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Web Exclusive Interview
Kevin Franks
 Kevin
Franks
Drummer
Kevin Frank, singer Walt Lafty, bassist Brian Weaver, and guitarists
Nick Perri and Mark Melchiorre of
Silvertide created quite a buzz in
their hometown of Philadelphia. In fact, the band was so hot, it led to
an all-out label bidding
war that veteran music mogul Clive Davis won. That's hot.
by Billy Amendola
Silvertide's debut EP, American Express, was released on J Records
in 2002. Their full-length debut, Show & Tell,
was released this past September. The band is a mix of bluesy,
raunchy,
ass-kicking '70s-influenced rock grooves that breathe fresh air into
the new resurgence of rock 'n'
roll. MD caught up with this slammin' young rocker just as the band returned home from Japan.
MD:
How did you develop your style of playing left-handed on a right-handed setup?
Kevin:
It' kind of weird - I
write with my right hand, but when I was younger
and I played hockey, more often I played completely left-handed. When
I
played tennis or baseball I did it right-handed. I'm definitely not
ambidextrous, because I can't do everything
equally well both ways, but
for some reason anything musical I do left-handed. I play guitar
left-handed, for instance. Then on
the drums, I play right-footed, with
the kit set up right-handed. But I have my ride on the left, so I'm
playing that
left-handed. I just taught myself how to play that way. It
seemed logical, with the hi-hat on the left, to play a simple
4/4
hi-hat/kick/snare beat with my left hand.
MD: At what age did you start playing?
Kevin: I
started when I was eleven. I just turned twenty.
MD: Did you ever take any formal
lessons?
Kevin:
I'm mainly self-taught, though in high school I was in the school band
and I learned
how to read music. But I never took any private drum
lessons.
MD: Who was the first drummer you
noticed?
Kevin: Actually, when I was around eleven, I was into the band Live.
MD: Chad
Gracey.
Kevin: Yeah. I remember watching Live on MTV Unplugged,
and he was one of the first dudes
that I guess you could say I
idolized. I saw him playing drums and I said, "I want to do that." He's
a good drummer,
though he's not one of my main influences.
MD: Who are your biggest
influences?
Kevin:
Keith Moon and John Bonham. And Buddy Miles is also a huge influence,
because I like
a lot of groove and funk music. Buddy was so back in the
pocket it's unbelievable. He couldn't push it any further
back. And
he'd be playing the same groove over and over, and it never got boring. That Band Of Gypsys
DVD is so unbelievable. It still inspires me. To watch those three guys onstage with all that soul, it's
great.
MD: Talking about DVDs - are you familiar with any of the drum DVDs that are
out?
Kevin:
I wish I could tell you yes because it would probably be more
interesting for an interview.
[laughs] But I'm actually not familiar. I
have seen one - I can't recall his name - the gentleman from Deep Purple.
MD: Ian Paice.
Kevin: Yeah! He's an awesome drummer.
MD: You
should listen to the Deep Purple album Burn. Besides the title track, there's another track with killer drums called
"Lay Down, Stay Down."
Kevin: I will, thanks. I did hear a live record that was great.
MD:
Live In Japan?
Kevin: Yeah. The drums on that are ridiculous.
MD: When you were
growing up, what kind of music did your parents listen to?
Kevin: My parents weren't really the
music-listening kind. They like music, and now that I'm in a rock 'n' roll band they listen to more
music.
But I'm the youngest of five; I have an older brother and three
older sisters. My parents are in their mid to late fifties, so
they
listened to music from the '50s and '60s that they grew up with. I
don't think any of that directly
influenced me.
MD: How did Sivertide get so influenced by the '70s rock
sound?
Kevin:
There's no real explanation. When we got together some of the other
guys' parents
listened to The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, and
that's what they grew up on. When we got together there were like
a
thousand different band influences within the five guys in our
band that we just started playing whatever we could
play. We never said
we wanted to be like this band or try to sound like anyone. I was
influenced by whatever was going on
when I was young and first started
playing.
