Derek Roddy interview (excerpt)

GTDS: Well another great performance that you put in was for the Dream Theater drummer audition. And I’m sure you’ve been asked this a million billion times, so I apologize in advance.

DR: No that’s all right. I mean, honestly some guys asked about it. It’s all good. I mean it was cool. That again is another funny story behind that. Some of you probably heard this story before. It was interesting because I’m very [familiar] with Dream Theater, and very aware of Mike Portnoy. But because of my influences as a kid, being into fusion and prog and the jazz thing and coming from so many different styles of music – like I wasn’t really a “rock’n roll” or “metalhead” – I really enjoyed the extreme stuff and I wanted to see how far I could push it, and I loved hearing how far other people could push it. But overall I really wasn’t a big fan of metal. And I know that’s sacrilege to say to a lot of the metalheads out there! I’m sorry! But I mean I did like the really, really extreme stuff for the time that I grew up with: Maiden onto Slayer onto Napalm Death onto the death metal, whatever. But when I was listening to Morbid Angel and stuff, there was no way I was going to be caught dead listening to Dream Theater! [laughs] So I was never a Dream Theater fan. I was, like I said, very aware of the stuff and appreciated those guys and respected those guys as musicians – they’re awesome killer players – just not really my thing.

My wife and I were going on vacation, and I normally just avoid my phone altogether when I’m out of town – especially when I’m going to see my folks up there in South Carolina. On like a Friday afternoon, we are driving up about 2:30 in afternoon, I get a call from a good drummer buddy of mine, doesn’t leave message. And he calls back like five minutes, doesn’t leave a message. Then he calls back five minutes later, leaves a message, and I’m like, “All right.” Then I started getting all these unknown number calls and voice mailbox is piling up, and drummers that I haven’t talked to in 10 years... what the hell is going on? So finally I start to get my voicemail messages and every one of them is [heavy breathing] “Dude!” [heavy breathing] “Did you hear that Mike Portnoy quit Dream Theater?!?” [heavy breathing] “Dude man, the world’s going to end!” [heavy breathing] “Do you have numbers, man? Do you know anybody in the management that I can get in touch with?” It was just one e-mail after another. One phone call/voicemail after another of guys just wanting to ask me if I had anybody’s phone number, to get an audition with Dream Theater. [laughs] And my wife and I thought it was just the dang funniest thing, because we have this ongoing joke about the desperation sometimes of people in the music industry and the lengths that people are willing to go to sometimes just to be that guy. We laughed about it, and we were like, “Oh my God, this is funny!” and I thought to myself, “Man I’ve met Portnoy a handful of times. I don’t know anybody else in the band. Never ran in any of the same circles – know none of these people. Why would anybody think I could help them with the Dream Theater audition, I don’t know.”

So fast forward about four days or so, we’re on our vacation, and I’m still getting phone calls. Haley looked at me one night after dinner, she says, “Look, what are you going to do when they call you?” And I’m like, “Who? They’ve been calling me! What are you talking about?” [laughs] She was like, “No. When they call you, what are you going to do, with the snakes and all this other stuff?” because I just started building a snake business. Dude, I have a hundred snakes here – it’s a lot to take care of, and they’ve been doing really well for me financially, and just I’ve kind of taken a left-hand turn in my life in the last seven or six years. I was like, “Haley, you’re crazy. They’re not going to call me.” Like I said, “I don’t even run in the same circles as these people” yada yada yada. So we’re driving home and I get an unknown number call me, which wasn’t odd ‘cause I kept getting other guys calling me from unknown numbers. I pick up the voicemail, and it’s Frank their manager asking if I be interested in doing the audition! [laughs] Yeah it was kind of weird my wife knew somehow or another that was gonna happen. I didn’t know what to do. I mean I was flattered and I was kinda blown away at the same time. I told Haley at the time, “I can’t do this. This is not feasible for us right now. They’re gonna want massive touring schedule – it’s just not – I don’t know if it’s doable.” And she looked at me and said, “Look, when Dream Theater calls to go audition, you f***ing go audition.” [laughs] So I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare – I had maybe two and half weeks, I think. I was out in the middle doing some clinics roundabout and I didn’t really have a chance to play any of the songs on the drum kit until two days before the audition here at home, when I got home.

It was cool playing with those guys. It’s a shame that they didn’t press record when it came down to when our session started, which kind of makes sense. I was right after Mangini and we were so lackluster. Petrucci and I just started talking and hanging out a little bit. They just went through a four or five hour audition with Mangini, so people wanted to eat. The crew was hungry, so people were eating, taking a break, outside smoking, doing their thing. So I set the drums up, redid the kit, got my cymbals up, did our thing. Just started talking to these guys, and we all just started playing at various random times. And then all of a sudden, we found ourselves playing the songs. I think what happened was people realized “Oh s***! They’re doing the audition!” and nobody pressed record. [laughs] That’s my honest assessment of what happened, because I’ve used that excuse myself – “corrupted audio” – when I’ve done the same thing. So I think that’s what happened in that regard. It was a shame that it didn’t get really fully recorded, because man, those three songs, we rocked them out. It felt like I’d been playing with those guys for years. I nailed those songs. That was fun playing with them. And then Jordan had this crazy odd meter thing that he threw at us – at all the drummers – the same thing. It just had this little tricky turn around in it. I’ve gotten this reputation as being this guy who records stuff in one take.

GTDS: Yeah I’ve seen your nickname ‘One Take’.

