‘Ho’me from Home

Hi there, fellow drum/techy people!

Here I am with a further Dream Theater /Mike Portnoy gear related piece. This time it’s an interview with Jose “Ho” Baraquio – Mike’s drum tech – and it is, in fact, is the second time I have interviewed Ho, the first time being in Manchester in April 2000. The interview had been pre-arranged so that Jose, Mike and I all knew it was going to happen, but because of the fact that it was early into the final leg of the tour, exact timings were virtually impossible to nail down, so we only had a small window of opportunity to work in, whilst the band and crew were in London. Luckily everyone (as always) was flexible and agreeable, so we made it happen! This was the second of two shows at the London Astoria and probably the best time to grab Ho as the gear was still set up from the previous night’s show. When we (me and my long-standing side-kick Robbie) arrived at the venue around 2 pm, we expected the crew to be there, but in fact, the band had arrived too, as they wanted as much rehearsal time as possible prior to that evening’s show. Thanks to Mike for allowing us to take Ho away for an hour... I wanted to speak with Ho again, partly as it had been two and a half years since we last talked and partly because, of course, much had happened in that time, especially with the arrival of Mike’s new kit – “The Siamese Monster”!

So anyways, enough of my ramblings and onward with the interview...

Are you happy to be on the road with Dream Theater after a month or so break?

A month off was good, there was just about enough time to settle in at home before you want to get back out there.

You didn’t go away anywhere on a holiday?

Not really. I did some local work at home, some video stuff and some lighting stuff.

On the previous leg of the tour, did you have a favourite location you visited?

Well, we played Baltimore, which was great. I had a bunch of friends come out that I hadn’t seen in a while, so it was good, but no real favourite.

Can you give us some background on the “tech rehearsal” day you had in Dublin? (Ho and the crew got together with the gear, the day before the Dublin show.)

Well, the band weren’t present – they didn’t show up until the next day – but one of the things was that we were going to have a new monitor guy, the monitor guy that was out with us during the summer was leaving after tonight, so we had to show the new guy the rig and everything else that he was going to have to deal with. Also we’re using a different sound company this time around, so we just had to make sure that all the gear was fine, as we’re carrying the same production everywhere we go and especially since we’re in a different country now.

Did the band rehearse prior to the Dublin gig (first show on this leg) as they hadn’t played together since the end of the US tour?

No, that show was the first time they’d played together since the end of the US leg. Jordan came by for, like 30 seconds, at the tech rehearsal and that was pretty much it, as far as pre-production goes. All we did was set up ‘front of house’ sound and the monitor rig as it was a pretty large studio, The Factory in Dublin. After that we just made sure everything was up and running, before tearing everything back down and moving it back into the truck.

You must be carrying a truckload of sticks!

Yeah! Especially since I’ve heard that our artist relations guy at ProMark has just left, so they’re in a sort of transition period, but I’ve been fully stocked since the end of the last US leg. I made sure I had five or six cases of sticks(!), so we could be good for Europe.

How many sticks (roughly) would you have for this leg?

Mike’s even surprised! He’s got in a bad habit of throwing a lot of sticks in the middle of the show, so I ordered a lot – like around 500 pairs – I wanted to be able to get through this summer and this fall!!

Roughly, how long does it take you to power up the kit now, once you have your cases in the room?

On a good day it takes around 45 minutes, but it all depends on the venue, sometimes it takes a little longer.

And when you pack up, do all the boom arms stay in position in terms of angles, etc.?

It’s pretty much the same now as on the first leg. All these kits have been built pretty much in the same way and with the Tama hardware, I don’t know if they really advertise it that much, but we use the “Touch Lock” system that they have. I’ve never seen it in any of the catalogues, so maybe it’s just a specialty item that you either know they have, or you don’t. We have pretty much built all Mike’s Tama kits that way, so basically I think it takes me the same amount of time as with all the other kits we’ve had. Everything just pops off and into the hardware case, the rack sits on the top and the tray comes out, everything underneath is all boom arms and the rest of the hardware. I tried to do a little “pre-planning” when we had the drum kits made (there are three identical set-ups of the Siamese Monster), as I really don’t want to worry about “did I ship this or that”, so basically everything is in triplicate, literally, even down to the stick-bags. The only thing that travels with me is my workbox and a “spares” case, which just has extra “everything “ even though there is a set of cymbals/pedals etc. with each kit, I still like to have this one “spares” case that travels with me.

Do you think the idea of the two kits together (i.e. small kit and large kit side by side) has worked well for Mike?

