MD: Tell me how how you guys managed to find each other in Bakersfield. I know there are a lot of people there, but it is not necessarily a music mecca.
DS: The music scene on Bakersfield goes in peaks and valleys, but when it's on a high, there's a lot more happening there than people would think. And we happened to get together when things were going alright there. I'd been playing for five years by the time I hooked up with other guys. I started at around nine years old. I remember starting up the drums on my own and remember and being able to get my mind off them. I just listened to music and kept beats to it, and made up some of my own beats in my head. I didn't get my first kit until I was thirteen. I started playing in the school bands then too, but I picked up the drumset on my own. Even then, I never really liked playing on my own - like sitting in the garage and practicing to records like other guys do. I was always always more into playing with other people. I never took any lessons or studied from a book.

MD: But every player goes through some kind of learning curve. Who or what were your models for development?
DS: I kind of developed naturally as I went along, without worrying about it. I started playing with some guys in High School and even back then we were doing originals. We weren't any good, but it helped me develop my own style. I wasn't trying to copy anybody's songs or sounds. I just played my own way. I think I probably improved a lot mentally, just in the way I think about playing - coming up with ieas and then being able to play them on the drums. Sometimes I'd work out ideas in my head, and sometimes I'd try them live, if I felt confident in what I was trying to do.

MD: Were you always serious about music? I get the idea that music just sort of happened for you more than your making it happen.
DS: Well, I always like playing, I mean, there was nothing else I really wanted to do. But I don't think I really took it seriously until Korn.

MD: But prior to KoRn you recorded an EP in 1990 and an album in 1991 with LAPD.
DS: Yeah, but they weren't really very good. We were still trying to find our own band sound and develop our own individual sounds on our instruments. If you listen to those records now, you wouldn't think we were even the same guys playing on them. It was kinda a heavy, up-tempo punk, not at all what were doing now. But LAPD really was good for us, too, because we learned a lot about the industry and how things work. We played all the LA clubs - even some pay-to-play venues for about two years. Even when we didn't pay-to-play anymore we were playing for nothing, which is still paying to play. We definetly did not get a record deal after a few songs we payed our dues.

MD: The pay-to-play scene usually kills off bands off pretty quickly. How did you manage to stick through two years of that without crumbling?
DS: We were trying to get signed. That's what it was all about back then. We had fans and people who came to the shows. We just had to believe that things were gonna get better and that somebody would notice us. We believed in oursleves, and it finally happened. Come to think of it, I guess we were pretty lucky. First we had the LAPD deal with Triple X records, which was hard enough to get. Then we got off that label and found Jonathan in Bakersfield. Then we got a whole new record deal with Epic.

MD: What made you shift from the more upbeat pop-punk music to what you are doing now in Korn?
DS: It was a matter of maturing and finding out own sound as musicians. I know I just got tons better as a drummer. I became a lot more creative and percussive, using more of my set to create beats. I started mixing up the the hi-hat, snare, and toms a lot and fooling around with other combinations. I'd heard some other drummers using the set that way, and liked it. I didn't pattern myself on anyone, or try learning their beats, but it inspired me to kind of go on that direction.

MD: I hear Korn has really taken a step up as far as production for your tour goes for your current tour.
DS: We're doing theatres now, which are the biggest places we have ever headlined, and we're using video projections. We open up with a "Davey and Goliath" skit, then we take off on some images from the album cover. We don't lean on it too much and it doesn't get in the way of the music, but it is good to enhance the show a little bit when your playing bigger places. And the fans seem to like it.

MD: A lot of bands like to take time off between tours and recording, but you guys went in to record the new album only a week after coming off of tour. Why so fast?
DS: We originally wanted to put the record out last October, which was the same month in which we had released the first album two years earlier. It was more the marketing than anything else, because November and December are pretty bad times to release albums. That's when labels are concentrating on their Christmas albums , and we didn't want to get overshadowed by all that. We figured if we put it out in October and started touring right away we would pick up momentum as the tour went on. Aside from that, we wanted to get back into it for ourselves, too. We actually took a month off after coming off the tour and we only had a few ideas floating, but when we went into the reheasal studio more or less the whole album ws written in the studio, which is how we figured it would be.

MD: What about you personally? Do you find much time or have the desire to practice or play at home on your own, away from the stage?
DS: No, I get totally away from the drums most of the time. The whole time I was at home, till the time we came off tour, to the time we started rehearsing again, I didn't play at all. Then, during the pre-production and recording period, I didn't play at all after laying down my tracks. I only started playing again when we started reheasring as a band for the tour.

MD: But with your style and how it fits into what Korn is doing, it seems like you couldn't afford to be loose. In fact, you seem really tight and precise on the record.
DS: I think that has to do with staying in shape physically more than staying in shape just for drumming. When I am at home I work out five days a week, and I think that has something to do with how I play drums. I can take a break and not feel rusty before the tape rolls.

MD: Once your in pre-production, do you work out your parts before the tape rolls?
DS: On the first album, I had everything worked out before we started tracking. We took a year and a half to put that record together, and I'd played the songs so much that my parts were alread second nature by the time we went into the studio. But for the new record we went in really fresh, and we wanted to get it done quickly to capture the energy. So it was probably about 60% knowing what I was going to play and 40% just playing whatever came to mind at that moment. I laid down about three songs a day and finished all my tracks in five days. I don't think I did more than three takes on any of the songs I recorded, I was a little nervous doing that way, because I didn't want to throw off some good fills and then be unhappy with them later on. But it ended up really good, and it has a kind of energy I probably wouldn't have gotten if I'd worked everything before hand.

MD: Do you ever come up with the beats on your own that turn into the basis of the song?
DS: "Good God" is one song where I kept hearing the beat in my head whilst we were trying to write the new record. The opening song "Twist" was like that too. That's how we come up with a lot of the music. Somebody will start playing something and the rest of us will work around it to see where it takes us.

MD: Tell me a bit about your kit. You seem to go for high-pitched sounds with both your drums and cymbals.
DS: I use a 20" kick drum and a 3" piccolo snare. They're small drums, but a get a lot of volume out of them. I ge a really punchy sound out of the kick that I really like. I use a hard Danmar pad on the head and I turn my DW beateraround, so I am hitting them with the hard side. I started using the smaller drums for the first Korn record, and got a really good sound. My setup is pretty tight,a nd it took me a while to get used to the smaller sized drums. But once I did , it felt great. And even though they're smaller drums, I still get a pretty good bottom end to them. I also have an 808 sample pad hooker to a Roland TD-7.

MD: What about your drumming future? Is there any area of music you want too get into, or any element about your playing you want to work on?
DS: No. I'm pretty satisfied. I know I'll get better on my own.