Interview with Tornado Rider’s Rushad Eggleston

By: Dr Matt Warnock

The cello has had a long-standing relationship to Western Classical music. It can be found in every orchestra in the world, in many of the top chamber ensembles and as a steadfast member of the classical string quartet. Some of history’s greatest composers have written works for the cello, including the memorable Bach “Cello Suites” that remain a staple of the modern cellist’s repertoire. While the cello has enjoyed a quiet life of seclusion in the classical world, unlike it’s crossover cousins the keyboard, guitar and bass, those days have come to the end with the rise of Indie punk-bluegrass-rock-metal-folk band Tornado Rider.

Fronted by the enigmatic electric-cellist Rushad Eggleston, these three West-Coast rockers are redefining the way people view the cellos role in modern music. After filling his instrument with foam, taping over the F-holes and running it through a Marshall stack in pure metal fashion, the sound Eggleston gets out of his cello has much more in common with Kirk Hammett than with Yo-Yo Ma. With a background in bluegrass and rock, studying at the Berklee College of Music in Boston on a full scholarship, Eggleston riffs and shreds as well as any guitarist on the scene today, though with his own unique, celloesque, sound.

Taking advantage of the cellos unique technical vocabulary, Eggleston uses quarter tones, long shimmering slides, his fingers, bow and even a guitar pick to produce a sound that can be described as purely his own. Though many moments on the bands first album Do You Have Time….? are recognizable as being played on a cello, if listeners weren’t told ahead of time what instrument Eggleston played they could easily mistake it for a distorted guitar being driven through an effects unit and a giant stack of amps.

With their first album recorded, a long list of tour dates booked, including gigs at last summer’s Burning Man and an upcoming U.K. tour, the guys in Tornado Rider are building on their early momentum as they look to take their unique brand of rock to audiences across the globe.

***

Matt Warnock: You draw from a wide variety of influences in your playing, especially on the new album. How would you describe your music to people who haven’t had a chance to check out Tornado Rider before?

Rushad Eggleston: The way I describe our music, on a regular basis to most people that ask that question, is Wildcat Rock. Or I say Wild Animal Rock, or Sneth Rock.

Matt: And what do those terms mean to you?

Rushad: Well, it’s completely futile to try and describe our music with normal terms. So, I like to leave a little room for the imagination, because no one’s heard of Wildcat Rock, or Sneth Rock, so they have to use their imagination. Then I could go into more detail by asking them, do you like victory, do you like falcons, do you like joy, do you like motivation, do you like punk or do you like rock? If you like those things you’ll probably like Tornado Rider.

Matt: There doesn’t seem to be a lot of other people out there playing the electric cello in rock, and with the fervor that you do. Did you have any specific influences when you were coming up, or were you pretty much on your own when looking for your musical inspiration?

Rushad: Being a cellist there were a few people here and there, but not really. I had to really blaze my own trail, for the most part, for what I was trying to do. Before I got into rock I was into folk music and bluegrass and stuff, and for that stuff there really isn’t an example I could follow. So I started to follow fiddle players. The fiddle has a long standing tradition of doing things that have nothing to do with classical music, and fiddle music is just frickin’ rockin’. When you get the guitar strumming, and the bass and drummer rocking, the fiddle just sounds great.

I think there’s a universal artchetype of the lead guitarist that exists in everybody. It existed in Pagannini, and it exists in bluegrass fiddle players who like to go out and take these wild-ass solos. So, I was interested in fiddle players from that perspective. Being a rock musician I also listen to a lot of rock-guitar players. I used to be a guitar player. I still am a guitar player, though I don’t do it publicly so much these days. Between listening to fiddle players, guitarists and my own imagination I’m able to get all these crazy sounds in my head out on the cello.

Matt: You mentioned that you played guitar. When you were studying music at Berklee was it on guitar or the cello?

Rushad: I was definitely studying the cello at Berklee. Before I went there I saw an ad in the paper for a scholarship audition to attend Berklee. At the time I was a cellist and a guitarist and my dad was like, “listen dude, there’s like a million sick guitarists in the world, but not many cello players, so you should audition on cello.” So I did, and sure enough I got a full scholarship to study cello at Berklee.

Matt: Did you study with a guitarist or a cellist during your time at Berklee?

Rushad: There was cello teacher there named Eugene Friesen who’s a pretty cool dude, and an improviser and stuff, but he’s still firmly stuck in the classical world. He would tell me to play closer to the bridge, play with more vibrato, project more and get a bigger sound. I just didn’t want to do that stuff. I wanted to find my own sound on the cello, so I ended up studying with a bluegrass fiddle player named Matt Glaser.

I was way more into bluegrass fiddle back then so it was great studying with Matt. If I could go back it would be great to study with a guitar teacher as well, but Matt made me learn sax solos on the cello, Cannonball Adderley and shit, which was great. A lot of my experience at Berklee was about looking up to fiddle players who were a few years older than me. They were tearing up bluegrass tunes, and doing weird shit with their instruments, so I was in awe of them a bit, and it was cool to try to do what they did, but on the cello.

