Thank you for life, and all the little ups and downs that make it worth living.
Travis Barker
We were concerned with having good songs, not just songs that go two hundred miles per hour.
I want to keep pushing the limits for drummers and expressing myself.
I wanted to say thanks... and share my gratitude for everything I've been blessed with. Family, friends, and continued support from everyone.
Then I tried out for the Fontana High School drum line, in Riverside, and I did really well. I got second chair, and played snare in that drum line for three years.
Bill Stevenson of The Descendants is really good, too.
Playing my drums is therapy.
I don't like traveling, period. I like being at places and I like going places, but I don't like forms of transportation.
We all write the music, and then Mark and Tom write the lyrics.
I have my kids every Friday through Monday, and I don't leave them the whole time I have them.
I like Steve Gadd, everything he did with Steely Dan. There's so many. I like everything.
A lot of people think that punk rock musicians don't know what they're doing.
I was playing with the Aquabats, and then I quit to join a band called Suicide Machine in Detroit.
I've been vegan since I got out of the hospital... It's another eye opener. It changed my life in a number of ways.
We all liked the Descendants and stuff like that, so we started playing it. It's not that it was really hard, well, it does take skill to play fast and keep up your stamina. But it was something that just happened.
My mom died when I was 16. I had a rough childhood, you know what I mean, but it made me strong.
I try to do an hour of cardio on the days that I have off, and then I'll do 30 to 45 minutes on show days. That's the first thing I do when I wake up, I have breakfast and then I'll hit the gym.
We never worry about the big things, just the small things.
I think putting your relationship out there for people to interpret and have their own opinion about, I think it's crazy.
I practice every day, I warm up before I play.
I've always liked Dennis Chambers, he's real flashy.
I looked Death right in the face.
I was a kid, and I wasn't even sure if I wanted to play the drums, you know? All I wanted to do was skateboard, but I was still learning and taking it in, so it was good.
I used to have friends come on tour and work as my drum tech, but they get bummed out when I have to tell them what to do. This time I'm just going to fly them out and let them hang. It's all good.
I was told once if I kept breaking things on my legs, that I wasn't going to be able to walk soon, you know? I wanted to be a pro skateboarder, but it was too hard. I was trying, but it wasn't going to happen.
My mom passed away a day before high school started, and her dream was for me to be a full rock and roll guy, and play drums in a band.
I'm a freak, everything has to be totally flat when I play. Ed Will, my jazz teacher, set up everything completely flat, and then you'd tilt your snare drum away from you, so I do that too. So my snare tilts away from me.
I run every day now. I never ran before.
We just wanted to write a bunch of songs that we thought were good songs.
My chops are still up, even though I'm not still in high school.
In the hospital, I promised myself that I ever walked again, that I would eat well and swim every day.
Usually, if I'm coming to Europe, I'm on a boat for seven days, so I spend the seven days doing a bunch of things. I'll do cardio for an hour or an hour-and-a-half and weights, just light weights.
Once in a while, I'll slip and get off my vegan diet and have egg whites in the morning, that's a good source of protein while I'm out on the road. If I can feel my body starting to tire, those are good to keep you healthy.
Oh, I was super serious about practicing and rudiments, and still am. I still have all my books.
I juice a lot; I get as much protein as I can, because being a vegan, there isn't much protein. But that's pretty much it. I just drink lots of water, too. I'll have a protein shake as well every morning.
I need protein from food rather than just protein supplements. I changed my diet.
On tour, you never have a home, you don't get used to anything, and you're always super busy.
But really, anytime, I play on a practice pad as much as I can.
It's something I want to overcome. And my kids are scared to death to fly. I want them to witness me overcome it.
We just wrote songs that seemed good to us. We wrote the album in like two weeks. We could have had more time, but we accomplished what we needed to in the two weeks.
My mom listened to the Beatles and Elvis, a lot of different types of music.
In junior high, I sang in madrigals, men's' and women's' choir. I played piano too, but then I got out of it.
In 1996, I was in was in an acoustic kind of rock band, we were called Feeble. We were just playing locally.
I'm super serious about that stuff. I mean, it's rare that I sit down at a drum set when I'm not touring, because we tour so much.
I was in a band called Hooker for a while.
I play Orange County drums. I love those guys. I've got a four piece kit.
I listened a little to punk when I was younger, but it was straight edge punk. It was nothing like what is going on now, like poppy punk.
I learned the songs and played the gigs, and then they called me about a month later. They told me they were like super stoked on me and asked me to join their band.
I can play punk rock, and I love playing punk rock, but I was into every other style of music before I played punk rock.
But there's actually a lot of punk bands out there that go out of the norm, use odd time signatures, or a lot of different tempo changes in a song.
