Interview – Street Drum Corps

March 3rd, 2010 by RBR

Street Drum Corps are currently on the European leg of 30 Second To Mars’ ‘Into The Wild’ tour. We had the chance to sit down and talk with singer Bobby Alt before the band’s set at Wembley Arena.

Words: Sophie Egboh and Claire Violin
Top photo: Sophie Egboh
Portraits: Claire Violin

You’re currently on your 1st European tour, how’s it been going so far?

Bobby Alt: Yes, this is our first European tour! I have to say that it’s probably one of the coolest things I have ever been apart of in my entire life. Being out here with our best friends in 30 Seconds To Mars, we have a brand new album getting ready to come out, so we get to test all of our songs in all of these really huge arenas. It’s been a blast and again, we’ve only played three shows so far. We’ve got about twenty five more in Europe and then we do the whole of the United States with them as well. We’re just getting warmed up here.

RBR: When is the US tour happening?

Bobby: It starts the first or second week of April, I believe they just announced the dates today!

You’re practically unknown over here as you haven’t toured here before, tell us how you all came together and how Street Drum Corps were born.

Bobby: The three of us, my brother Adam, Frank and I, started five years ago in Los Angeles. Adam and I moved to LA from New Jersey, Frank moved to LA from New York and Adam and I met Frank there.
We were in between working with other bands and we decided to put together just a small drum show for theme parks and half time shows for big sporting events in Los Angeles and the show just kind of picked up.
We called it Bang, Street Drum Corps presents Bang, and now you can see a number of Bang groups all throughout the entire world playing colleges, performing art centers, and private parties.
We signed a record deal, our first one was with Keven Lyman who owns the Vans Warped Tour. So after doing that first record we chose the producer DJ Lethal and that was more of a Hip-Hop beats sort of album. So we went in for one week and we made that record and we made a DVD to go along with it.
Then we went and toured with The Used, we did the Vans Warped Tour, it just started building then we did another record called ‘We Are Machines’ by the same producer adding another producer by the name of DJ Jamie Rise. We worked with him on the ‘We Are Machines’ record, toured a bunch and ended up wanting to take it bigger! We wanted a bigger show, we wanted to write bigger songs, hire more musicians to play with us and we got to work.
About a year and a half ago we signed with Interscope/Geffen Records which is big for us. Jimmy Iovine signed the group who is very famous for signing bands and giving them their start and we just completed that record.
So it started a little bit of a history. The Street Drum Corps name came because we were really, literally playing on the streets with buckets, barrels, garbage cans and what we built over the last five years has been a dream for us.
The dream keeps getting bigger, here we are in London at Wembley Arena, a venue we had only seen pictures of in US magazines, whether we were reading Kerrang! or my favourite, NME magazine, I get that in the United States so we get to see Wembley in there.
Manchester was incredible.

RBR: Is DJ Lethal the producer of your next record?

Bobby: We had a gentleman by the name of Howard Benson. We wanted to work with someone that was a song writer type producer and he worked with our friends in a band called My Chemical Romance. He did an album for them and we really liked how that turned out, he helped them to develop a popular sound. We think working with him was a really good choice and the record will be out this year, hopefully the end of spring or summer. Then we’ll come back again in the fall on our own tour and come here and play smaller places where we can get a little more intimate with our new fans in Europe.

For a person who has never seen you live, what kind of show can they expect? Would it be a more typical street performance or what we would usually expect from a rock band?

Bobby: It’s a high octane, pure adrenalin punk feature. It’s a show for the whole family. Really, we want to keep the energy up, tons of drums of course and now Street Drum Corps offers songs that everyone can sing along to. A lot of blood sweat and tears went into making this new album. The show is getting bigger and bigger, the bigger the stage, the bigger the show, the smaller the stage, the bigger the show! No matter what, we’ll get it in there!

On previous big tours, you’ve joined bands like Linkin Park and The Used on stage. What’s it like on this arena tour, being the main focus and having your own set?

Bobby: First of all it’s a real privilege and honour to come out on this tour with 30 Seconds To Mars for our first introduction to our European fans. They’re a very professional band 30 Seconds To Mars, we also play four songs with them every night so that’s a lot more drumming. When we finish our show, we barely have time to towel off before we get on stage with them.
Going out with bands like The Used and Warped Tour and Linkin Park got us ready for this. We also did a big two month tour with 30 Seconds To Mars for an MTV2 tour a few years ago. So it’s not new for us to be out with them, but it is very very special for us to be here with them this time.

Our co-editor saw you in Nottingham last week and was surprised to see a more traditional line up what with guitars being introduced more and yourself taking on a more significant role as a front man. Is this where you have always wanted to take the band or is it something you are exploring just for now?

