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Appice Perdomo Project Talks Music, Drums, Guitars, and Recording

V13 caught up with Appice Perdomo Project to discuss their single “Drum City,” how they got started in music, and their current project.

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Appice Perdomo Project, photo courtesy of Appice Perdomo Project
Appice Perdomo Project, photo courtesy of Appice Perdomo Project

Appice Perdomo Project, made up of legendary drummer Carmine Appice and guitarist Fernando Perdomo, recently released the music video “Drum City,” a track from their album Running Up That Hill.

Known for his work with Vanilla Fudge, Cactus, the power trio Beck, Bogert & Appice, Rod Stewart, King Kobra, and Blue Murder, Carmine Appice has done it all and continues to do even more. He’s unstoppable.

Fernando Perdomo has recorded with Rebecca Pidgeon, John Wetton, Todd Rundgren, and Jorge Moreno. Perdomo was the star of the band in Echo in the Canyon, the celebrated movie about the development of the California Sound, and in it, he demonstrated his flexibility and his daring.

V13 caught up with Appice Perdomo Project to discuss “Drum City,” how they got started in music, and their current project.

What inspired your latest single/music video, “Drum City?”

Carmine Appice: “Well, I happened to send a drum track to Fernando, which sometimes we do and then he writes some music to it. So, once I sent him the drum track, I had some tom toms going and when he wrote it and put it together, then he would send it back to me and then I would fix some stuff and send it back to him. Then, you know, we came up with this cool drum track and, because it was very drum-oriented, I said, ‘Well, what should I call it?’ So, I had this artwork that I did, and one of the drawings was called ‘Drum City.’ My friend Ed Heck is an artist, and he draws stuff that looks like kiddie art. So, he said to me, ‘Do you know how to draw anything?’ I said, ‘Well, not really. I could draw some drums.’

“So, the first one we did was a thing called ‘Drumhead.’ It was a floor tom-tom with a caricature of my face in it with the mustache and the sunglasses. They said, ‘What else can you do?’ I said, ‘Maybe I’ll draw a city out of drums.’ So, I drew the city out of drums and then I gave it to him and he finished the artwork and had all these beautiful colours in it. So, I said, ‘Let’s call it Drum City.’

“Then when we came up with the song and not even thinking about the cool video we could do with it, we called it ‘Drum City.’ And after that, we did the first video, which was ‘Running Up That Hill,’ which was from the Kate Bush version in Stranger Things which was kind of a horror thriller series.

“So, we did the first video like that in the Stranger Things vibe. Then the second video is going to be ‘Drum City.’ So, I said, ‘Why don’t we take my artwork?’ You know, because we could do everything with a green screen and use that as a backdrop for ‘Drum City,’ the ‘Drum City’ artwork and the ‘Drum City’ song. So, everyone loved that idea and then when we videoed it, we did the green screen in my garage here with Fernando.

“Then I gave it to my editor, and he said, ‘Look, for a little more money I could animate the little cars, people going over the cars, the water, everything will look real cool.’ I said, ‘Well, let’s do it.’ So, we did it. I paid for that video, and I just wanted to make it really great, you know, and well actually, we all chipped in for that video. I paid for you guys and then basically, it came out fantastic. Everyone I show it to, they say, ‘Man, I love the colours. I love the vibe of it!’ The song is called ‘Drum City’ and it’s a real cool take.”

Fernando Perdomo: “Carmine inspired this one with his spirited drum track and his art collaboration with Ed Heck. The visual of the video is very fun and campy! It really matched the music great.”

Appice Perdomo Project ‘Running Up That Hill’ album artwork

Appice Perdomo Project ‘Running Up That Hill’ album artwork

Why did you choose to cover a classic like Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill?”

Appice: “I was a Stranger Things fan. In watching it I heard that song which I never heard before. Then I ended up with a copy of Billboard Magazine and saw it was #5 on the charts. I thought it may be cool for us to make a cool guitar and drum-heavy instrumental version and make it very different. Kind of like what Vanilla Fudge did to ‘You Keep Me Hangin On.’”