He’s definitely happy. There are a couple of things I wish we could somehow fix, like it would be great if somehow we could get it down to one seat! Sometimes it gets a little crowded up there with the two drum thrones, the mic-stand and the sand bags holding the mic-stand down. Sometimes Mike will get up and for speeds sake he’ll knock the throne over, just so he won’t trip on anything, he’ll just knock it back to me. I guess it’s the only thing I’m not too thrilled about, having the two thrones, but it does have its advantages if he wants to have someone up there to play with him (e.g. Mike Mangini in Boston).

The 10” floor tom between the two kits has a phenomenally deep sound, is that with Pin-Stripe (heads) on both sides or just the top (batter)?

It’s just a Pin-Stripe on the top and a regular Ambassador on the bottom, but that’s the really odd-ball drum. I think this one is the hardest to tune, ‘cos it’s such a small shell. It sounds good, but by the end of the night – ‘cos the lugs have to be really loose to try and get a wide sound out of it – and by the time Mike’s done beating on it, it sounds really bad actually! That’s why, with the intermission, when Mike’s actually physically not behind the kit, I can sometimes sneak in there and try and tune the head back up.

You must have noticed a big difference in stage volume from where you sit now, since the band have been using “in-ear” monitoring! (So no wedges blasting in Ho’s ears!)

Oh yeah, there’s definitely is a big difference not having the drum fill back there. I mean, with the drum fills he used to have before, they were literally inches away from my head every night and it’s taken its toll on my hearing. I know my hearing, even with ear-plugs in, is pretty bad, but also just having the sub’s (MP has bass sub woofers under each throne) means your body can feel it too. You can wake up feeling really sore, like someone’s been punching you every two seconds!

I’ve noticed that the miking for the kit has changed over the year – most recently you have been using mike booms for the rack toms, which were mounted on the rack?

Well, Tama have their own mic arms. As we’ve gone thru a couple of sound guys, I think originally we started out with one type of mic, which were more “clip-on” style, so we really didn’t need any kind of mic stand/arm to do all of the drums, but now that we’ve switched to a different mic, we actually needed a stand/arm, however, on this leg, we’re back to using a different type of mic which has an all-inclusive clip that mounts on the rim.

Also on the earlier legs of this tour, the overheads were different, in that a) there weren’t always three (like now) and b) the boom arms weren’t attached to the rack?

Yeah, we were using actual stands on the first leg, but we’ve pretty much always had three overheads. We’ve gone thru some different types of mics though.

I’ve noticed that there seems to be one cymbal boom arm (holds the middle of the three chinas) which looks like a variant of the Tama “ratchet arm” – I think it’s an MRB30?

Yeah, it’s custom. It’s because it’s such a tight configuration around that area, it was a custom piece because with the regular cymbal arm, there’s too much height once you stack the cymbal on – it’s almost like a small nub, just cut off to put inside the ratchet arm slot to tighten down and it has a regular thread on it – it was the only way we could actually fit that cymbal in there where Mike actually wanted it.

I noticed “Animal” from the Muppets appeared on some of the shows of the previous leg (he was mounted on the gong stand to Mike’s left rear), but he doesn’t seem to have made it on the trip over to Europe!

No, he stayed at home! “Animal” actually came from Mike’s kids, they were at one of the shows and earlier in the day they’d been to some sort of carnival or amusement park where they had won him playing some sort of carnival game or something. So of course Mike shows up with it and says “hey, we’ve gotta put this on the kit somehow!”

I spotted on one of the photos from Switzerland (during the European summer leg) that the right side of the kit was missing the far right crash, also the chimes and granite blocks were missing and the gong bass drum seemed to be pushed much nearer to Mike?

Aaah, the reason behind all of that is because it’s a festival situation, where we aren’t really totally 100% in control of everything that’s going on, plus this pretty much being a show where Mike was only going to play on one side of the kit and also as far as inputs (on the sound desk) goes, there was no festival that would have enough inputs to do that whole kit, so to make it look not so weird, like if we removed the whole right side of the kit, we sort of “illusionised” it, so it was actually there, the whole kit, but in actuality, he was only playing one side. You could also tell by the fact that none of that stuff had mic’s on it. He did want to use the gong bass drum, so I pushed it all the way over so it was almost “behind” the right kit.

Did you have to make that decision kind of “there and then”?

We sort of knew that realistically there would be no way that they would have enough inputs to do a full festival show.

The rolling risers you use at these festivals – are they carried by the band or provided at each location?

