Playing In-between the Notes with Rocco DeLuca
August 22, 2007 by Kristen Pierson
Filed under Interviews
We recently had a chance to catch Rocco DeLuca and The Burden during their first headlining tour. We attended the performance in Boston, but the interview with Rocco was postponed because he wasn’t feeling well. Now rested-up, he graciously took some time to speak to us via telephone.
Type 3 Media: You’re in the midst of you first headlining tour; how are things going so far?
Photo by Kristen Pierson
Rocco DeLuca: They’re going good. It’s been fun for us to be able to play a little bit longer. To see our name up on the marquee, it’s been a trip.
T3M: I’ve been to a few of your shows, and I really enjoyed seeing you headline and play a longer set. You put a lot of energy into your performance; is there a particular song that you put a little more heart and soul into more than others?
RD: The right answer would be ‘no’. It just depends. I think we go through phases. After playing a set, or playing a song for a while, and then adding a new song to the set, you bring a little bit different energy to it. I think for the most part, we go through phases.
Either one reinvents itself, or you add a new song, and that becomes something really fun to play. You start to anticipate it during the set. I think that’s just a natural thing.
T3M: Like the song How Many Times?
RD: That’s fun for me because it gives me a chance to play in a style that I usually play in. On tour with the boys it’s a bit aggressive, and it gives me a chance to do something a little more delicate and vulnerable, which is where most of the songs start from. It’s nice, after all the bashing, to get a chance to actually hear music, very simple.
T3M: Do you have any other new material in the works?
RD: Yeah, I’ve got a lot material. I consider myself more of a writer than a performer, or a band member, so I just write every day. I’m always working on something. It’s just a matter of they way the world works that you can’t promote it all the time. You spend most of you time showing people your last record.
T3M: We recently listened to the Live Sessions EP, and think it sounds great. Do you have any plans to return to the studio to record?
RD: We’re hoping that we’ll get to record and finish the record before the end of the year, and put it out in March of next year. That’s my hope.
T3M: Who came up with the name ‘The Burden’?
RD: To be honest, it was me and the label. Me, Jude, and Kiefer came up with it. We were doing something that we cared about. It was hard to properly hold, and show to people. It became kind of a burden for us, which is almost like a joke. It felt like anything that you cared about, on any level, it ends up becoming a burden, if you don’t want to somehow destroy it. So, that’s where it spawned from.
T3M: Have you experienced any interesting fan moments?
RD: When people say something has afflicted them… like dealing with disease, or people who have lost a loved one. Then they sit and tell you that somehow, in some small way, the record gave them some kind of chance to fall into something else, or gave them a little bit of relief on some level.
There was one guy who started a winery with his wife, and I guess they listened to the record while they were starting to ferment their wine. She ended up dying. He gave out the first batch of this wine to us, because that’s all they played in the winery. That blew my mind.
There was a girl the other day that came up to us… she had cancer, and was beating it. In the hospital, it was one of the records she was listening to. That kind of stuff is absolutely mind blowing. It makes me glad that I took the time to be thoughtful in what I was saying.
T3M: Your answer to the question ‘Which line of your own do you wish you’d never written (or are proud that you did)?’ I’ve read as being the line ‘Don’t fix me because I’m broken, I was that way from the start’. It’s not clear if that’s something you’re proud of or wish you’d never written. Can you clarify?
RD: I’m glad I put it down. For me, it was about acceptance, which is hard for me to do sometimes, accept who you are. That was my way of saying it.
T3M: Some of your cited influences include John Hurt, Fred McDowell, and Doc Watson. Is their one musician that you enjoy listening to the most?
RD: You named three amazing individuals. I’ll go through a period when it’s nothing else but John Hurt. If I had it my way, I really wouldn’t listen to much more.
And then someone else plays another record and I’ll go ‘oh god, that’s so good’. Then I fall into that. I definitely go in phases. I can’t compare them.
Any artist that I’m drawn to makes their own path, makes their own road, so it’s totally theirs. There’s no real comparing. I think they all stand pretty strongly on their own.
T3M: Is there someone that you consider a mentor, or that you are particularly thankful to for helping you along the way?
RD: Besides my record collection… there are a couple people that turned me onto stuff. There’s a cat named Tom Boyle who really started my quest into the real primitive folk music. I was playing with it, but he really shined a light on a lot of that for me. I was thankful for that.
For the most part, I would attribute most of my ‘thanks’ to those who burned me… those people who were malicious towards me or wronged me in some way. Because, it’s the only time when I truly was like ‘I’m free’, and I stood on my own. And was like ‘I’m going to beat this’. I think those people in your life teach you more than someone giving you gifts could do.
For me it worked like that anyway. It’s been the only time when I truly had the opportunity to realize that I’m on my own. They taught me not to be entitled to anything. I have to earn every little thing. That’s been a lesson that I’m grateful for. And they taught me not to be pretentious. That’s another lesson that I’ve embraced. So those are the people I’d thank the most.
T3M: The way you present yourself seems very humble. Do you think fame has affected you at all?
RD: That’s the funny thing. I haven’t really explored any real fame. I think I’m pretty unknown amongst pop-culture. Even in the music community, I don’t think I’m that well-known. To be honest, I’m just still doing the same thing; I wake up, I write music, I read, I play, I work on whatever artifice I’m into at the time.
My emotions and my physical things have not changed. I haven’t had a chance to lay up back at home long enough to really see if anything’s kicked in yet.
T3M: You started playing guitar at an early age; what made you gravitate toward playing a Dobro?
RD: I had a lot of good guitar players around me growing up, and it gave me the chance to be a little bit different, and join the jam sessions.