Perdomo: “Carmine was introduced to the song by Stranger Things. I have been a Kate Bush fan since I was nine years old. It is truly my honour to cover her music. She is one of my biggest influences.”

Where and when did you two first connect?

Appice: “Well, when I first moved here, I had a studio in my guest house. My brother built a studio and he’s a computer geek. My brother Vinny plays drums, and he built it and he showed me how to use it, but I never really used it. So, when I got a call from Tom Dowd, the famous producer, his daughter, she said, ‘I got this guy that Tom was going to work with before he passed away. He’s a great talented kid and he wants you to play on something of his.’ I thought to myself, ‘Well, this might be cool, I could learn how to use my studio, maybe.’ So, I talked to him on the phone and he sounded promising. He played guitar, bass, keyboard, and drums. I said, ‘Wow, a multitask guy! That’s great!’

“So, I gave him one of the tracks that I wrote on my iPad, and he transferred it to his studio, and he played the bass, guitar, and keyboard, and sent it back to me to put drums on it and it was great. I said, ‘Wow, this is really good!’ So, I played the drums, I sent it back to him, and then he fixed up things to go on my drums. Then I sent him another one off the first album and he did the same thing. So, I said, ‘Wow, this is cool. Why don’t you send me something?’ So, he sent me something, this is all back and forth on the internet, you know, and I played his thing. It was called ‘Little Havanna’ because he’s from Cuba.

“So, I sent him a drum track back after that. I said, ‘Why don’t you play something to this? And it could be a name of something else.’ So, he did, and it was a killer. That’s the first time I ever sent him a drum track. So, on the first album, we started doing that. And so, he sent me stuff back and I’d send him drum tracks and he’d send me tracks that he did, sometimes I’d send him a track that I was working on. It was half-finished and he had finished it. So, it was a great collaboration. So that’s how it basically started. So, when we finished the first album, it came out, we had no real push for the first album, but it got rave reviews everywhere.

“So, when we did this one, we wanted to make sure that this one got some PR because I’m shooting to try and get at least a Grammy nomination for instrumental rock, because it’s a small category, you know, and this is a good one. You listen to it and you go, ‘I like that melody.’ You know, and it stays in your head. So that’s how it all happened.”

Perdomo: “We were introduced by Dana Dowd, daughter of Tom Dowd, who produced The Rod Stewart albums Carmine is on. I go back decades with Dana because her dad came to my high school often to mentor us.”

How did you get started in music?

Appice: “Very easy. My cousin was a drummer, and he was older than me. Every time I went to his house, I jumped on the drums, started banging them, and went home… pots and pans. So, my parents said, ‘Maybe he likes this stuff.’ They bought me a toy drum set when I was nine years old. I used to get them and break them. So that happened for a couple of years.

“Then they bought me a real drum set at Sam Ash, the very first Sam Ash music store. It was 55 dollars because my birthday is in December with Christmas. I got two gifts in one, it was 55 bucks, a bass drum, a snare drum, a pedal, and a cymbal. And I set it up in the cellar, not even a basement. It’s a cellar in Brooklyn. And I used to go down there and practice. I had a little Victrola. I listened to Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich.

“And my first album was Krupa and Rich, Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. People, when they do interviews, they go, what was your first album? And expect me to say The Beatles. You know, I didn’t even like The Beatles when they came out, but mine was Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich, and then Dave Brubeck, then Cozy Cole, and Team Beat. Those are the records I listened to. And I emulated them on my drum set. And then I had a band, I got a better drum set after a couple of years. I chipped in because I started with that little drum set. I did a few little gigs and I saved up a hundred bucks and my parents put the rest in for Christmas and my birthday.

