DRIVE: At the Top of the Rock
By: jAcK Frost
Interview by: Elmo
Photography by: Keith Michael Chester
Well... you'd pretty much have to be living under a rock to have never heard about this band. DRIVE has been blowing up the San Antonio and Texas music scene for over five years with an high energy, full-on ROCK assualt. Their light shows have been the envy of local bands and thier fanbase guarentees a packed house and a rockin' night. In anticipation of their upcoming summer release, MFM caught up with lead singer Gerard (A.K.A. G-RAWK) to get a sneak peak at their upcoming album and a glimpse into the the full-throttle world of DRIVE.
MFM: How old where you when you first started playing music.
G: About 14 years old.
MFM: You said you were inspired by your father…
G: Yes, my father was a musician… he played for a cover band here in San Antonio back in the 60’s, they were called the ‘Misfits’, he paid his way through college playing cover shows.
MFM: Would you say it was genetic or environmental?
G: Ha, ha… I’d say a little bit of both. But, it was really nice to have someone to look up to that pushed me really hard to take care of my school stuff first and then music after that.
MFM: Tell us how long the band has been around… when did DRIVE get started?
G: Drive has been around since September 17, 2004… about five and a half years.
MFM: How would you describe the band?
G: ROCK-A-HOLICS… ha, ha – totally addicted. We love to just get up on stage and rock out with lots of energy. After a few member changes, we finally got a great bunch of guys together, super talented and great songwriters. As a matter of fact, everyone in the band is a songwriter.
MFM: Really? How many original songs do you guys have put together right now?
G: Well, we have ten songs on our first CD, and we have five finished songs on the new CD… plus about another three in the making. So, we’re getting pretty close to finishing up the second CD.
MFM: We’ve heard that one of
the songs on the CD is called ‘Texas Girls’.
Can you tell us a little bit about the song and
what inspired it?
G: Actually, it was pretty funny… I had a riff that
I would warm up with… it was just a simple basic
guitar riff. Mondo, our drummer and I were writing
one day... he asked me to play that riff again. So we started playing around with it and he asked me what
I thought about this dance kick drum thing that he was doing. All of sudden in about twenty minutes we had the whole song written. We wrote all the lyrics real quick and it just stuck.
The actual meaning behind the song was… we were just really tired of hearing California this and California that on the radio. Nothing against California, but there’s some really good music in Texas and we think the best looking girls in the world come from Texas… so, that’s how ‘Texas Girls’ came about.
MFM: You said you were working on your second album, when is that expected to be finished?
G: If I were to take a guess, I think that it will be ready in early summer, 2010. We’re still in the writing stages right now… there’s tons of people that we’re working with to make sure that everything comes out perfect. We’re really hoping we can get it out in the summer and maybe get on a tour.
MFM: Sounds great Gerard, we're really looking forward to the release. Any closing thoughts that you’d like to share with the MFM universe?
G: I think 2010 is going to be our year, DRIVE will be ready to take on the world!
// MFM
