Modern Drummer Interview with Abe

If heavy music were like fine wine, 1997 would go down as a sweet vintage. Let's take an inventory: Metallica "Re-Loaded," Pantera kicked out live brutality, Korn and Tool headlined Lollapalooza, and the OzzFest tour pushed up & comers like Coal Chamber, Powerman 5000, and Machine Head into the mainstream. On the down side, however, all this activity overshadowed the best thing to happen all year to hard music: Around The Fur from the Deftones.

Around The Fur is an amazing record built on crushing instrumental lines, schizophrenic vocals, and lush, bottom-heavy rhythms. Reflecting on the making of the disc (the band's second), drummer Abe Cunningham says he contributed as much with notes he didn't play as with those he did. But before you banish him to the less-is-more department, consider his upbringing: drum corps, school jazz band, and a lineage of musicians. While most touring drummers have written off home practice, Cunningham still relishes the woodshed. And at twenty-four, he's already learned that strong musicianship has nothing to do with showing off to the masses.

As the Deftones continued their international sonic assault, Cunningham broke away to talk about his love of drumming, his passion for learning, and what you can and can't hear on Around The Fur.

MP: Sacramento, California has had its success stories here and there, but it's not like there are a lot of places there to play and grow as an artist. Did you guys set out to break away from Sacramento as quickly as possible, or did you have more humble goals?

AC: People think we're this new band, but we've been around almost ten years now. I went to school with our singer, Chino, and he grew up in the same neighborhood as our guitarist, Stefan. Skateboarding was kind of our common bond, but after a while we all started jamming in Stefan's garage. It was just the basic garage band thing, just friends having fun. We started playing around Sacramento, which has its ups and downs, I guess. It's true, there aren't a whole lot of places to play. But there aren't a whole lot of bands either.

We used to play cover tunes in the garage just because it was fun. But way early on we started writing our own music. You used to be able to see the same bands playing the same places, so any band that really wanted to branch out had to go to the Bay Area. So that's what we did--Berkeley Square, the Omni, the Stone. The whole Bay Area thrash metal scene was very big then. We were heavily influenced and inspired by that.

MP: Were you a metal-head, yourself?

AC: I don't know if I'd say that. I've always liked heavy music, but I have a real different background than that. My dad was a bass player and my step-dad was a drummer. My first memories of being around music are from watching my dad play at blues gigs. When I started to play at around seven or eight, I dug out my parents' music, like Beatles records and Hendrix albums--Mitch Mitchell is a big influence of mine--and I'd play along to those. My mom was into things like the Police. All of that probably influenced me as a drummer more than the metal drummers.

Around the time I started playing, my dad sort of got away from the drums, so I just sort of took over his kit. I was so fascinated with it that I'd just take it apart and put it back together again. Then in high school, I was in marching band and jazz band. I tried taking lessons for about a month, but the teacher was a real jerk, and that kind of gave me a bad taste for formal lessons. But I used to come home from school and just jam for hours. And that's still something I crave a lot: just playing on my own. I miss it when we're on the road.

MP: I've interviewed some drummers who say they hate playing on their own, that they get all the practice they need playing night after night on the road.

AC: Well, that is a form of practice. What you're doing is getting really good at playing those same songs, and there's a lot to be said for that. I'm sure my playing is tighter and more fluid on our songs now than when I first recorded them, mainly because I've had more time with them and had time to experiment with other ways of doing things. But that doesn't necessarily make me a better drummer.

When you're out on the road, you really don't have time to sit down and work out some things you'd like to try. You basically have soundcheck and the show. So when I'm home and have some time, one of the things I crave most is woodshedding by myself and trying to keep up my chops.

MP: Do you try to work out specific patterns or develop a specific part of your playing--or do you just like playing what comes to mind?

AC: It's really all of that. I go a lot on inspiration. Even if it's another drummer's licks--something I heard on a record or saw another drummer do--I might go home and pick it apart to see if I can figure it out. Maybe it's something I'm frustrated with and I just want to work on until I nail it. But now I pretty much go in and play what's on the top of my head. It's just nice sometimes to be in a room by myself and play.

MP: Are there any drum parts on Around The Fur that came directly from your woodshedding?