“I got a really nice drum set. It was a Gretsch red sparkle kit with a bass drum, snare drum, one tom-tom and one cymbal. And then with that, I started out doing gigs and everything and I had another tom and blah, blah, blah. So, by the time I was 17, I made enough money to put a down payment on a brand new ’64 Chevy Super Sport 327, four-speed, all that. And that was a hot rod, you know? And then it just went from there. You know, in my family, there are seven drummers on my father’s side. All on my father’s side. My cousin Joey was on my father’s side, too.”

Perdomo: “My mom was a classically trained pianist in Cuba. I always had music playing in the house. MTV and The Beatles were my biggest early influences. I also loved the Vanilla Fudge albums I got when I was 8.”

What kind of drums and cymbals are you playing, Carmine?

Appice: “Now I play ddrum, which is a company out of Florida. They make also Dean guitars, and the cymbals are Sabian cymbals. I have a couple of signature cymbals that I did with them. I use those. And I have DW pedals, I have some DW hardware and Evans drumheads, and Vic Firth Carmine Appice model sticks. And I’ve been using them for a long time. All of that stuff.”

Fernando, which amps, guitars, and pedals are you currently using?

Perdomo: “Electrophonic, Shabat, Fender, Yamaha, and Sparxx guitars, Magnatone amps, Valetone, and Visual Sound (Truetone) pedals.”

Are there any special recording techniques you use in the studio?

Appice: “Well, my technique in the studio is based on the great Andy Johns. He’s an engineer who recorded Led Zeppelin. I worked with him with Rod Stewart and a few other side projects when he was doing Eddie Money, the very first album. I used to go watch him and I played on Eddie’s third album. So, I learned a lot from Andy on microphone placement. We had to place the mics to make it sound really good, rich, and peak.

“So, I use his technique and, you know, fooling around with compression. And now that I’m my own engineer, which I thought was really wild on the first Appice Perdomo album. It was engineered by me, the drum sound. I thought that was funny because, you know, I never got a credit for engineering before. I got production credits, but never engineering.

“So, this time, you know, I really spend the time and screw around with it, change drums. I have different snare drums and, you know, I mess around with different sounds and different things. But I leave the mics and everything the same. Those drums never leave the room. I’m using these 1971 Ludwig cactus bass drums that are a little oversized. They’re 24×15, normal drums are 24×14. But when I started experimenting with different size drums Ledr came up with, you know, more lengths in the drums. And that’s what a lot of drum companies are doing today. So, we pioneered a lot of stuff, but I’m using ddrum tom-toms, and I got an old 20-year-old Radio King snare drum slinging, so little different combinations of drums.

“They never leave the room. The A/C stays the same, the humidity stays the same, and the mics are the same. So, I could record something today and two weeks later go in there and recut that. Like, if I like a drum fill, I could punch in the drum fill, and it will sound just the same. Where before, when I didn’t have the studio, I had to come in with my roadie, set up the drums, get sounds for two hours, then play the song, play two or three days of that.

“And then finally if wanted to change something and I went home, I’d have to go back and do everything over; but I have to do the whole track because things change when you reset it up. So, this is such a great setup, I love it. I walk through my garage into the studio, I’m ready to go.”

Perdomo: “We collaborate via email. There are three ways we write: I send Carmine a demo, he sends me a demo, or he will send me a drum track to track to.”

What is your definition of tone? And has your tone changed over time?

Appice: “Tone? On drums, it’s not about tone, it’s about feel and the way you hit drums. So, I don’t know what that would be.”

Perdomo: “Real amps putting out air. I love the sound of real everything: no programming, no MIDI, no fake sounds.”

How do you keep your sound consistent on stage?

Appice: “I try to keep the Egbert level up and try and project groove, feel, and showmanship. I use the same drumheads and drum configuration for what I’m known for – cymbals, size of drums, etc.”

What inspires your writing? Do you draw inspiration from poems, music, or other media?