The festival provides those, unless it’s our actual tour, then we’ll rent a riser or whatever.

Also the drum and keyboard risers have never been covered with drapes to hide the underneath on this tour – any reason?

It’s our lighting guy, he really likes that sort of look, with the moving lights being able to shine underneath. We usually have a lot of remote lights that are on the floor, behind the backline and he likes knowing that the lights are going to shine thru.

How did you get on with the setup side of things on the last leg, did the “triple bill” with Satriani and King’s X give any special problems?

It was fun. Certain shows were really tight and there were times when Mike’s and Jeff’s (Campitelli) kits were side by side during each other’s set, ‘cos the stage had no place we could roll-off to, we did have rolling risers but there were some places that didn’t have space or access ways to use them. As far as an 80-minute show, I think everyone on the crew was happy with that. Compared to the three and a half hour marathon every night we do now, I think we were actually pretty spoiled this summer.

I guess they were pretty big venues you played there?

It varied. We did a lot of large outdoor amphitheatres but some of the places were pretty small. It varied from theatres, to large clubs, to outdoor venues etc.

Did you strike up any good friendships and/or camaraderie with the other band’s crew guys?

Well, I’d known the Satriani guys from when John Petrucci did the G3 tour, so it wasn’t the first time that I had met these guys, but they’re all great guys.

Has the crew on the Dream Theater tour this past year stayed pretty much the same, apart from FOH sound?

We sort of had a revolving door of monitor guys, but the current guy on FOH sound has been with us for most of the year.

I noticed Steve Vai’s tech is out with you on this leg, working with John Petrucci?

Yes, the revolving door of guitar techs! Thomas took care of John during G3, so he was kind of familiar at least at the guitar end of things, though he’s still learning John’s rack.

Is the footboard for the remote hi-hat on the small kit (for the 13” Groove hats) a custom fitting?

Actually, the last European leg we did, it did have the original (Iron Cobra Junior) footplate, but yeah, this one is another custom piece that Tama made, it’s actually from an Iron Cobra hi-hat, but that there on the kit today, is the custom made piece.

I notice last night you had some problems with the “Slicknut” cymbal top on the 9” splash – have they been reliable? (“Slicknuts” are a quick release cymbal top felt/nut combination endorsed by Mike.)

Yeah, but last night I did have a problem and I actually swapped it around with a new one today, so it was probably just getting a little bit worn. It’s kind of hard to tell sometimes, like Mike will look at me and I know that it’s actually loose and I could go out there mid-song and attend to it, but I’ m trying not to be a big distraction. I was trying to wait until the song actually ended, but I guess it got to a point where it was actually bothering him playing, so I was trying to hold off as long as I could before I actually fixed it.

Are all Mike’s splashes and Stax Sabian “Brilliant” finish?

Yeah, you can get them in both versions, but it’s pretty much hit and miss with what they actually send us. I’m pretty well stocked with the “Max” stuff now, I haven’t physically opened up all the boxes, but most of it is “Brilliant” finish.

When you were building the Japan kit, from the pictures I’ve seen it looks like you had two identical rack set-ups, like one was being built simultaneously to mirror the other?

Well, we weren’t sure – I think the pictures were from us building the third kit and we only had like a day and a half to build the rack, so just for safety’s sake we didn’t want to be stuck with an unfinished product, so we had the American rack shipped over and actually put it together – it was a lot easier to compare side by side as opposed to trying to rely on memory and pictures. We actually had both racks set up.

Then there was the strange looking “infinity symbol” table that caused many people to scratch their heads, wondering where that came from. (Again this was a picture on the Japanese version of the Tama website, which showed Jose building a kit from scratch.) What was the story on that?

I actually made it! Mike usually has to have something – some sort of table or such, to put his candy, his watch or whatever on. The original piece that I had was just a piece of plywood scrap that I found at some rehearsal studio, but had no way to mount it or anything to put it on. I had to somehow come up with a table. So I spray painted it black but it looked kind of odd – I didn’t really like the way it looked, so over the break I decided to make something a little more fancy. I knew that the “infinity symbol” means something to Mike, so I actually had a think about it and came up with what’s like a kind of fancy drinks holder!

Are the storage locations the same for the three Siamese Monster kits as they were for the previous set-ups?

Yeah – the American kit stays at a storage place in New York, the Japanese kit stays with Tama in Japan and the UK trucking company that we use throughout Europe keeps this one.

On the production version of the kits, all the rack mounted bottom tubes that hold the boom arms have been cut off – can you give us some more info on that?

