Adam Warner: Your self titled release was out about 7 months ago, congrats by the way.
James “Buddy” Eason: Thank you
AW: Is there anything new on the horizon as far as stuff that’s been recorded?
Buddy: I personally have 12 songs written. All vocals and everything like that are ready. The rest of the guys are working on music and all that. Probably after Summer, closer to Christmas time. We’ll be recording again in that little downtime area.
AW: How did you guys originally come together? Did just one person start it?
Buddy: Both guitar players started about 10 years ago. And I was originally from Florida, grew up in Florida, but moved west to pursue a career in music. Played in LA, all of us actually played together, they had a different drummer, different singer, different bass and everything. I was in another band in LA, we all kinda played together and at the same time I quit, they booted their singer and this is almost like 9 years ago. It all just kinda came together and made sense, and now we have a bass player that’s been in the band for about two and a half years. We’re just kind of evolved and taken a lot of steps, and now it’s where it needs to be, it’s really brutal.
AW: It is, I’ve listened to the whole thing a couple of times and it really is good. It’s solid and it keeps you very interested, what kind of influences are being brought both musically and lyrically?
Buddy: Everything in my life is my influence. Personal life, there is only one fictional song on the record… called, uhm, I’m out of my mind, I’ve been really sick for two days now… I can’t even think of the song, we’re not even playing it right now.
AW: Is it the one with Chino?
Buddy: No, that’s called Vengeance is Mine. It’s also a fictional kind of song, I was writing to it, and the music just kind of made me feel like a tough guy kind of vibe, right? And I just kind of went with it and wrote all these lyrics about you know like if someone just made me so angry and how would I write about that and how would I deal with that? So when I wrote those lyrics and that way it just kind of flowed that way. Me and Chino worked together on this song and the structure wise like that and we got probably like a couple hours in the studio, it was crazy.
AW: With DROID still being relatively new in the industry, what do you feel are the biggest obstacles that you forsee going forward?
Buddy: First of all you gotta stay a band, #1, a lot of people can’t get along, personalities. We’re all like really strong minded guys and sometimes we butt heads and our #1 goal is to keep playing and if we can do that. And then the other one is just paying your dues. You never think “if I just do this tour” and “if we sell this many records” and “I deserve this”, na na, you have to pay those dues no matter what. The bigger you get, the bigger the dues, I think.
AW: What do you feel about when they do things like “Battle of the Bands” where they gather up a dozen local bands and automatically one of them gets signed? Do you feel that they given a free pass as opposed to a band that struggled to get heard?
Buddy: I don’t like “Battle of the Bands” that much but at the same time, but whatever it takes for you to be what you wanna be in this world, you know, do what you gotta do, get what you gotta get. U2 was a “Battle of the Bands” band ya know. The only reason I knew that is because we were in Cleveland at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a couple years ago at the Hard Rock, and they have the U2 exhibit and it showed that they were a “Battle of the Bands” in [Ireland].
AW: What are the best and worst things about being on the road?
Buddy: Rough winter or summer. Cause right now it’s sure damn winter. We’re all sick, that’s the worst thing. The best thing about it is just playing music and doing what you love, that’s the #1. And in the summertime, the worst thing is we eat. The best thing about it is playing music because it gives you all the things that you love. The worst thing is being sick.
AW: Speaking of just general health, do you do a lot of exercising while on the road? How do you stay in shape while being on a bus all day long?
Buddy: We try to stay fit as much as possible, try to workout at whatever hotels we’re staying at or whatever. In the winter, I try to save as much energy as possible, obviously it’s easy to exert yourself too much. That’s about it right there, our bass player [Duke] he works out like a mad man so he’d have a different goal and angle on that situation.
AW: A slightly different approach on training, have you had any kind of vocal training? I mean, when you sing its really raspy and growling, so what kind of exercises have you had to do so that you don’t burn out your voice?
Buddy: I’ve done a lot of vocals especially when I sang more, cuz I wanted to work my singing voice. Now I pretty much just… brutal, heavy singing but when you do that it’s even harder. I warm up about 20 to 30 minutes everyday before we play. Today’s gonna be a whole different thing though cuz I feel like shit, ya know? [laughs] But yeah, I warm up every single time, if I don’t warm up, I’ll be dead, I’m done.
AW: Seeing as your from Florida and DROID hails from California, those are both very good weather areas and seeing the snow like this in Minnesota, so is there…
Buddy: You have to go to it in California. You go to it for a reason, called snowboarding.
AW: I was actually going to say, do you like any kind of winter sports?
Buddy: I like hockey and snowboarding, I don’t know enough about hockey to really get into it. I watch hockey with my friends but I don’t really know what’s going on. Snowboarding, I’ve done it maybe like, 4 times, it’s fun as hell. See, where we’re from, I’ve been out there about 12 years now, I can surf in the morning and snowboard at night and then skateboard during the day. You can do everything you wanna do.
AW: When you guys got signed by Munky, what did it feel like to get approached and given an offer to a major label?
Buddy: Honored. That’s the first thing, I mean we’ve known him and the whole Korn group for a long time. Actually he [Munky] taught my guitar player Jamie [Teissere] how play when he was a kid; gave him lessons. He’d be in Venice Beach and bring him [Munky] Taco Bell for guitar lessons. He’d always stay in touch and he watched the evolution of DROID and they evolved at the same time. And they’ve just always been there. Jaime invited Munky to the show at the Whiskey[-A-Go-Go] and we played and it was an aweful show, but we had a really good time. Right after we were done, we were loading up and Munky goes ‘I just left my office where I signed all my paperwork to get my label and I want you guys to be the first band’. And we know what kind of person he is, we know that he’d take care of us. You know, there’s a lot of labels and either they take care of ya or they don’t. They’ll just put you on a shelf or if you don’t give enough writing in the first couple months, your DONE. So, we knew he’d take care of us right. Plus he gave us 100% music creativity, to do what we wanna do and make a DROID record like we wanna make it.
AW: As opposed to the label trying to say ‘you gotta do it like this’.
Buddy: Yeah. Well, here’s our record, ‘no no no, this isn’t good enough, where’s the hit single’ you know. This is a metal record [laughs], he knew what band he was signing, he knew what we were doing, we have potential.
AW: Well, I’ll let you get going and warm up, thanks again for your time.
Buddy: Thanks man.

http://www.droidmusic.com/

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