I remember the first time I was in an ensemble at Berklee and I was trying to show this fiddle player how to play a melody, but she couldn’t get it. It was then that I realized, “man that’s a cello lick.” That the cello has its own vocabulary, that’s separate from what people do on the guitar or the fiddle. That’s a cool thing, figuring out that an instrument has its own unique voice.

Matt: If people didn’t know you played the cello they could easily mistake some of the riffs on the album as being played on the guitar. Besides using a bow, do you also use your fingers, and even a pick, to play the cello?

Rushad: I use a pick on one song, but it’s not on the album. It’s kind of fun because I turn the cello sideways and play it like a guitar, with some slap-ass delay on it. I use my fingers to pluck the cello maybe about three to four percent of the time, a little bit here and there. To me, the whole romance of the cello is the bow. I love using the bow and how expressive it is, and slippery.

On the guitar you can have a whammy bar, and a wah pedel, but all that stuff is already on the cello. Infinite sliding around and micro-tones because we don’t have frets, doing swells with the bow, and wild attacks, using harmonics and false harmonics, there is so much expression available on the instrument, it’s really cool to explore all of those possibilities.

Matt: You were nominated for a Grammy, can you talk about that experience a little bit?

Rushad: Yeah, back when I was in college I got to play with this dude who’s kind of a legendary fiddle player, named Darol Anger. He was putting together a band with two other fiddlers, so it was me and three fiddlers and he called it Fiddlers Four.

We went out and made a record and it was nominated for best traditional folk album, which was pretty tight because I was twenty and still in college and was nominated for a Grammy, whatever that means. I mean you can get nominated for best urinating on an album cover these days. Laughs. But it was cool because I dressed up in this Abe Lincoln getup and we went to the Grammy’s and got to see Eminem and The Roots perform, which was cool.

Matt: Some of your tunes, like “Mountain Jumper,” have a bit of a Primus vibe to therm. Since you’re focusing pretty heavily on developing your own sound, how do you react when tunes like this, or others, get compared to band like Primus?

Rushad: I’m totally cool with it, because my philosophy is that every musician, at any point in time, is standing on the mountain of the past. Then, once they’re gone they become part of the mountain. I wouldn’t be able to do what I do if it weren’t for Les Claypool, but Les wouldn’t have been able to do what he did without Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, know what I mean?

All we can do is just do the best with the time that we grow up in. I’ve listened to a lot of Metallica and Primus, so that influence is there. I’m naturally kind of a weird and wild dude, so I was attracted to that kind of music. I’m never trying to purposely make music that sounds like Primus, but it’s in there and it’s funny to hear when it decides to come out on my music.

Matt: Since you guys are doing this pretty unique thing, with the electric cello, the costumes you wear and your kind of quirky song titles, have you ever had critics blow you off before they even hear you play because of how you look and the instruments you use in the band?

Rushad: I think that happens a little bit with some of the more serious music snobs, but most venues and fans are open to our thing so it happens, but it hasn’t been a big deal or anything. On the other hand, there are tons of people who are totally down with it. They think it’s kind of refreshing compared to what else is out there these days. Like, if you go on Myspace you see so many bands with the combed down black hair, standing in an alley in Brooklyn somewhere looking all depressed.

It’s just crazy how uniform and how serious it all is these days. I mean I’m serious about self expression, being creative and other dimensions and stuff, but I’m not trying to cater to the norm so that people will listen to it. If people don’t like what we do now, hopefully Tornado Rider will grow into this towering tree that they’ll be able to see rising up over the forest.

Matt: You’ve played some big venues recently, including several shows at Burning Man, how do you deal with feedback issues on stage with your cello? Is that a major problem that you have to deal with on a regular basis?

Rushad: Feedback is definitely one of the main problems that comes up when playing cello in a rock and roll band. Our drummer is a loud drummer, and we have the bass up there, then I’m trying to hear my vocals, and the cello has to be loud to begin with so I can tell if I’m in tune or not. Then, I like to use a big old Marshall amp, I love that distorted sound they get, which makes it worse. I mean I could avoid some of the feedback if I played clean, but I don’t like to play clean.

So what we did, me and the drummer went to the hardware store and bought some spray foam and foam pellets and started experimenting with it. Since the cello is a hollow instrument, kind of like a hollow body guitar but way worse, we had to fill it with foam and then tape over the F-holes to stop the feedback. It still happens but it’s way better than it would be without the foam. Though I don’t mind dealing with a little bit of feedback, it’s rock and roll. You get these wild horses screaming in the background, uncontrollable noises of the damned, I’m all for it.

Matt: You’re fresh off your summer tour, with the first album already out in stores, what do you have planned for the coming months as far as moving forward with Tornado Rider?

Rushad: Fans can expect to see more wild and powerfully, motivating shows. There will be new songs about hyenas and other animals, and powerful songs about things that they wouldn’t expect to hear about. We’re also going to be getting out to more parts of the country than we’ve ever been. I think they can just expect more touring from the band and definitely more hard rockin’.

***

Links

Tornado Rider Homepage

Do You Have Time? on Amazon