MD: Like?
Kevin: Whatever was on
the radio
and whatever was going on at the time - Nirvana, Soundgarden,
Green Day - bands like that. My taste developed more after I
met the
other guys in the band, and I just started listening to more of the
music that they listened to. They showed me the
world that I'm into now.
It's
weird, I still don't think we're like Jet, but we get compared to
them
all the time because "rock 'n' roll" is more popular than it was. There
are just so many more bands that have
come out like, "Hey, we're a rock
'n' roll band," you know? We're definitely not trying to do that at
all. If
anyone would ask, "Do you guys want to be the next biggest rock
'n' roll band?" we always say, "No." We just want
to be a really big
band. That would be cool.
MD: Your first single, "Ain't Coming Home," has been getting
substantial radio play.
Kevin: It's been top-10 on active rock, and on heritage rock radio. The video is just
out.
MD: What did you practice growing up? Did you play along to records?
Kevin:
I did,
actually. But when I first started out, it didn't work too well
considering that it all sounded like grenades and explosions
going off
for the first six months or so. [laughs] I had no concept of tempo when
playing along to a song. But eventually that is
pretty much how I did
it. My brother played a little bit of guitar and attempted to sing, so
we always played together. That was
a big influence on me. I would go
home and play whatever was in my mind. It was probably influenced by
what I would hear on
the radio and some records I had back then - Stone
Temple Pilots. I'd play by ear. The whole band did it that
way.
MD: The band has a good live feel. Were the tracks recorded that way?
Kevin:
Yes.
There were some overdubs, but the general feel of the album is
definitely live, which I think is different from the way a lot
of
records are made today, in terms of computers and overproduction. My
drum takes aren't pasted together. I just
played a couple times until I
got the right take. I know I can play it perfectly one out of a few
times, so that's the
approach we took.
MD: Did you record the drums out in an open room?
Kevin:
Yes, in a big
wood room, about 200 feet long by 75 feet wide, and about
35 feet high. It was a studio in Burbank, California called
Ocean
Studios.
MD: How was it working with producer Oliver Leiber?
Kevin:
Oliver is a
great guy. At first we had total resistance to his methods
because we were younger then and inexperienced at recording an
album.
We learned a lot from him in terms of his production skills and having
him look over our shoulder and suggest certain
things. He didn't
suggest too much, but it took us a couple days to adjust to it.
Then we realized that all his
suggestions were amazing. He was coming
from the same background as we were. He's also an amazing drummer.
He
took lessons from Bernard Purdie at one point, and he taught me some of
the feels that Bernard would
do.
MD: Are you familiar with Purdie's playing?
Kevin: Not really - I'm trying to think -
what is the song with the same feel as the Zeppelin song?
MD: "Roseanna"
Kevin: Yeah, with
the hi-hat shuffle.
MD:
That's Jeff Porcaro with Toto. Jeff once said he played a cross between
the
Purdie shuffle and Bonham's "Fool In The Rain," and that's how he
came up with
"Roseanna."
Kevin: Yeah. That's it!
MD: How did you hook up with GMS
drums?
Kevin:
Originally through Dennis Ricci at the Long Island Drum Center. I was
hooked up with the
LIDC through a guitar tech of ours who knew another
guy who told me to give Rob a call. At that point I hadn't played
GMS
drums. But when I played their drums, it was exactly what I was
looking for - with the drum tones that I'm
into, the more
vintage-sounding drums. I've collected vintage drums over the years,
but I needed a kit that would hold up
on the road. And they made me a
custom 16x26 kick that sounds so big, I love it.
MD: Is that the kit
you used on the record?
Kevin:
No it isn't, because I got hooked up with them after the record
was
already recorded. I picked out sizes, a color, and a finish, and they
had the drums at my house the day we had to leave
for the Van Halen
tour. They were all in pieces and didn't have heads or anything on
them. I put them in a big box and
threw them on a trailer and got to
the first gig and put them all together. And I was blown away.
MD: Any
favorite songs to play live?
