It’s not that often that you get to hang out with Incubus in Germany. At least for me it happened once. And it happened in Bonn, Germany. So Incubus does pretty well in Germany (as you can imagine) and I think this was in August of 2007 that we played this show. This was part of a crazy 3 day run we had in Germany. We played 3 shows on that trip and every show was a mammoth of an experience. I would gather that we probably slept about 7 to 8 hours in the 3 or 4 days we were there, getting about 3 to 4 the first night, about 2 the 2^nd, and maybe 1 and a half the last night. It was pretty insane. The route was basically to open for Incubus the first night in Bonn and then play the Hurricane and Southside festivals, which were at the Northern tip and the Southern tip of Germany respectively. Basically, we traveled the whole longitude of the country in 2 days to get to those 2 festivals. Germany is not a huge country, but when you are driving yourselves around in a station wagon with only a map you got from the rental car place, and you got 3 really tired, smelly dudes and your equipment in the car, Germany seems like a decently large country. On top of that, our schedule was extremely tight and didn’t allow us much of a margin for error in our travels. Add that stress to the equation.

So the first night we opened for Incubus in Bonn, and then we played those 2 festivals which had bands like Queens of the Stone Age, Pearl Jam, Kings of Leon, Dropkick Murphys, Billy Talent. Heavy hitters. And there were only 2 stages there. Our promoter in Germany, Bernie, managed the band Billy Talent, who is huge in Europe. So, he hooked us up with the shows. We were actually the very first band to play at each of the festivals but in Germany the festivals are quite different than in the US. The US festivals seem to have A.D.H.D. and have about 7 stages at each festival. On top of this, they have stages in the parking lot, on pick-up trucks, in the concession stands, on a fat lady’s head… Well, you get the point. In Germany, there were just 2 main stages. Done. So if you wanted to watch music, you watched the band that was playing. Which was awesome for us because this was mega exposure, with mega bands. And German fans are even rowdier than US fans. The German fans are the best fans in the world, in my opinion. They go crazy and their energy really gives you something to feed off of.

When you are up on stage there are several ways you can measure a show. Part of it is the sound that you hear on the stage. A musician can’t hear the sound that the audience hears, that sound is being mixed and leveled and compressed by a sound engineer somewhere in the room. The sound engineer molds the sound through the microphones that you see set up next to the instruments. The sound engineer’s ‘mix’ comes out of the big speakers that you see in front of the stage. These speakers face the crowd and are in front of the band. Thus, the band won’t hear those speakers until the sound from those speakers hit a wall somewhere in the room and come back to the musician’s ears. By this point the sound wave may be a bit different, or sound fuzzy or muddy, as well as the delay from when the sound was made and heard could mess up the musician’s timing. Thus, on stage there are things called monitors, speakers that have a separate mix just for the musician. So, say I wanted a bunch of my kick drum and some of Chad’s vocals and guitar in my monitor. That’s what I would hear the most of. Basically, a musician can create his own mix of the instruments, so he (or she) will have a unique listening and playing experience.

The only setback here is that sometimes you can hear the amps on stage, or weird notes bouncing off the walls, or the monitor system is a weak one and can’t cut through the sound. Or the monitor engineer (who you are at the mercy of) might not be able to get your levels right. Or different songs have different sounds and you need to keep adjusting what you hear. Or the monitor might feedback if you try to put your vocals too loud… Well, you get the point. Sound is quite complicated and every room is different.

There are also things called ‘in-ear monitors’ that basically transmit the sound to your ears through a pack connected to a pair of earbuds. This is comparable to listening to a CD where the monitor engineer controls the sounds you hear. The earbuds should block out a lot of the other sounds in the room and focus your sound in your ears. Obviously, an in-ear monitor system is not as common and is pretty expensive to purchase. Almost all clubs have monitors you can use for free but if you want in-ears then you usually have to bring your own, which means that the band would need to purchase them. I am lucky enough to have in-ears at this point with State Radio, but most bands that are starting out would definitely not be using in-ears. Anyway, when you see musicians that have big things in their ears it has to be one of two things, either the in-ear monitor system that I just described, or they are simply earplugs to block out some of the ragingly loud sound that is present during a live show. If you don’t wear earplugs when you are a musician then you are destined to be deaf. Plain and simple. Done!