Well, at the Tama factory in Japan, we had unlimited resources for tools and any item you can think of, like clamps or anything, you name it, they have it. So once we had the placement of everything sorted, they used like a real fancy saw that cuts everything nice and smooth and it certainly improves the look of the rack, but I usually carry a pipe cutter with me, like yesterday for instance, I was cutting some of the mic-stands because I though they stuck out a little too far.

With the thinner (Emperor) heads on the toms now, do you find you have to change them more often than you did the Pin-Stripes on the previous kits?

I guess in theory yeah, but to me it doesn’t seem that I’m doing anything any different.

How about the number of flight-cases for this kit – are there more than with the previous kit?

I’m really happy this year, as we spent a nice chunk of money getting these road cases made for the three kits. It definitely makes my job a lot easier to have individual slots for the drums instead of trying to wrap ‘em in blankets and such.

Any specific breakages this time around with hardware etc.?

Gear-wise, we haven’t had any major problems this year. Everything’s been pretty good. We’ve had some minor stuff like cracked cymbals and stuff like that, but no major stuff.

When I was out with Mike and Transatlantic last November, the 17” HHX crash was definitely in need of replacement by the end of the tour – have you had anything similar with the HHX’s?

The only one I noticed was the front left 18” HHX crash – it’s got a slight dip in it (spookily enough, this cymbal was replaced, that night, mid-show!), but I noticed that they don’t make “brilliant” finish HHX’s.

I love the look of the 19” HH Fierce crash, the way it’s hammered...

Yeah, it was a Signature Series line, but I don’t know if they’re still carrying that same signature line (I think it was Jojo Mayer’s line) but they still make ‘em.

I love the way the two kits share cymbals in the middle – I think it comes into its own at the point where Mike is playing ride patterns with his left hand (e.g. in Blind Faith).

Yeah, and he also plays the small kit kick with his left foot sometimes too. Also, when you look at the prototype set-up we had in the studio (for the recording of Six Degrees), without using a rack and having everything on cymbal stands, the footprint of it was maybe like 16 x 16!! Mike was like “how are we goin’ to do this?!” – but we compacted everything into the rack and it came out pretty good. I mean, I was really surprised it fits onto a 10 x 10 riser.

Really good to see that you got some recognition in one of the latest ProMark ads! (Jose was featured with several other techs in a full page ad.)

I still haven’t seen it. The picture they used was from the build of the first kit. ProMark called me up and said they were doing an ad and did I have any pictures that I could send. At the time I was out of town and the only picture I had was on my computer, that was the only one I could get to, so they ended up using that one, but it was great to be in the ad.

Did you carry on taking lots of digi-cam photos on this tour, like you did on the M2000 tour? (Jose took tons of shots on M2000 many of which were used in the “Scenes from a Memory” DVD amongst others.)

No, I really slacked off on taking pictures. What I have got into the habit of, is exchanging pictures with guys who do have digital cameras. Since all the media is interchangeable, I can always just get a copy of everything that they take, so I can borrow their pictures!

So once this leg is finished, what are your plans for the rest of this year and into next?

Hopefully I’ll be out with Joe Satriani this winter, that’s supposed to start about ten days after I get home and I know Dream Theater really wants to get back out on tour again by next summer. Also, I’m really hoping to get onto an upcoming “Matchbox 20” tour, our lighting guy works with them and I’d love to get on that tour.

When this leg ends in Turkey, do you have to worry about shipping any of your gear or is that someone else’s problem?

Our production manager handles shipping and carriage – it’s one of the reasons why I wanted to get everything in triplicate, ‘cos sometimes I have a bad memory and I forget things.

Next year is your 10th anniversary year with Dream Theater!!

Yeah, you’re right! That’s a pretty big milestone!

So there we have it. We finished the interview pretty much at this point, but as we were winding down, we were chatting about various things, including how the last time Dream Theater played the Astoria (in 1993) the whole band and crew had personal items and passports stolen(!) and how Ho looks after Mike’s vocal/monitor mix as well as having to be in attendance for all the other physical things that can go wrong! It was a great 45 minutes or so, and as always, my heartfelt thanks go out to Jose for taking time out to answer all my geeky questions(!) and of course to Mike for allowing us to do this interview at a pretty critical time for the band – luckily it didn’t have any effect on that night’s show – band and crew were rockin’!

Also thanks to Robbie, for another fantastic four day Dream Theater adventure, where we flew to Dublin to catch the first show, then back to London for the two shows there – we had fun!!

So until next time, keep ‘em peeled...