PipemanRadio Interviews Drummer Tommy McKinnon

0:00 Hi, you have unto censure? Wow? Were you young? Wake up America. It's time for the Adventures of Pipe Man on W four c Y dot com. West pomp Beats is number one internet radio station. Here's your host, the pipe Man. Don't you go.

0:54 This is the pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four c Y Radio. And I'm here with our next guest, who is an amazing drummer. And there's some great new music we're going to talk about. So let's welcome to the show. Tommy McKinnon. How are you. I've good. How are you fight man? I'm doing great. First thing I want to say right off the bat before we talk about anything else, because this is the most important part, is why does Bruce love the sound of your drums so much? I've been trying to figure it out. Yeah, yeah, I was under the understanding that kats have an accute sense of hearing. But he's always been a music cat. And whenever, even if I practice on a practice bet, he's always sitting right by. And then when I drum sometimes he's he's on the chair behind me. You just nap him.

1:53 I love it. Yeah, I don't know. I just think he likes the vibes and maybe when I'm I'm playing, I'm really relaxed, you just exit. Maybe it almost feels like to him like purring when when the beating of the drums is happening. That's possible. Yeah, I'm not sure, but he loves it. So there you go. There you go. And I had to bring it up because I saw that and I was like, that's definitely interview material that probably nobody else would bring up. All right, yeah, there you go. And my daughter she has two cats, and I'm sure if I call her up after an interview, she'd be like, yeah, I know, my cats would be running for the hills.

2:37 But that well, see that, and I think, but though the running from the music, I think that may be like a representative of her. Maybe. You know a lot of times are animals they share our personality. Oh totally. So what I want to see next is like you guys do a TikTok where Bruce is playing the drums with you. Yeah, I have to figure out how to make that. That'd be funny, right. That would be totally funny. So let's talk about this badass new album by Derelic uh Man that first of all you're drumming. I'm old school, you know, like from the beginning of all this stuff, and you're drumming reminds me of like my favorite drummers in the eighties that were starting this whole type of music.

3:35 Well, that's funny you say that, because you know I've been I've been listening to death metal pretty much since the beginning as well. Right, So I think that the first time I head back to East Side Legion, I must have been nine years old. Wow, So I kind of you know, I grew up mostly listening to like hair bands and rash metal whatever, everything from the semities. But you know, I, you know, I was always a moded angel path uh you know, suffocation type fan. And definitely when I was coming up as a player, you know, late nineties and after, Like I I listened to all those guys, right they've called us and Gino lind and Nicky d is like if the heavy that all Nickid is definitely a guy like I learned a lot of King Diamond songs when I was learning how to play.

4:28 There you go. So that's all that's all in there, And for me, it's like, well, these guys have been around forever. They made records that sold and that are still praised. So for me, it's like, well, there's the school, right if you wanted any better teacher. And then eventually, you know, even as I went all tour and all that stuff, I ended up touring and meeting up with a bunch of those guys having a chance to exchange you know, you know, a few words or spent a few weeks on the road, and so it all kind of came to g better eventually, and it's part of who I am as part of my playing. You know, It's funny because I played drums for nine years as a kid until until like high school, and then I met, you know, a bunch of the old school drummers, and I was at shows. I'm like, yeah, I fucking suck. I'm yeah. I was like, I'm looking at these guys and I'm gone mad. There's no way I could drum like that, And you guys gave me.

5:32 It's funny because you kind of gave me a little trigger of trauma with the practice pad, because I remember my dad would never get me a drum set till like way later. So I went for years only playing on practice pad and freaking hated it. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of a brutal one for children, you knows. For me, my practice, I didn't even have a practice add on soil later, Like I started out just with a kit, you know. I basically just wanted some to beat on that wasn't going to hurt anybody. And my first practice bat I was using my bed, you know, and I had this blanket that had little squares on it, so I used the squares for like target practice or whatever. Anyway, that's cool.