Either way, with all these wild cards about your sound it is easy to not be able to hear what you want to hear. And when you can’t hear yourself playing, it becomes harder to know what you are doing, and thus makes it harder to perform well. This can be frustrating and affect your experience and your energy on stage. By now I have learned to play through this, and play through general equipment malfunctions, but some musicians don’t enjoy themselves when things go wrong with the sound or with their equipment. At this point, I almost expect my equipment to move around and not be perfect, it’s part of the game. For goodness sake, my drum kit is about 400 years old. I actually have had it since 1994. A 1994 Yamaha Stage Custom. That’s an 18 year old kit. I didn’t even have drum cases for it until 2006, when I started with State Radio. Seriously, that kit has been to hell and back, and it still sounds good. I love that kit, love it to death. I will play that thing until it falls apart.

I can remember letting people use my kit one time in college as the kit for the night in this place called The Rat. It was a cafeteria down in Lyons Hall at Boston College, but sometimes they had little basement shows down there. It was actually a pretty cool scene for sure. Anyway, I remember walking down there, after I had grabbed a quick bite, just in time to see my rack tom slip off the mount that was on my bass drum, then hit my bass drum, then fall about 2 feet and slam on the linoleum floor of the cafeteria as the opening band was playing. I just laughed. That drum set had been through way worse than that, it was a beast. And a drum set is meant to be played, it’s meant to be thrown around just like Dave Grohl did. I have trashed my kit several times, that’s part of the fun of having one! It’s worth it, if it breaks just try and fix it, or worst case scenario you just break down and buy a new part. Or just try and play without that piece! I was reading about Kurt Cobain the other day and it said that he had a little workshop in his garage to fix the guitars he broke on stage when he was just starting with Nirvana. They had no money and he had to fix his guitar to play the next gig. The dude was crazy, and cool to figure out a system that worked like that. I also read that before the recording of Bleach, Chad Channing had cracked his bass drum in half during a show and taped the drum up to record the album. Taped his drum together to record! Unbelievable. So coming from that perspective, you can see my philosophy. It’s worked well so far with me, I haven’t been able to kill my kit in 18 years!

Back to a musician’s experience at a show. Past what I have discussed, there are several more factors that affect your experience at a show, all the way down to what kind of day you are having, and what is going on in your life. You have to realize that musicians are people and their life doesn’t stop for a show. If they get sick, or have a bad day, or their girlfriend or boyfriend breaks up with them, or they get into a fight with someone over the phone, or the crew at the venue treats them poorly (or really well), this all affects their experience at the show.

So when you get up there and all this stuff is going on and the crowd is a dud, that’s a real bummer for the band. But in Germany, the crowds are freakin unbelievable! These kids work harder than the bands sometimes! They are moving and responding and interacting and it’s awesome. The energy from a German crowd really seeps into the band and puts energy in your veins. When you feel tired during a show and don’t want to push any harder to take the show to the next level and you look out and the crowd is going crazy, you dig deeper. You make it happen. That’s the difference between German crowds and US crowds, or any other crowd I have experienced for that matter. US crowds sometimes make you dig deeper, German crowds always make you dig deeper!

So putting that into perspective let’s get back to Incubus. We had never opened for a band in Germany before. We had always headlined in small clubs in Germany. Well, there were about 4,000 to 5,000 people at this Incubus show in Bonn. And right before we had to walk out to play our set, there was an “Incubus” chant that was going on. And most of the people that were coming to the show had already arrived. The Germans are serious, they get there early and they are rowdy. When we walked out on stage there was this huge cheer. I think a lot of the people thought we were Incubus, which is kind of strange because my drum set was set up in front of the Incubus equipment. Interestingly enough this was the first time I had played on a stage big enough where my 16 inch crash cymbal wasn’t sufficient. Usually in the club scene I got complaints that my cymbals were too loud, I played them too hard, they ‘bled’ into the vocal mics. Could I please play my cymbals softer or tape them up? Annoying for the man who wants to rock on drums, right? But at sound check for this show the backline man told me my 16 inch cymbal sounded like a ‘toy cymbal’ and that he had an extra 20 inch cymbal I could use for the show. Bigger is better baby! You don’t have to tell me twice to use louder and bigger cymbals I can bash on.

