Adamo Drive

Interview with VBlazin Magazine, April 2008

By Andrew C. Zinn

I am back to Rockin' dirty bars with Adamo Drive. Adamo Drive from Greensboro North Carolina is a back to basics rock band. They jam, have fun, and you can hear it in the music. Adamo Drive's music seems to have no rules and ultimately, no boundaries. They borrow from all types of rock and roll, past and present. No listener will be disappointed with their mix of everything barroom. They have both male and female vocals. That is what I found to be Adamo's greatest appeal. They have a sort of chameleon like effect with their mix of singing styles and a very riff oriented style of playing. They are a very hard band to put into a box. I will just have to let you hear for yourself. I am eager to for readers to absorb this article and more eager for them to check out the band. Cheers to Adamo Drive for this excellent interview.

(VB) How did you come up with the name Adamo Drive?

Drea-It was a road where our founding songs were written.
Tim- It's the only road we could remember the name of in Tampa, Florida.
Drea-It had a nice ring
Tim-Yeah it had a magic ring… Ryan and I were driving around town one night…I can't remember what we were doing, but I remember seeing the sign Adamo Drive. I said that's pretty cool, Ryan, what do you think? He said, "That's pretty cool."
Ryan-I remember that too.
Drea-You guys just had to get me to settle on it. The only way I really thought it was cool was when I imagined it in writing.

(VB) Describe your music.

Tim- Our music is spaghetti splash shaved wetness, reverb surf rock
Drea-our music's a lot of fun. Professional, but not serious.
Tim-Seriously professional.
Drea-NO!
Ryan-Professionally unserious.
Tim- Yes! Professionally unserious.

(VB) How long has the band been together?

Tim- We have been in this formation since 2002.
Ryan- 6 years
Drea- We originally began as a five piece…as of 2005 we graduated as a 3 piece power pyramid!

(VB) How do you come up with new songs and who writes what parts?

Tim-there's 4 ways we come up with a song. Either Drea starts it and we run with it; I start it and we run with it; Ryan starts it and we run with it, or we write it together.

(VB) How did all the members of the band get together?

Tim-Ryan is my childhood friend
Drea-We all knew each other from high school
Tim-Drea and I have been dating for 10 years
Drea- We've always wanted to play in a band but didn't get together til after college.
Tim-Ryan always knew he wanted to be in a band since preschool…
Ryan-I started playing my friend's prosthetic leg during nap time…and I had a battery-powered Michael Jackson microphone that transmitted through radio.
Tim-I had hot sticks and hot licks. And Drea was forced into drums by her mother
Drea-Yeah, I was pretty much told that I was playing drums in elementary school. However, Tim always wanted to play drums, but his parents bought him a guitar instead, so it all works out—
Tim-I wanted to play drums, but I couldn't be a drummer because if was a drummer then Drea and I wouldn't have gotten along
Drea-Probably not…

(VB) Tell me about your hometown.

Tim-Well. We have two hometowns. I [we] grew up around Hershey, PA ate a lot of chocolate, it was a fun time and I swam in the chocolate river and ate a lot of candy and became obese as a child and was put into a fat camp program when you used to be able to call it "fat" camp and that's where I met Julius (our 15 pound orange tabby cat)
Ryan-And that's where you got the nickname "Chocolate Thunder."
Drea-Basically, we come from a small town, where there's nothing to do unless you drive 45 minutes until you reach Harrisburg. There's a lot of farmers, a lot of Mennonites, a lot of Amish, a lot of chicken factories, farms, and the cow manure stench is pretty…
Tim-I think our music was inspired by the rolling hills we had to drive through for years and years
Ryan-And God said, "Let there be ROCK!"
Drea-Rolling hills and winding roads…being enveloped in winding roads and sweltering heat and vegetation tumbling from the--
Tim-and the horse shit smell, tripping us out, making us almost want to puke…holding our breaths for long periods of time.
Ryan-Yep. We had to smell inside-out chickens.

(VB) Is your music well received where you live?

Tim-We don't know…we haven't played there for over 5 years.
Ryan-When people listen to our music, they love it and they tell us, "You are the best band I ever even heard," but the problem is, no one ever listens to it except for two people.
Tim-This is true. We have the curse of the shaft, I believe. We're learning that being Mr. Niceguys is getting us dicked over most of the time. So we're really trying to become assholes, but it's really kind of hard when you're surrounded by bigger assholes. So we're trying to become dicks…because dicks are very well received by assholes.

(VB) Tell me about your record label.

Tim-We have no label and it's not that we don't want to have a label because indie labels are cool for the simple sake of distribution, but it seems that the label going away. We do have high quality recordings
Ryan-And maybe we'll be on a label soon.

(VB) How many albums have you recorded and tell me about them?

Tim- Adamo Drive has three albums. The first album is called "Adamo Drive" and it's a rarity to find.
Ryan-If our first album were a dessert, it would be kind of like a dump cake because it has a bunch of different stuff all thrown together.
Drea-Our second album would be a strawberry shortcake because is has the foundation of a nice, flaky biscuit, covered with a delectable topping..
Tim-Our third and upcoming album would be like an old gourmet cheesecake that your grandma left in the freezer from 1972…with no preservatives and it's more like a piece of artwork. No, it's actually like a 7 layer because there's multiple layers in it and they're all really good.

(VB) Do you prefer your studio work or live performances?

Drea-I'd say they're incomparable.
Tim-Yes, they're incomparable. We realize that we can't capture a live performance in a studio and visa versa.
Ryan-Live performances are about interacting with the crowd at a live event and it's an experience and a recording is more like…a dessert.
Tim-In a recording, we have to paint a picture and we have a freedom… It's hard to capture the true energy that we have on stage, so what we do is, take a brain explosion and put it on a blank canvas.

(VB) I noticed allot of Fender products on stage. How does that fit into your overall sound?

Tim-Well, I love the sound of a Stratocaster with a trem bar, single coil pickups and Fender reverb is the reverb of reverbs and I like reverb. It's pretty rock n' roll product. Every make has its genre.
Ryan-I like the sound, the look and the quality I know I'm getting when I see a Fender name
Drea-Wow, that's going to look really good on Fender
Ryan-They're going to sponsor us after this.

(VB) What are your plans for the near and distant future?

Ryan-Our plans are to be able to eat every day and in the distant future we plan to be driving through the rolling hills where we grew up in—not really.
Tim-I think our future is like rock n' roll itself. Ever-changing.
Drea-Our future kind of relies on what happens with the music industry. If there is a rock n' roll revolution, that will be our time to shine. If not, we'll still keep striving to get as far as we can.

(VB) What do you hope to achieve with your music?

Ryan-Acknowledgement that we existed in the world
Tim-Yeah, recognition in our own right. Recognition of "being," of "thinking."
Drea-A little spot in history
Tim-To make a movie soundtrack.

(VB) Tell me a funny story about something that has happened while ya'll have been together?

Ryan- We got a telegraph from a small village in Mexico to play a show with a band called El Guapo...Well it turns out El Guapo isn't a band, he's a bandito who keeps trying to kill us...maybe you had to be there.

(VB) Thank you from VBlazin Magazine.

Thank YOU! - VBlazin Magazine