6:23 That's a cool technique right there. I like that, you know what. It's It's just something before coming into drumming when I was about fourteen fifteen, I didn't really know anything else. I was in into sports, I was in into anything, and then when I found that out, it was just everything, you know. It was all my attention was focused on that. And then you brought something before that would never you know, during the eighties, we would never say both things in one sentence, where we would mention hair metal and thrash. The come to that. Okay, check this out back in the day, you've probably seen this, maybe two. So if anybody wore Motley Cruise shirt to a Slayer show in LA back in the day. You would take the shirt from the kid, throw it up to Tom and he would burn it on stage.

7:20 Oh that's funny. Wow, that's amazing. I never heard that one before, but I'm not surprised, right you know, Well, you know I heard like guys in Quebec City getting punched in the head for wearing spandex and stuff like that. Yeah, you know, I came up. I came up in the nineties, right, so, like I'm born in the eighties, but you know, I came around all that stuff a little later. So it was kind of like grunge was already pretty big by the time I found out about King Diamond, you know. So for me, it was just anything from nineteen seventy one or even like sixty six, you know, like deals, Let's uplone, anything from led Zepp to so Morbid Angel was just one stream of you know. You know, I lived in a small town and I had a CD player and a tape deck, and for me, it was just one big progression, you know, And I saw I just listened to everything depending on the mood I was.

8:19 I just loved electric guitar and solos, and you know. Yeah, it's just that's physics. It Yeah, it's funny. You should say that too, because I was just talking about that in the last interview. Okay, So recently I interviewed John Lodge from The Moody Blues and I said to him, I'm like, you know how I know about your band because I had a brother that was eleven years older than me, and I rifled through his albums and I used to steal his albums and yours is one that I stole, and he goes, Yeah, thank god for older brothers, or we'd have no fans, because that's how we got our fab base. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I didn't have an older brother, but my my, my best friend growing up did have an older brothers into everything, and they had like a whole box of you know, cassettes, and so I eat, I'd go, I'd bring him virgin tapes that he would make me mixes and shit, and that's how I got into all that stuff. Yeah whatever, Yeah.

9:21 And I'll tell you too. Okay. So before there was a such thing as thrash and before there was such lance hair metal, I saw a Motley Crewe at the Roxy nineteen eighty. I think it was before their album came out, and they were not glamb at all. They weren't they weren't glamb at all. They were like horror punk, right it was. And that's really so you talk about the progression, I went that through that same progression. I went from like the old school rock, which is all you had, and then you had like the Bridge Invasion and may you know, the Made in the Priests, and then we started to have the the other bands that weren't thrash yet, weren't hair metal yet. It was just LA bands, and Molly Crue was like the heaviest band there was in LA until those first Metallic en Slayer shows.

10:23 But you know, it's interesting because we should have all gotten along, and I'm so happy that now, in twenty twenty four, old metal heads can get along. I think that that's a long's that was a long week coming, you know. Yeah, And there's a flea culture shift that happened over the last like ten years or so. We're gate keeping is just not really happening anymore. You know. I hated it. That happening exactly, I think, yeah, yeah, yeah. For me, it was always uh, you know, openness and just having a good time, you know, But uh yeah, I don't.

11:13 I don't know, like I in the tech de years, you know, coming up in the two thousands, when I was doing a lot of touring, the scenees already like like a lot more female and dance. You know, there's a lot more fusion, you know, kind of bills where we would have metal core with debt metal and you know, everything in between. So it's for me, it's more about, you know, are these guys cool to hang out with her? Not right exactly, you know, And I used to think it.

11:54 It used to have to hide stuff, Okay. So it's like I remember when I started getting into sleigh, my friends were like, Okay, we're gonna have to burn all your Montley cruise. Shit. I'm like, you're not burning it, No, yes, we are. You know. And and then people would say, yeah, in reference to what you're saying about females, that yeah, the only females in metal are are in hair metal, and they're not females. You know. You know, but I can tell you now, I think the most badass metal heads a lot of times are females. You know. You take people like Ginger Ginger or you know, Courtney from spirit Box or you know New Year's Day, or I mean there's Butcher Babies. There's so many that I can name that. Man, I don't know.