Back to walking on stage. When people noticed that we weren’t Incubus they seemed less disappointed and more inquisitive. It was one of the strangest things I have ever experienced to see genuine curiosity on the faces of 5,000 German kids. They seemed almost startled to see us, and they seemed very curious, and you could see it on every one of their faces. Pressure!

The first song we broke into (maybe it was “Waitress” but I’m just guessing on this) was what I would call a judgment song. People were kind of just standing there with blank looks on their faces and basically just judging us. It was quite weird and unnerving, but then again we had never opened for a band this big before with a pumped up German crowd who had mistaken us for the main band. So I guess I can understand the blank stares of judgment. At some point in the second song the crowd became more of a listening crowd instead of a judgment crowd. It seemed that we had passed the initial test of not sucking, and now we were on to the next stage of trying to win the crowd’s favor. For us, we just kept playing as hard as we could. I mean, we had made the trip over to Europe and had a golden opportunity here, so we might as well play our balls off. Eventually, the crowd seemed to turn our way and it seemed like we were getting them warmed up for Incubus. This was a great feeling, similar to the feeling when you realize all your hard work is paying off.

We pounded out the rest of our set and thanked the crowd for actually giving us a listen, as it was amazing to play in front of so many people as an opener. It turned out that a lot of people did listen to us, and like us, because when we went back to that area the next year we had a ton of kids show up and say they saw us at the Incubus show. And this time they went crazy! German crazy, as I had mentioned before, is like nothing you have seen before. It was awesome. In speaking with some friends from Germany that came over to the U.S., they describe the U.S. crowds as ‘listening crowds’, and are confused that people don’t go nuts for the whole concert. They are surprised the crowds don’t ‘work’ as hard as the bands, and don‘t often catch the opening bands. I guess it’s just a different code over there. I like their code.

Anyway, after our set we were feeling pretty good about the show and thought that the whole trip was already worth it on that exposure alone. We had already met a few of the Incubus guys backstage at dinner, and after their sound check as well, and they all seemed super nice. I can remember Brandon (the lead singer) introducing himself to us and saying he was psyched to be playing with us. He seemed like a really nice guy and it was extremely nice of him to go out of his way like that. I can also remember him at dinner getting the chicken but asking for no sauce (it was a cream sauce so it was probably high in fat) and asking for rice pilaf for his side. Plain chicken and rice, now that’s why the guy is in such good shape and why all the ladies love him. You see people, hard work and dedication does pay off! I can honestly say that he was the only one of the 30 or so people that I saw go up and eat dinner (from the crews and the bands) that didn’t get the sauce on that chicken. He definitely stood out from the rest of us shmucks. Chad had talked about a woman who had worked with Dispatch, as well as Incubus, that described the first time she met Brandon Boyd. She said he walked into the room and the first thing she thought was “Star Power”. Now, that’s a pretty good thing to make someone think. Brandon was a stud. I also remember seeing Incubus in 2004 with my Mom in Worcester, MA. They opened with the song “Nice To Know You” and the crowd broke the barrier up at the front of the stage and the show had to stop until the crew could fix it. Nice job U.S. crowd, breaking the mold on that one! I also remember my Mom noting during that show that she now could see why women swooned over Brandon. Even my own Mother loved him!

Keeping this in perspective, I was mulling around backstage after our show and saw all the Incubus guys waiting to go on stage, sans Brandon. One of the guys said “good show” to me so I stopped to thank them for watching and for having us, and to say I was really looking forward to their set. After the ritual polite thank yous, we began to have some small talk together. And we started to joke around with each other. And all my jokes were spot on (at least in my head). Everyone was laughing, we were having a great time, the guys in the band were super cool and funny, it was like we were old friends from grade school. After a minute or two of this banter I asked them why they weren’t on stage yet and they were still talking to a shmuck like me. They replied that they were waiting for Brandon. “F’n lead singers huh?! Typical!” I said.