AC: You know, this really sounds cliché, because you always read interviews like this where drummers say they were just playing for the song, that they're more mature now or whatever. But that really has a lot to do with where I'm coming from now, and definitely where I was coming from with this record.

At the time we did the first record--which I really like and think is good--you can tell the band was really young. We'd been playing most of those songs for quite a while, and we were just so happy to be making a record that we didn't really think a whole lot about making the songs better. I think maturity is the biggest difference between the two records. We'd been on the road constantly for two years before we started the second record, so we were a lot more at ease in the studio. I think that allowed us to look a little deeper into what we wanted to do. What came out of that is that we simplified things.

For me, I think it was just playing with more confidence, and not feeling like I had to fill up all the empty spaces. As a drummer, I wanted the songs to come through. There's a difference between playing what's right for the song and the song dictating what's right for itself, and I think we let the songs have their way a lot more this time. The difference has really started to come out now that we're on the road, because I'm already playing some things differently than I did on the record. Not that it's better or worse--it's just different now that I've lived with the songs for a while.

MP: What were some of the main challenges in simplifying your playing in the studio? Did you consciously hold yourself back from embellishing certain parts, or was it very natural for you to lay low?

AC: Any drummer would just love to open up when he can, so it was a conscious thing to pull back. But it's just something that needed to happen. And it's not that difficult when you're thinking of the song first and foremost.

With the kind of music we play, the guitars are really heavy and powerful, so it didn't make a lot of sense for me to try to compete with that. It also doesn't leave room for me to put in all the ghost notes and grace notes I usually like to play. I did a lot more ghosting on the first record. But you can't hear them, anyway, so I really just had to play solid and heavy. I wanted the notes I do play to matter and to help create a feel.

MP: You can definitely hear the difference in production between your first and second records. The drum sound and the whole band now sounds a lot more thick and lush.

AC: Yeah, we spent a lot more time thinking about those things and talking with producer Terry Date about different things we wanted to hear. Terry has just so much experience to offer us, too. When he did our first record, he had just come from doing a White Zombie album for the previous six months, and he was a bit burned out. This time, he took almost a year off before he went to work with us. It was so nice because everyone was ready to do it, and Terry knew exactly what would be right for what we wanted. He really put it all together for us.

MP: Did you use a lot of different drums to get the sounds you wanted, or was it more a combination of mic's and the room?

AC: We used the same kit throughout the whole record, but I swapped different snares around for practically every song. I think I've sort of refined what I want in a snare sound now. I've always liked getting a nice crack, but the older I'm getting, the more I'm getting into that fatter sound. Sometimes I like really loose snares. I'm always adjusting my snare tension, just to try to blend that crack with the fat sound.

I used to like piccolo snares a lot, but now I mainly use a 6x14 snare that's 20-ply maple with die-cast rims and four 1" holes drilled into the shell. It's become my main snare now because it's sort of the best of both worlds for me. But I'm really happy with my whole kit. My drums come from Orange County Drums & Percussion. They're really well made, and they've got great tone.

We did a cool experiment with one song that didn't make it on the album. We set two kits up, one of them upstairs in the balcony of the studio and one down below. I played the main track on the kit downstairs, then went upstairs and played that kit, but still recording it with the room mic's from downstairs. I used two 19" crashes for a hi-hat. It was just a really bizarre experiment, but it was toward the end of our time in the studio and we didn't have a lot of time to play with it. It came out okay, though, and the song might make it onto a B-side or something.

MP: Did you play to a click? I'm asking because your timing seems really tight.

AC: No, I don't use a click. I can; I don't have a problem with it. We tried once, I think, but we really didn't need it. I don't know if good timing comes naturally to me or not, but I think I trained myself for that without even realizing it. It starts by playing to records with these bad-ass studio drummers on them, like Steely Dan records with guys like Jeff Porcaro. I don't know if they used clicks or not, but their timing is right on, and I guess playing along to them sort of taught me to be a stronger timekeeper.

MP: Like training wheels on a bicycle.

AC: Totally. After you ride with training wheels, you take 'em off and you can ride on your own.

© Copyright 1998 Modern Drummer Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.