12:45 I yeah, I think. Yeah, and oh and you're gonna you're gonna hate this. I saw a Merciful Fate at the Troubadour in the eighties. Oh, I wish I only saw a guy in Uh the last tour, the the Never they never made it through Canada. So oh yeah, the last one, God bless the last one Merciful Fate played at. I think it was Hellfest. I'm trying that. I was at that they played at. But uh yeah, but Vancouver when the when the odd new album comes out in a couple of years there.

13:30 Yeah, and see I think your new album here. Uh. That's why I'm bringing all this stuff up because it does give me old school vibes, like the talent behind. Because one of the things I find nowadays is there's a lot of metal bands that just sound exactly the same, and yours just gave me the vibe of old school where you know you were in the same genre, but nobody sounded the same, you know. Possessed Dark Angel Slayer exis they all did not sound the same. You could tell them apart easily. I could know a Possessed song in like three seconds max. You know. Yeah, I think it's the Montreal influence, you know, because we're all over the place now, but we're all originally kind of a band for Montreal sounds very Montreal, like criptopscener Raxes, you know. So there was always a big melting but there of like New York death metal with thrash, you know, and like a little bit of New School, but just I would say more it's like modern, right, It's not like trending new school. It's more like a modern touch to it. Yeah, but they're great guys to work with.

14:48 I love the combining of genres, like the blending genres, which we couldn't do back in the day. I think it just makes better music and a more unique sound. And I think it brings us back to the days music from the sixties and seventies, but making it much heavier. You know. But that music back then was very much musician based type of music, and you know, I think that's what you're bringing to the table too. It's like it's not just making it loud and fast, it's making it loud fast, but also have musical genius to it and a groove to it and something you can like sink your teeth into.

15:30 Yeah, that's an interesting point. I think there's there's there's two kinds of bands, if you want to like breaking down, there's the attitude bands and there's the musician bands. Right, So it's like that relike is definitely music oriented, you know, where it's less about the looks and the pyrotechnics or whatever and really more about the chops and the overall songwriting, you know. Mm hm exactly. So what can you remember that one point in time where you knew that being a drummer is where you needed to be for like the rest of your life.

16:11 Yeah, that's that's interesting, actually you bring this up. So I started playing in nineteen ninety eight, and I got the drums in sometime in April, and it took me about a month to be able to nail down at a four to four B and I got really frustrated. So I would play for five minutes and throw the sticks off and think, I saw go home, go upstairs, watch some TV, eat a little ice cream, and then I come downstairs play it. Again, you know, and I just kept going back to it. And after about a month of like struggling and hating everything about it, I remember one night I was alone at home, so I you know, I lived in my parents' basement and I had my drums in my room and I was alone at home that one night, and it just kind of locked in and I played for like three hours NonStop.

17:02 And you know, I'm sure what I played it was all that great, but it felt good, and I just kept getting inspired, you know, as if something took to control of me, and it just and then at that moment, I was like, well, this is it like this, this is what I like, you know, and and and and then from then on it was just getting more and more enriching. And then the second key moment, I think it's my first show. Yeah, I played. I had this local band with a couple of high school buddies and we we went to jam blues jam where it was not really a blues jams. All the guys from our town that could play that were in cover bands and blues bands or whatever. They all got together and we got invited and uh, they just we just sit around playing Sabbath and Metallica and whatever all night, just getting fucking slammed, and we uh, we got there and they told us, guys, if you want to play it, I just get it done. And so we went back. We got our ship, reloaded it in my buddy's tiny FOURD escort.

18:11 We got back, we set up on stage. We didn't have a bass player at that point. It was just two guitars and drums and a vocalist. And we played three songs. I think we had like, yeah, we only had three songs at that point. So we played our three songs and I was nervous as I'll get out. I was a pretty introverted kid at that point, and I broke down in the middle of two out of three songs. But the guys in the crowd, they were all older dudes, didn't playing for a while, and they liked it and they were cheering us and everything. And then that feeling, I think, the crowd response, and that that sort of validation, pure validation that came with it.