So have you ever seen a movie when the music stops at a party and everyone becomes silent and the camera does a close-up on one idiot who said or did the ‘wrong’ thing? Well, this was me with Incubus. All of a sudden, everyone stopped laughing and you could cut the tension with a knife. I was just kidding damn it! Wow, wrong thing to say. And as you would have it Brandon himself walked up about 3 seconds later and actually saved me from the situation. As he came walking to the group he was facing me and to the backs of the guys in the band. So I saw him first and said, “Brandon! We were just talking about you!”. That was my attempt at a save. “You were,” he said in his calm, sweet Brandon Boyd voice. The guy was really nice. “All good things, don’t worry! Well, get up there guys and have a good show!” I said and started to walk away to let them have their time and get on stage (and to make my escape with my tail between my legs). “Thanks!” Brandon said and they headed to the stage. And put on a killer show.

Obviously, I felt unsettled about this interaction. I mean, joking about lead singers when you are not one in a band is a common band joke. I had no idea that those guys would not dig that joke at all. Obviously, I struck some kind of chord that I didn’t expect or want to strike. It was like a complete 180 from the way the conversation was going. I told Chad the story and he laughed and was equally as confused as to why that would make such a positive vibe into a negative one. I remember we had an interview at the beginning of Incubus’s set with a good friend of ours from Germany named Sasha and I am pretty sure I mentioned it to him to try to apologize to Incubus formally and say I was just kidding. I don’t think it ever made it to print! Anyway, I told Chad and Chuck that we were definitely staying until the end of the show because I couldn’t leave it with Incubus like that. I had to talk to them after the show.

And I did. We waited until about 20 or 25 minutes after the show and as we were walking by their dressing room I popped my head inside and said, “Hey guys, great show!”. I began to duck out of the room and wouldn’t you know they said, “Hey guys, come on in!”. I’m telling you, the guys in Incubus were above and beyond nice. So we walked in and spoke with the guys in the band for about 10 minutes or so. The guitar player Mike had actually just got surgery on his left hand and could still barely grip anything. It was actually quite amazing that he could still play a show! He was telling us about how he was trying to play within his new limitations until his hand fully healed, but that he didn’t want to cancel the tour on his behalf. I honestly didn’t even notice that his hand was still stiff from the surgery when he was on stage, he did a remarkable job playing through it.

I also spoke for a bit with their drummer Jose. Obviously, drummers gravitate towards drummers! Come on now! I always thought he was a great drummer and I told him how I listened to Incubus before I was even playing professionally and how I had seen them live a few times. We spoke for a bit about his drum set-up, which is pretty crazy and awesome, and I was saying how I didn’t understand how he could play his kit so fluently with the way he had his gear set-up. He had a pretty untraditional set-up and he played it so gracefully. He just shrugged his shoulders and said different drummers can play different set-ups. He was a humble guy. He then, to my surprise, started talking about my drumming and our set. I had no idea he saw so much of our set. This is not typical to see so much of an openers’ set, and I was really appreciative that he even saw our set, never mind mention it, or even further talk about it. He told me that he was really impressed at all the different drumming styles that I played, especially the way that I could smoothly switch between those styles. I told him that it didn’t always feel like I was switching smoothly but the same goes to him about his transitions. He told me that he thought my transitions were definitely smooth and I was sold on the guy after that one! Ha. I mean, he was probably just being nice, but I liked it nonetheless.

I then started talking about all the cool little things and accents he puts on his beats. He has awesome chops and he adds cool little snare fills and uses bells or a timbale or another accessory to add awesomeness to already cool and innovative beats. His response to this was, “Yeah, well let’s face it, we both overplay a bit. We’re drummers, that’s what we do!”. Now I don’t think he overplays but when I told Chad about our conversation he loved the fact that Jose used the word “overplay”. Chad would use this reference jokingly to me for a while whenever he thought I was… yeah you guessed it, “overplaying”!

After about 10 minutes of us bothering the Incubus guys, we let them be. I felt like I had redeemed myself from the lead singer comment and Chad and Chuck had a great time talking to the guys. It was definitely a once in a lifetime experience opening for them in Germany. We haven’t played with them since, as we just missed out on a month long tour with them shortly after that German date. And I have never experienced a crowd that inquisitive or wide eyed since then. Maybe it’s time for an Incubus reunion! So if you’re reading this and you know Incubus or their management, let’s try and make this happen. It will be a great bill I promise, and I won’t make any more lead singer jokes!