Appice: “Well, I don’t know, different things. You know, like I wrote some Christian songs. I’m going to a church here, which I like. I listened to a Christian label, Christian radio. And then I would write down things that the pastor would say. And I don’t know, I would just write things on my iPad where I’d play enough guitar, bass, keyboard, and finger drums to write demos, you know, and then I would transfer them to regular studio. It depends on what I’m doing.

“You know, when I wrote with Rick Derringer, it was more of a party album. So, I wrote a song called ‘Everybody’s Coming,’ and I just wrote party lyrics to it. The very first song I wrote was ‘Faceless People’ with Vanilla Fudge. The inspiration for that was we travel so much, we’re going into these towns, we meet all these people. After a while, everybody becomes like a faceless person. You know, you don’t remember who they are, you don’t remember their names. And the whole thing is faceless.

“So, you know, it depends on what the situation is. Most of the time, if I’m in a band like King Cobra, we just did an album with King Cobra, and it’s coming out. I helped write the music and I let the singer Paul Chitina write the lyrics and he was a great lyricist. Sometimes when I listened to what he was writing, I would change a few lines to make it a little more coherent.

“But like all the big ones I wrote with Rod, he wrote all the lyrics. He was a great lyricist, but I learned a lot about songwriting from him, so that’s how I do it. And lately, I’ve been just writing music songs and I’m going to play on Michael Shanker’s next album, so I won’t be writing lyrics on that. I’ll just be writing the drum parts. Produced in my realistic rock studio, engineered by me.”

Perdomo: “My record collection made me who I am. My influences are all over the place, from Todd Rundgren to The Cardigans, to Blood Sweat and Tears, to Gino Vannelli, and modern bands like The Lemon Twigs, Parcels, and Silvertwin.”

What is your definition of success?

Appice: “Well, I think success would be something that you love doing and you can make a living at. You know, that’s success. Then you have alternate success where you can make a lot of money. I’ve been blessed. I’ve had a 50, 60-year – what is it? 57. So 57 to 58-year career where I made a lot of money, I blew a lot of money in divorces and everything.

“But, you know, I have a great life. I live in a great house in a great area. I have a studio, I have cars, I have a great wife, I have a dog, and I got my kids who are successful in LA. So, I consider myself a very lucky man, blessed and successful. I created things, I wrote a drum book, and I have an autobiography. All these things that I thought about in my head to do, I did.

“Now I’m doing storytelling gigs where I go up and I made a show out of it where I tell stories of my career and I don’t just tell them, I let the audience pick the stories. It’s called the ‘Carmine Appice Diaries.’ I have a big intro. I come out, I play drums. Then I get everybody singing the lines for ‘Do Your Thing,’ ‘I’m Sexy,’ ‘Hot Legs,’ and ‘Keep Hanging On.’

“And then I tell some stories and I talk about that silly thing that was going on with me and Motley Crue, which gave me a lot of press. It brought me in front of a whole new audience today. So, I love doing that. And I do gigs with my brother. I do gigs with Cactus. I do Vanilla Fudge gigs. So, I’m playing with almost everything that I’ve done in my career.

“I’m working on my ‘Rod Experience Show’ which is doing the songs from 1979 when I was with Rod, a very high-energy show with a guy that looks and sounds like Rod. I did this 15 years ago, but it wasn’t in then. Now it’s in, now you can go see Rod or any of the name bands and it’s so expensive to go that a lot of people don’t want to go. Your ticket’s 800 bucks a ticket, but you can go see a Rod Experience, Led Zeppelin Experience, or a Fleetwood Mac for 75 bucks, you know?

“And you get the same kind of thing. Even better because the new shows are new. You know, like Rod’s show is all video, he got three chicks in it, and there’s no monitors on stage, no amplifiers, got a chick that plays harp and the horn section.

“You know, when I played with Rod, it was just a five-piece band, and we kicked ass. He wanted to be like the Rolling Stones and that’s what we are, you know. But now he is getting older and he’s a great performer still, but it’s a whole different thing now. But I liked the old show we did, I like the kick-ass rock and roll show because that’s what I still do. All the bands I play with, we kick ass, so success is being able to do what you want to do and being able to make money at it.”

