Update interview with Alexei Rodriguez 11/09
by: Craig Sternberg
SDM: How did the Prong gig come about?
A.R: The building up of Death Pilot, financially, has been a thankless labor. Pretty much, you should never start playing music because you think you’re going to make a bunch of money, because that’s the most ridiculous notion in the world. So when you’re just focusing your energy into a band that’s just starting out, you have to have another way to make money. I had a session gig here and there, but nothing steady. Didn’t have a day job for months. A friend of mine got me in touch with Danzig’s management. They helped me get a drum teching gig with Danzig for three days. That was a joy, not only having grown up on Danzig’s music, but Johnny Kelly as a drummer is one of the mellowest, nicest guys ever. Really easy to work with. Tommy is the current Danzig guitar player, so I met him through there, and he needed some band members to fill out this unexpected tour offer. They weren’t planning on going on tour right now, so all the other regular members are off doing other things. He called me, and it just made sense.
SDM: You’ve been a fan of Prong for quite some time, haven’t you?
A.R: I had the first Prong EP on cassette when I was 15; for those of you who don’t know how old I am, that would be the late ’80s. I ended up naming one of my first bands in high school after a song on that Prong record.
SDM: What’s the latest with Hail the Night?
A.R: Hail the Night has some new geographical challenges ahead of us. When we last talked, I just recorded drum tracks for ten songs, five of them were new and five of them were updates on demo tracks. We really only focused on mixing and tracking the instruments for the five new ones, and we figured we’d get back to the demos and somewhere along the line the files got corrupted. If we wanted it to sound like one session, we’d have to pretty much record it all over again. Rather than doing all five of those songs all over again, we’ll do the best three out of those, and write three brand new songs from scratch. The singer, Thorn, recently got married and moved to Georgia. So there’s definitely separation now; I’m planning on moving back to Seattle, and another member is probably going to move to Texas, and another to Georgia as well. For the three new songs, we’re just going to be bouncing ideas back and forth over the Internet. Thorn is building a recording studio in his new house, so we’re going to be doing the entire recording out there in Atlanta.
SDM: What’s the latest with Death Pilot?
A.R: Death Pilot signed to Virgin Capital. Don’t have a date for the new record, really. Aside from the ten songs we’ve already written, we’re doing another three songs that are in the works right now. They’ve redone all the vocals on the previous tracks. I’m going to go in after I get home from Prong and redo all the drum tracks from scratch.
SDM: Tell us about your involvement with KMFDM.
A.R: That’s another band I grew up on, especially in my high school years. Tommy was commissioned to create a remix for this very danceable, very upbeat KMFDM number, and we basically went into the studio for a day, he did one guitar riff based on the crazy keyboard line the original had, and then created three other riffs to go along with it. We jammed it out organic metal style, and I don’t know what the final result is going to be, but it’s going to be way, way different. It’s an honor to be asked to be doing something like that.
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