DR: Yeah, with the extreme metal stuff, that was just because growing up in the studio environment, I was anti-punch-in. I like to learn stuff. I like to play it and not have to piece it together. Sometimes that took me a little longer to actually learn what was going on, then I would sacrifice a day in the studio for something like that. This is one of those instances where it was like, “Well cool, yeah. I’ll work on that.” And they were like, “Well we want to see how fast you’ll get it.” I was like, “Dude, why do you care? Are you looking to put yourselves in a situation where you’re writing a record on the fly? Because I’m not really interested in doing that, because to be completely honest, every record that I’ve done in my entire career, I’ve done on the fly. And I’m so sick of that. I don’t have anything that represents me as a drummer outside of I, Monarch from Hate Eternal, because I put my foot down with that and told Eric, “Look we are going to spend some time writing this record as a band. I want to at least hear the lyrics and know how the vocals go before I start planning drum fills and cymbal parts and all this other stuff.” Because everything that I’ve done, my playing has always fought with everything else going on. And it was all because I never had time to learn anything. I mean King of All Kings we wrote and recorded that record in two weekends. The Nile record I did in 17 hours. [laughs] I’m so sick of doing that, and I told those guys straight up. Just to spit something back out, and I spit something back out at ‘em, but it wasn’t anything that I would’ve creatively wanted to play. And we jammed out and had a fun time. I even threw something at them that kinda stumped those guys, too. So it was kind of a cool thing.

The audition in and of itself was really killer. The whole experience in itself was really killer, to be honest. I expected I wasn’t going to get it. I knew going up there I was going to get it. I knew going up there I didn’t want it. And I hate to say that, but it just wasn’t feasible for me with animals and everything else. I mean I’ve easily got $175,000 to $200,000 wrapped up in animals. So for me at this point... I mean, yeah, if Steve Morse called me and said, “I need you for three weeks to do a tour” or whatever... And even recently I just got offered the Fear Factory gig. It’s the same thing there. I told Dino, “Man, if you only needed me for June and July – if I was just filling in, I would love to do it.” But for me to quit my life at this point and time for somebody else’s band and a 16 month touring schedule? Just for me that’s not feasible. Now, if it’s my own band, and I go out for three-four weeks at time at my own leisure, that’s one thing. But to join another band and to get into that situation... I mean look, I was flattered and I told those guys straight up. I mean right when I got there, I had a talk with the manager Frank. I told him what was going on, how much I was generating from the reptiles, and he was like, “Man, I don’t blame you.” [laughs] Because for me to have to deal with re-homing all these guys or hiring somebody full-time to take care of them like I would, that would cost me a good deal cash. I just don’t think that it would have weighed out in the long run, to be completely honest with you.

GTDS: But were you happy with the footage that they put out in the documentary?

DR: When it comes to that, I don’t really give a s***. It is what it is. There were drummers that were upset – I’ll just put it that way – that kinda talked s*** and bad mouthed the process. But I went into it knowing exactly what was going to happen. Because Roadrunner had sent out this questionnaire, and it was the same question asked 15 different ways. It was basically trying to get everybody to say that they would blow somebody to be the drummer for Dream Theater, and I simply wasn’t going to do that. If you notice, they didn’t include any of my interview footage, because I simply didn’t give them the ammo to use. And if you wonder why my part is hastily gone through, and there’s no interview footage – there’s only that little bit of interview footage that they got of me after the interview... Because I wasn’t going to sit there and be like [in a goofy voice] “What would it mean to me to be the drummer for Dream Theater? Oh, gee, golly guys! It would be the best thing ever!” And it’s funny because I know that from talking to Marco, and from talking to some of the other drummers that were doing this, they were doing it just do it, as well. A drummer like Marco – for him to stop musically doing everything that he does for Dream Theater – I just didn’t see happening. But yet it’s edited to the point where it seems like it would be the biggest thing ever for him to be the drummer in that band, and I know for a fact that that wasn’t the case. I mean he was already playing with Jordan and Petrucci in a project. What did it matter to him? But it’s cut together like, “Oh yeah, to be the drummer in Dream Theater would be the best thing since sliced bread!” And I know for a fact that that’s not what was going through his mind. So the way that it was edited was done in a haphazard kind of way just to create a story and to make winners and losers. But in the end of it though, we’re all winners. Anyone of us could have went in there and walked all over that gig.

GTDS: I enjoyed it because some of my favorite, incredible drummers sort of performing. Just another chance to see them again doing their thing. But I must admit there was this certain X factor vibe behind it, where there was this... the way that it was edited, sort of like a teary-eyed story: “Oh I really hope I get this gig” – that sort of thing that you would see on those audition-type shows.

DR: Well, I had heard that it was taking them so long because they were trying to make some type of reality TV show out of it, and it was taking them longer with the footage. I heard that nobody was interested. Like they shopped it to MTV and VH1, and nobody was really interested in putting it out.

GTDS: But it certainly did have that kind of reality TV show vibe.

DR: Of course it did.

GTDS: There was something there that was very much –

DR: And you know it was funny ‘cause before I did the auction, Petrucci kind of said something to me under his breath like “Yeah, the record label’s kind of making us do this, because they don’t think we’ll sell units if there’s not some drama attached.” I mean that’s not what he said, but me reading between the lines, that’s what it read to me. And then another thing that he said, too, is that they knew immediately – I was right after Mangini, and he told me straight up that “Mangini’s our guy. It would be hard to beat our feelings for him, for him being in this band.” So they really were just doing it to have footage.