18:56 It's what drove me. And I was like after that, I was kind of craving it as this place of shows. And then you know, it all went from there. Yeah, you know, you know, what I love about that story is so many musicians, contrary to what people would think, are introverts. But but the thing that's cool is being an introvert, you still thrive on that feedback from the audience. It's like you're in your own zone. You're in your own zone, but at the same time, there's this other zone, the audience that's feeding into you that just you kind of forget. I think you kind of forget that you're even up there with this crowd, you know, and what would normally give you like trauma, the extrovert part, you know, you don't really notice because you get into the zone and you're not really there. It's like an out of body experience.

19:58 Yeah, definitely, there's there's some higher I you know, not to get all like isoltic or anything. There's look something spiritual and there's defly some sort of community that you can you can have this experience with total strangers, and it's all that the music is the vector that you know. Yeah, and and having an audience is the main thing. Like whether you're planning for your cat or you plan for two people or one hundred thousand, it's that it's that connection with the audience at the end of the day. That makes it all make. Sense absolutely, which is why you know, for me, I think we would have gotten We wouldn't be so angry and depressed and everything else that we are right now if we didn't have that two year lockdown of music.

20:51 You know, there's no release and and then these live streams, which were a cool idea and great thing and look good, but not the same has been in the midst of it, And I'd look at bands, I'm like, man, that must be really hard to perform like a normal show and you're not performing for anybody. Oh yeah, I mean, you know there's gonna be the filming crew that's going to be there and whatever. I didn't have that experience. I had a completely different lockdown. I'm in the military, so I was, you know, doing military things. But as far as the post pandemic rebound, though, like, I'm really impressed, and it's been amazing to go back to shows and seeing someone my buddies when they're in touring they come down and seeing how hype and excited and just awesome everybody is and just just happy to be there, you know. I's I feel like there's less of that bullshit, like, oh, I like you, you don't like that, but it's just like everybody's just happy to have a good I am, yeah, well that's like that.

22:04 That's like me during the lockdown, I'm like, I don't care if some fifth grader get some stage where recorder. I'm going to that live show. Yeah, you know it, it doesn't matter what it is. And we're all together, and I think that you're going to take a positive out of the lockdown. I think it kind of created a higher appreciation for live music because people were taking it for granted. Yeah, I think, yeah, picking it for granted and to go, oh, yeah, what's the point. You know, everything is online? What we just had, you know, a couple of years of everything is online? I guess pretty fucking lonely and boring. No, don't say at all. Right, see that human connection has to happen in real time, so like you know, social media and all that stuff. I'm all for it. I mean it's super useful. Uh there's also a lot of junk, right if it counts whatever spanning, But at the end of the day, it's it's about the people behind it, right, So it's it's good to get our together with a crowd and just rub elbles and people and had a good time. Man.

23:08 Yeah, Now would you say too that this new album, it's the song writing part of it and putting it all together. Do you, as musicians feel that you're more creative now after that lockdown and a revived like energy towards that creative process. It's hard to speak for everybody, but my experience during the lockdown, I had a while where I was working from home as well, and I went and got an electric guitar and and then I started teaching myself how to play right. So I went to schools, I know theory, and you know, I learned a few riffs and I've been messing around and so now I started writing my own stuff. So now that I've got a freedom I didn't have before. So there's two parts of that where I learned how to play guitar and bass and you know, it's not amazing, but you know, I'm getting there. And then you know, I'm learning how to produce my own stuff.

24:17 So now I have this kind of like you know, total vehicle for like making albums whenever I feel like it. And so that that's what I spent all my spare time doing producing nice and yeah, yeah, and then you know the drumming aspect. Yeah, I was kind of burned out actually and has nothing to do with the pandemic. Does some shit going on. So I got kind of a burnout in between twenty nineteen and like twenty twenty one or so, and then I start practicing again and the like. So in my case, the passion is totally back and revived again, you know. And I you know, so I'm in the I've just been starting to make more projects. So I think one of the things that happened for me moving on the to the West coast and kind of like getting cut off or anything, is like I took more on more kind of like ah freedom on my own part. I guess to just beat my own creative force, you know. And uh, and then they're they're like current Corporation happened out of the blue, and it's it's been an amazing experience and we're I was saying in another interview, I really feel like I'm part of a band, even though we're all scattered all over the world, because the Camaradbri is there. You know, we we talk every week, you know, we send each other jokes and whatever, and it's just kind of cool.