Bobby: This has been a natural progression for us. We all started off playing drums in bands. I’ve always been very attracted to just being an entertainer, even while I’m on a drum set, I pay attention to my audience and put on the best show I possibly can.
So this particular line up has enabled me to step up front, still play drums and sing lyrics that I wrote deeply from my heart. This could be the last time we ever do something like this, or it could be one of many records.
We hope that we can just keep building, adding to it and exploring musically. One big part of the Street Drum Corps since day one is to always be experimenting. When we started off we were doing something very new to us, we were looking for different sounds that we could make outside of just using a drum set, whether it be barrels, fire extinguishers, pots and pans.
Then after four years went by we developed all these other shows, now we have other kids playing these shows that we developed four years ago and we said “Hey, you know what? We’re kind of missing being in the rock band again too!” So we wanted to go back and make a big record…

[He point's to our co-editor wearing a Jimmy Page shirt]

Bobby: Oh man. Jimmy Page right there? Jimmy Page while we’re being interviewed… He’s my hero! Jimmy Page is the one of the reasons why, so this actually goes with the question, stepping up to being a front man and helping produce the sound of this band now. Someone like Jimmy Page and the late Michael Jackson who is my favourite entertainer of all time. So it kind of went hand in hand with taking one of the greatest, biggest, super rock bands in the world, elements of that and the love of what Michael Jackson brought to the world, bringing it to our show with dancing… If you listen to a lot of Michael Jackson’s records, a lot of them started off with taking percussion sounds… Michael would make a lot of sounds with his mouth and then start adding the words and the beat…
So all of that. Sorry I lost my trail of thought when I saw that Jimmy Page shirt, because he’s the reason why we wanted to come to England. This is where they’re from… That got me a little excited.
To sum up your question, you never know what the Street Drum Corps, what Adam, Frank and I are going to do.
I’ve put on my outfit for tonight, I don’t know what I’m gonna end up wearing I could keep this on or end up going out there in my underwear.
One thing we do know for sure though is that “the drums”… to quote the Ting Tings… [sings the quote], are some of the biggest drum sounds you’ve ever heard and it all comes from the drums for us first. So any time we create any kind of music, whether it’s the soundtrack to a movie, or a cd of twelve songs or just a drum album.
We actually have an only drum album coming out with this new cd which we done first. We went into Dave Grohl’s studio and we recorded for two and a half weeks an entire cd of drumming. So that comes hopefully free with the cd and our Bang groups can also perform the songs from this album. We open the show tonight with a song called ‘Victory’ taken from the drum album, just on drums.

Do you have a song on the upcoming album that you particularly love?

Bobby: Right now a tracked called ‘Marry Me’ is a song that we’re really liking. It’s a lot of fun, it’s a very pure lyric about being in love and going with that love. That one is going over really great every night but the cd as a whole really turned out to be a masterpiece for us. It honestly took a lot of work, we wrote songs for a year and a half, we wrote over seventy songs for this record. We completed every single song, demoed every song, we have seventy recordings of all these songs and then twelve of them went on this record.
It’s actually being mixed as we speak in the United States and we’re going to have two songs, ‘Knock Me Out’ and ‘Heart Shaped Shelter’ that will be on iTunes in a week. That’s going to be just a digital release and then we’re going to make up cd’s of that, I think just five songs maybe, just something that we can have on the road for the rest of the tour. Then we’ll shoot a video, put artwork together… So everyday we’re still working on the record! We started straight after the Linkin Park tour two years ago, rented a huge house, started demoing all of our songs, got with our producer Howard Benson, made the cd, it’s being mixed and here we are! This is sort of a promotional tour for us.

How did your relationship with 30 Seconds To Mars come about?

Bobby: I’ve known Jared now for about seven years just from being in LA and running into each other. I was in a band called S.T.U.N and we did some shows together. Jared’s been great, the whole band and earlier their bass player Matt who actually played bass on every song of our new cd. He is a dear friend of ours so you know, it’s one of those things where we got along together, we like a lot of the same things in music, art, film, when we get together we always have a real good time.

What’s it like being on tour with one of your brothers in the band? Do you relate to the Leto brothers at all?

Bobby: Of course, it’s a real treat! It’s a relationship that has been built over my entire life, with my brother that has led to us being on stage together. I have another little brother whose name is Justin, and he lives in New Jersey. He has a company called Jacked Motorcycles and he builds custom motorcycles. He was sending us motorcycle parts that we were playing! The first two albums had all these motorcycle parts! I wish he could be here with us too because if you can keep it in the family it’s great.
Jared and Shannon do it, they have another brother out here with them as well. He’s helping out too behind the scenes so it’s a real treat to be out here too with that and Frank, he’s our adopted brother we call him.

Are there any funny annectodes from the tour?

Bobby: Funny annecdotes… Last night was hilarious. We were about to get into a cab because our bus was parked between the O2 Arena and the David Beckham Academy. So our bus was just over there and we needed to take a cab back and the cab driver wouldn’t drive us, this guy who we were with that was helping us out was yelling at the guy. We have YouTube videos of it that we’re gonna put up tonight because it’s so funny. He’s screaming at this guy, it was rediculous.
There hasn’t been that much, it’s been real serious because we want to make sure the shows are incredible for everyone. Frank is really good with remembering all of the funny stuff, the pranks that go on and all of that sort of stuff.

Do you have any final words to people reading?

Bobby: Well first of all, thank you very much for even writing about us and taking notice. You guys announced this tour for us, it was the most special way we can think of this tour to have been annouced. By you, in Europe, so thank you and we’ve met people out here that have read your article on the web, so thank you for paying attention, we’re gonna keep making music and keep coming back to Europe now forever, for the rest of our lives.

Don’t forget to check out our live review from the London Wembley  ‘Into The Wild’ show.

‘The Little Ones’ live at Bournemouth International on the current Into The Wild Tour.

Tags: 30 Seconds To Mars, Adam Alt, Bobby Alt, DJ Lethal, Europe, Frank Zummo, Howard Benson, interview, Into The Wild, Jared Leto, Linkin Park, london, My Chemical Romance, SDC, Street Drum Corps, The Used, UK, We Are Machines, Wembley Arena
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