Kevin: One is a song called "Show & Tell," which actually isn't on the
record, even though the record is titled Show & Tell.
The song didn't come out quite the way we wanted
it to. It didn't have
a live enough feel, and we just couldn't capture the vibe and energy on
tape. We knew if we
waited, we'd be able to play the song ten times
better. So we play it live now and it kicks.
MD: How long
has the band been together?
Kevin: This January it will be four years.
MD: How did you
meet?
Kevin:
Nick, our lead guitar player, and I went to the same high school. The
band started in our junior
year, when we were sixteen. The other three
guys went to a high school five minutes away. Mark and Walt were
playing
together at coffee shops and doing more acoustic gigs, and Nick
and I were doing sort of an open-mic' deal, and we
crossed paths. From
the first rehearsal we had three new songs. Then we got our bass
player, Brian, who is Mark's
neighbor.
MD: I noticed you're all involved with the songwriting.
Kevin: We all play guitar,
and we all have ideas in our heads. Walt writes ninety percent of the lyrics.
MD: How long have you been playing
guitar?
Kevin:
About seven years. But I haven't really been playing guitar much
lately. I've been
focusing on the drums and percussion much more. I
used to write more for the band, and play more too. "Mary Jane,"
"Show
& Tell," "See Where I Hide," and "You Want It All" are riffs that I
came up with.
MD: Playing
guitar gives you more of an understanding of melody.
Kevin:
Definitely. And when I'm trying to show the
band an idea, I can just
lay down a quick guitar part and say, I want it to be something like
this.
MD:
You're playing live so much now, which is the greatest practice in the world. Do you sit down and practice as
well?
Kevin:
I warm up right before every show, with doubles and stuff like that,
just to get my hands loose.
Like you said, we play every day on tour,
and that's definitely enough for me. And we're based
around
improvisation. Every night is a little bit different, so I can try
different stuff every night and experiment.
MD: We talked about some of the drummers influencing you growing up, are there any drummers that
you're into now?
Kevin: Let me think - I'm really bad at names, but that first King Crimson record, In
The Court Of The Crimson King - the
drummer [Michael Giles] is definitely awesome. It's so precise. If
you
haven't listened to that record, check it out. It's definitely out
there - very time signature - oriented and
progressive. And it's really
unique the way the other band members go along with what he plays. It's
very complex,
but cool. Another band is Bad Company. Who is that
drummer?
MD: Simon Kirke.
Kevin:
Another good drummer. And who's the drummer of the Jeff Beck group?
MD: Which
version?
Kevin: The one with "Ice Cream Cakes"
MD: Cozy Powell.
Kevin: How
about Humble Pie?
MD: Jerry Shirley.
Kevin:
Great! I just started listening to them, I never
even heard of them
until people started saying that we sounded a little like them. That's
the reason I just started
listening to The Black Crowes, because people
say we remind them of them.
MD: How was it opening for
Aerosmith in your hometown of Philly?
Kevin:
That was great! That was one of the first things that started the
bidding
war. That was right before my senior year in high school - the
summer before I went back to school. That one show started this
huge
buzz in Philadelphia, and from then on, all the pubs started being
packed and teachers in school were letting us slide a
little more.
[laughs] But I was always a straight-A student until I graduated.
MD: Were you guys into
Aerosmith?
Kevin: Oh yeah, definitely - older Aerosmith, not the Pro Tools stuff. But Toys In The Attic is a
good record. Joey Kramer on that record is amazing. That's a classic.
MD: Where would you like to see
yourself musically in five years?
Kevin:
Well, since we're big in Japan right now, how about we headline
the
Tokyo Dome. [laughs] This band's long-time goal is, it doesn't matter
how many records we sell, it's more
important to us that we're still a
band and we're not just writing a record to have hit singles. We want
to be friends
and be playing together for life, because we enjoy our
musical talent when we put it together. We do hope that success
comes.
But if you don't place unrealistic goals on yourself, but instead say,
I just want to do the best I can and always
try to do better, then
you'll never be let down.
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