Perdomo: “When fans tell me my music helped them in any way.”

Which artists, in your opinion, are killing it right now?

Appice: “I don’t know many artists, but let’s face it, the one killing it most is Taylor Swift. I found a new artist by accident, Royale Lynn, with a new song for me called ‘Six Feet Deep.’ It’s a mixture of metal, rap, and groove. She sings her butt off.”

Perdomo: “The Lemon Twigs, Vulfpeck, and Parcels – they’re all amazing bands headlining tours playing real music and playing their instruments incredibly well.”

What can your fans look forward to over the next six months? Music videos? Live gigs?

Appice: “Part of the thing is to make Appice Perdomo successful to a point where maybe we get recognized for a nomination for a rock instrumental Grammy. If we get a nomination, I’ll be a happy guy because I never got one in my life, you know? So, we’re working towards that. I’m always promoting it when I do other things. And like next week we go out, I do two Diary shows and I do three Vanilla Fudge shows. In July, Vanilla Fudge is getting inducted into the RockGodz Hall of Fame. I’m already in there individually, and then we go do two more gigs with Vanilla Fudge.

“The week after that, I play with my brother one night and then we do a big gig with Vanilla Fudge. All through this, I’m rehearsing with my Rod Experience to get that really good. September 7th, we’re playing the first gig in front of an audience in South Florida just to get the band in front of an audience. Then we do Vegas and I bring out all the production. We’re going to have a white stage and we have some lights and effects for the show. I try to make a big show out of everything, not just go play. Rod told me that. He said, ‘If you’re gonna do something, make an event out of it.’ That’s why we’re releasing this album and trying to make an event out of this album.

“The first single was ‘Running Up That Hill.’ Unfortunately, the label released it too early, and they released it on March 26th instead of May 26th by accident. So, we never really got the mileage out of the first single but now we are getting some mileage out of it. But that was supposed to be the first single and ‘Drum City’ was supposed to be the second single a month later like you normally do. So now we’re kind of working both of those singles. We recorded it and called it ‘Running Up That Hill.’ I thought that the title of it would get us some traction because it wasn’t the name of our song, but this is like Vanilla Fudge did it. We took something and made it different.

“So, basically that, and there’s a surprise Beck, Bogert, and Appice thing coming out in September since it’s the 50th anniversary of that band. And next year we have a Cactus Influences and Friends, which I’m producing, and I did the drums again at my studio. It’s got these 25 different artists playing the original Cactus songs and the title is Influencers and Friends. Joe Bonamassa, Ted Nugent, Dee Snider, Warren Haynes, Billy Sheehan, Tony Franklin, Rudy Sarzo, Doug Aldrich, Mick Mars, the guys from King’s X, you know, there are 25 different artists on there.

“Even the guy who replaced the singer in Judas Priest, Ripper Owens, he’s on it. There are just a lot of great things. So, we’re going to release that next year because I’ve got too much coming out this year. I don’t want to be fighting with myself, you know?

“It’s not work, it’s my hobby. How many times do people play golf? Every week they play golf. Nico McBrain from Iron Maiden, whenever he is not playing, he’s golfing! So, whenever I’m not cleaning the house or driving a car, I’m working, even if I don’t have anything working, I experiment. I got a kid across the street that he actually did all of the video for ‘Drum City.’ He’s a great talented kid and he does rap and he never worked with drums. So, he’s got a bunch of rap songs that I’m putting drums on just for fun to pioneer and see what happens, you know? I’m having fun with it.

“We’re playing down at the Levoy Theater in Millville, New Jersey, and the Newton Theater in New Jersey with the Rod Experience.”

Perdomo: “I want to play with Carmine forever and make many more records. I love him and it is a dream come true to even know him, let alone make music with him.”

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