25:47 So even though I don't have that jam space, you know, three times a week, four times a week kind of like reunion to look up to, like, I still feel like I'm part of it, this band full on and it's it's pretty enriching. So yeah, it's pretty cool, man. Like, like I'm in a good spot in early forties, I got my drum set up at home ready to record at any time. I just turn it on and it just works and something be fortunate that way. Man. So like the road aspect of it, I kind of miss it right now. I have a day job in an office at Lee's pretty good, so I'm not complaining. Like obviously, if I had a chance to go back on.

26:33 Tour and just do that full time, I'll probably take it. But yeah, right now, it's kind of like the longer I wait, the lesson less likely it become. So having the chance to work would have been like they're like and. And my other projects right now they're in the development. It's pretty awesome. So it's definitely like, you know, it almost go on kind of thing, but it's it's it's definite the kind of a progression, you know. Yeah, I think the next the next area the album is gonna be even better because now we know a lot of technical things we didn't know going into it, and the next album is gonna sound like.

27:17 I love it because I gotta tell you too. I watched both video versions of The Escapist, the one I watched one where you do the drum through yeah, and I was like that I like that video because I was like, man, that's a badass drumming. Like I like being able to watch you do the double bass and everything and just you're just so into it, and like, I think everybody has to check it out. And I assume the rest of the album is even just as bad ass. How will Pet? How can people check you out?

27:58 Check darylic out? Uh, check out the new album get it and all the info connect on socials all that good stuff. Yeah. So for the band, we have a band camp, So Derelic Metal at band camp, I think, uh, and uh the album is versus Entropy. Uh. They have their own YouTube channel. I think they're on all streaming platforms as well as Spotify and so on. So as long as you check out the band, I know that there's a couple of their linked related music thing out there, so Derelic metal it's probably a good cumor for search so.

28:43 Is great. Uh streaming, Apple, Spotify, they have the every streaming platform. As far as my own stuff, like YouTube, I think it's the bescause it's got all the links to my other thing expandation whatever. And my YouTube channels called Tommy the Drug Channel, so look me up my name out in the middle of developing that channel. It's it's kind of time consuming to do all that and all the end of thing and all that stuff, so I do my best to keep up and produce new stuff. So I've got another play through I'm preparing right now for uh sorry, Derelict, and it's gonna be the probably the third and last. There's one that came out and versus Entrophy.

29:35 The song I came out on the Sick Drummer dot com as well, so I sent it out to them and the m I reached out to em and I you made a deal. So I sent them the video so it's on there. It's on my channel as well, so let's always check it out. All you gotta do is look around a. Bit, absolutely and They definitely should check out your YouTube channel because you've got a lot of cool stuff on there. It's not just you know, your typical channel, so there's a lot of cool things that if you're if you're just a drummer or love drummers, you know, it's a great resource. In my opinion, I appreciate it. Man, anything else you want to share with the listeners we haven't covered, Yeah.

30:26 Well, well everybody, thank you for taking the time shooting in man, thank you mister pipe Man for health inviting you over. And yeah, check out Derelict and Versus a trophy that's been out for a couple of months. I have other albums too, if you if people that are watching I haven't listened to you like that metal can check out my previous band called The Acury On you have one album come called Come Forth to Me Curi with Micasolvo, and I'll be posting updates on I've got some stuff in the works right now, so I'll try to make it as available as possible, but it's kind of too early right now. But those would be the two I would say, check those.

31:14 Out nice well, thanks for making us great music. And of course Bruce de Cat approves, so everybody listening needs to approve too. If Bruce likes it, you're gonna like it. And thanks for being on the Adventures of Pipemin. Hey take care buddy. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Pipemin on w for CUI Radio.