And there are the records that I picked up, like Son House, Booker White, and Robert Johnson. To me, these guys were playing more wickedly than any electric player. I really felt like there was a dimension in their music that cut deeper than the electric blues guitar players. So that was a big turn-on for me, because I felt like I was tapping into a source.
Initially, something inside really felt like playing that instrument. It’s really as simple as that.
As I got a little bit older I got into Raga, Indian music, and Ravi Shankar, and all of a sudden I realized what I liked most about it. The Dobro offers you a chance to play in-between the notes. That’s what Indian music does, it finds this negative space, and it’s not so square anymore… it’s a round thing. Initially I just wanted to sit on the Dobro and drone as if it was a sitar.
I think all those elements combined sold me on it.
T3M: Watching you perform in Boston was a real treat, and the audience gave an enthusiastic response. How does it feel for you when a crowd reacts that way?
RD: I don’t take that crowd for granted, because there are slow nights too. So when people are giving you energy, you just take that energy and use it to play. Last night we played and it was really slow. It was a small club, and we’d never been there before. So when you come out ready to get into trouble, and the crowd comes out like that, it’s a nice feeling.
T3M: In the pictures I’ve taken I’ve noticed some wear on your Dobro. Is that one of the original one’s you’ve had?
RD: That is the original Dobro that I’ve had. It was brand new when I bought it. Some people make their guitars wear out a lot quicker over time because they do a lot worse things to their instruments. I’ve just played that thing for so long, and beat on that thing for so long now that’s it’s just worn down where I play.
There’s people who light their guitars on fire and send them to the guitar builder to get them playing again, and then continue to play them. Mine… I just haven’t had the heart to torch it. That’s all from sweat, your hand rubbing against it, and knocking it into things.
T3M: You must take good care of it.
RD: The thing is, I don’t. It’s the grace of the gods that it’s still in one piece. It’s not even well-made. It’s built out of plywood. There’s really nice Dobros out there, but I play the cheap one.
T3M: Don’t you also have a custom one?
RD: I do have one custom one. That’s a completely different beast.
T3M: The body looks narrow.
RD: We were experimenting with sizes. I think I’m going to widen it out a little again. That was the proto-type.
There’s a guitar builder in Los Angeles, his name is Pavel. He’s originally from Poland. He came up to me at a show. It turned out he was building for Pink Floyd, and Johnny Winter‘s Dobros, and he wanted to start working on my Dobro. And then we got talking about building one, and we designed that one together, then he built it. I’ve been playing it since the Keane trip, and just been trying to learn it. It’s pretty cool.
There are a few things that we’re going to change from here, but I think we’re onto something. People have already wanted them from him, like Joe Perry from Aerosmith. Now he’s got a back-order for these guitars. I was like ‘this is something I wanted for me, what are you doing?’. He goes ‘I’ll write the RD Model on the neck’ and I said ‘I guess that’s fine’. We’ll see how it goes.
T3M: Is there something that people think they know about you but really don’t?
RD: I think a lot of people think I’d be down on guitars quite a bit. The truth is that I never did. I don’t talk a lot of shop. Even the other musicians that I’ve toured with, and other people that I’ve played with, the first thing they do is come up to me and start talking about the Dobro. I find it funny, because I was always the one who would jump into a conversation about some drama that happened, or something someone just saw… that’s the fun stuff.
Talking about guitars is like talking about computers. It’s just a tool. I think that’s one of the bigger misconceptions. The thing is that I don’t know anything. I never paid attention long enough to learn anything. You string it up, you play it. It’s a simple thing. People make things that are simple, very complex. I think I spend most of my time trying to re-simplify them.
T3M: I read somewhere that you played at Hugh Hefner’s birthday party, is that true?
RD: No, I played at the Playboy mansion. It was for the legalization of marijuana.
T3M: Did you bring The Bunny with you?
RD: Yes we did. We knew we couldn’t score one of the real ones, so we brought our mascot.
T3M: What have you learned in the past year and a half?
RD: That guts wins over talent almost every time. I’ve seen amazing musicians do nothing. I used to wonder why. They used to be so bitter. Now I know why. They didn’t have the guts to actually put anything out there, and give people a chance to take a hit at it to see if it really works. They’re just afraid. A lesser talented artist wins because of that. That’s one thing I’ve learned.
Another thing I’ve learned is to be nice to people. I already knew, but it affirmed it. The relationships to me are so much more valuable. I don’t mean for any contact, I just mean for your experience, to actually enjoy this. I’ve had to learn to enjoy it, because I grew up feeling like I’ve always been at war with everybody. It’s nice to start to change that mentality a little bit and start to enjoy people’s company, and enjoy being out here.
T3M: What do you do during your downtime between shows?
RD: We’ve become quite avid tennis players. We all have our rackets, and as soon as we can we try to get to a court and either play tennis, or kick a soccer ball around.
T3M: What does it feel like for you to be able to see this country, or even other countries?
RD: That’s something I wanted to do my whole life. I did do it, but in a much more humble manner than I do now. I’d travel and run out of money. I always wanted to travel… I always wanted to play music… so it’s all working out really good right now.
T3M: Thank you for taking some time to speak with me today.
RD: Yeah, no problem.
T3M: Also, I’m glad you’re feeling better. We would never have known that you weren’t feeling well during the show in Boston, if we weren’t told, because you played all night and didn’t even flinch.
RD: The delirium helped a little bit.
T3M: Enjoy the rest of your tour.
RD: Thank you, Love.
www.roccodeluca.com
www.myspace.com/roccodeluca
