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The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus: Drumlines And Firing Lines
Posted by Rob Ortenzi on 11-Apr-07 @ 04:15 PM
The combined forces of classic rock, Green Day and a self-righteous marching band director helped set the course for THE RED JUMPSUIT APPARATUS maiden voyage into pop stardom. Whaddaya mean you can't hear it?Story: Tom Lanham Maybe it wasn't as geeky a childhood as, say, that of the flute-diddling Alyson Hannigan in American Pie, but Ronnie Winter did collect quite a few one-time-at-band-camp stories to tell once he'd made it through high school. It all began innocently enough, back in seventh grade, when his music teacher Mr. Coleman was assigning instruments for his class to learn. "And because my last name was Winter, he'd already gone through the entire list of kids alphabetically when he got to me, and nobody wanted to play tuba," Winter recalls. "I was good at sensing emotion even then, and you could tell he was depressed. He said, 'Ronnie, what do you want to play?' And my first impulse was drums, but I said 'Uhhh... What do you think I should play?' And he said, 'I think you should play tuba!' Long story short, I tried it, and two weeks later I was his star pupil, and within three months I was playing in symphony bands." These days, the 24-year-old brass master spends time in the punk-spirited overnight sensations the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, who've logged their first official hit with the piston-pumping single "Face Down," from their gold-certified Virgin debut Don't You Fake It. The Middleburg, Florida, outfit isn't exactly emo; there's a sunny sense of harmony beaming through shout-along anthems like "Waiting," "In Fate's Hands" and "Seventeen Ain't So Sweet," thanks to an adult knowledge of hooks that Winter can trace back to his six years of tuba-cradling. "I learned everything from tuba," he insists. "Timing, melody, how to listen. The great thing about playing tuba is, you're not really playing all the time, so a lot of the time you're just keeping time, and you're listening to melody constantly. Melody that literally surrounds you. You have trumpets to your left, clarinets, flutes and saxophone to your right. In my opinion, tuba taught me everything I needed to know to become a great songwriter." As reigning first-chair tuba, Winter went on to play several concerts a year, and in two all-state bands and four all-country combos. By senior year, he'd added his first love, drums, to his résumé, in addition to marching band. But his geekdom came to a screeching halt during a senior-night football game, when he added complicated new twists and turns to his drumline's performance. "I don't even remember the opposing school, but we blew their drumline outta the water," he says. But the band director wasn't taken by Winter's bold new concepts, thereby promptly demanding his sticks and dismissing him. "He told the cops that I threw my drum sticks at his head, which wasn't true-I wouldn't have missed, I can tell you that much. So they escorted me off the grounds, and the next day I was informed that I was kicked out of band. Permanently. "I was a very intense musician," Winter adds. "A little too intense, looking back on it now. But music was the only thing I really cared about." For the rest of the story, pick up AP 223 below... |
