A Conversation with Street Drum Corps’ Bobby Alt – HuffPost 6.29.10
Mike Ragogna: Can you catch your fans up on what’s been happening over the last couple of years?
Bobby Alt: Well, the last few years, I’ve mainly been focusing on our group, Street Drum Corps. We’re celebrating our six-year anniversary now, and we can’t even believe it. It seems like only yesterday we were playing at Six Flags Magic Mountain. The last few years we’ve done two records, that are out now on iTunes, produced by DJ Lethal. And our new one, which will be out late summer, early fall, is a double disc.
One of the CD’s will be all drumming, sort of like a movie score–if you can imagine it sounding something like Godzilla or King Kong or something like that–tons of drums. And on the other disc, we have fully realized songs where we have guitar players, bass players, horns, keyboards, programming, singing. So, I guess it’s been sort of a natural progression, and this will be our fourth album in the last few years.
MR: You’ve gotten some critical acclaim for “We Are Machines.” And you’ve been on the road with the Vans Warped tour, right?
BA: Oh yeah, many times.
MR: Recently, you did something special on a certain low profile television show…
BA: Oh boy, yeah. A couple weeks ago, we performed on American Idol as the Street Drum Corps backing Travis Garland. He has a new single out called “Believe,” and we share the same record label. We’re both on Interscope Records, and Danja produced the track. We’re big fans of Danja, and he wrote this great drum part that was in there. So, the three of us got out all of our trash cans and went down to American Idol and rocked out. We had three days of rehearsal and Travis was great. There were seven dancers, us and him performing his song and, you know, forty-three million viewers – not bad.
MR: Can you go into your new untitled album a little bit deeper?
BA: Yeah, we’re going in a lot of different areas. My friend says that we’re like schizophrenic musicians, don’t know which way to go, but it’s a natural progression. On the first record we made, Street Drum Corps, we had a week to make it in, and we had ten thousand bucks. We went in just having a little routine that we did on buckets and garbage cans, and we made a bunch of beats and some songs. There weren’t any lyrics or guitars or bass or anything yet. Then, when we started the second record, We Are Machines, we had two weeks and twenty thousand dollars. We decided to bring some other friends down. We were developing more as a band, and we wanted to add bigger sounds and express ourselves a little more. So, then we went out and toured with Linkin Park, on the Projekt Revolution Tour, and we had great things happening with that record. When we got back, we wanted to take it up another notch. We feel like now, working with our friends, we can write better songs, we want to bring in some more friends, bring in some more colors and sounds and make a bigger record.
So, we called up some friends that worked at Interscope, hashed out a meeting with Jimmy Iovine, and let the lawyers go to work for a couple weeks. Cut to two years later: We have written and recorded over 110 songs to put out, twelve on this record and twelve on the Big Noise album. So, for “this” record I speak of, we chose producer, Howard Benson who had done some work with our friends and My Chemical Romance and Hoobastank. He makes great sounding records, he has a great team of engineers and programmers behind him.
MR: Yeah, I loved his work with Papa Roach.
BA: So, we went from a week, to two weeks, to two years making a record.
MR: (laughs) Worth every minute of it, eh?
BA: (laughs) Worth every minute. I’m actually sitting in my car outside of the studio now because I’m singing today on the last two songs.
MR: What’s next?
BA: The album will be packaged, videos will be made, photos will be taken, and QR technology will be everywhere.
MR: Now wait up, let’s go into that a little bit. Can you go into the technology you used?
BA: Yeah, the QR technology. I first saw it being used in Japan about two years ago. I think people were buying groceries and scanning things with their phones and it was just instant. I wanted to find out more about it because I was thinking, “Wow, wouldn’t that be an interesting concept?”
Let’s say you see a barcode and you say, “that must be for sale.” Now with this QR technology, what you can do is install a QR scanner app onto your smart phone and then that will search the web for your QR reader. Once you scan this barcode, alien looking thing, it will take you directly to a website. So, it will go from print to web. And I was thinking about the fact that we’re making a product, and how funny would it be if our album cover was a barcode? Maybe by that time, more people will know about this QR technology.
MR: I think it’s catching on.
BA: It’s used in an episode of CSI, and if you type it in on the Internet, you can do a lot of research. It’s a lot of fun. So, I thought of, like, Beatles For Sale, that album. Just that, kind of tongue-in-cheek “buy my album.” I brought it up to the record label and they thought it was a great idea. People need things fast now, they just want it. This is one way for people to get what, we feel like, is our best work yet as quickly as possible.
MR: I take it you think Al Gore’s Internet thingy will catch on.
BA: I’m a big fan if the Internet, I’m a big fan of how fast you can get music. I don’t think music should be free, I think it should be bought and it’s up to us as artists to make it easy to buy our music. I think iTunes or Amazon are great ways to buy music, it costs ninety-nine cents or a dollar twenty-nine. You get a song, you get artwork, and you get it right to your ears.
MR: What a marvelous invention this Internet is! What suggestions might you have for artists in general, tech or no tech?
BA: Well, the one thing that comes to mind right off the bat is it’s a word of mouth thing. Anything I’ve ever fallen in love with was because somebody told me about it, or I went to check something out because they thought it was cool, whether it was my peers or my parents. And now, obviously, finding out about things on the Internet is very fast.
But for a new artist, just take your time, develop what it is that you’re trying to say or put out there. Take your time working on your music, be patient, because the people will come to you if it’s good and you don’t want to settle for anything less than what you think is great. I know it’s hard for some artists. But there are always going to be fresh ideas, there are going to always be new ideas and that’s what the Street Drum Corps feels like. Every week, there’s something different going through our head. Every month, we’ll be on to new recordings and new ideas. Right now, we’re working on a theater show, we’re working on a Broadway show, we’re working on a Vegas Show, all of these things simultaneously. But making sure that our eye is on the prize, and we set our goals and we have our time.
Transcribed by Ryan Gaffney