dancers, and all that. It can be immensely annoying at times, but its great when a really good melody pops in there, i go write it down. So i have one really good part that was a piece of cake, but then i need to go sit down for a few hours or days and come up with a second and maybe third part that matches its quality. Its like 50% inspiration, 50% dedication, but that changes depending on the song. Some were completely spontaneous, just popped into my head fully formed, whereas others i had to wrestle with intensely for a long time.
Any advice for kids who want to form a band?
Yeah, basically, I have two pieces of advice:
1- Learn everything you can, knowledge is power. It always helps to know everything about music theory, chords, melodies, and be as good as you can possibly get. Because the more skill you have, the easier you'll be able to express what you really want to. Its like you need a good pizza oven to make pizza, or else its always gonna turn out as some soggy homemade blob.
2- Like an older dude in the business once told me when I was young, "If you want to make it in the music world you've got to have laser focus". I always remembered that, and I used to sit in a practice room anywhere from 4-16 hrs a day practicing, and later, writing songs. The more you learn, the more you realize there is to learn. You need to become addicted to it, if you want to really get somewhere magical. Its like my brother Zarosh, his whole entire life has revolved around skateboards and skateboarding. He never went anywhere without a board and was skating pretty much as much as humanly possible, he even slept on his boards. Thats why he's different, amazing, and a legend, because of his complete dedication. -HOT
For more info and to hear some sick tunes, check Tornado Rider's website:
http://www.tornadoriderband.com/
