Where were you born and where did you go to school?
I was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut and grew up there. I moved to Louisiana for a while when I was a kid and then moved back to Connecticut. I finished high school there, then I went to Vermont for college and never finished college. That’s where I started my music career.
What college did you go to in Vermont? I, myself, am a Vermonter.
I took classes at Green Mountain College and Castleton State College. But I never graduated from either of them.
Oh yeah, Castleton State College. My brother went there for a while. DJ Scott LaRock graduated from Castleton State College. A lot of people don’t know that. That was before he met KRS-1. It was when he was out of college he met KRS-1 and really started expounding upon the importance of education in the black community.
Wow, I didn’t know that.
What kind of music did you listen to in your adolescent years?
When I was in high school and middle school I was marching in marching band. I’m a drummer, by trade.I marched in the drum line, I was captain my junior and senior year. I was very much into drums, liked percussion-heavy type music. I like Rush a lot, because Neil Peart’s a great drummer. My parents were real into the Beatles, so I listened to a lot of Beatles music.
Then classic rock?
Uh, yeah. Well, my household listened to a lot of Beatles, some Willie Nelson, Pink Floyd…my parents had an interesting swath of taste, if you will.
Willie Nelson…my dad was a big Willie Nelson fan.
Yeah, my parents weren’t really too rebellious, but were always really into making their playlists. I think they were smoking weed or something.
So, you went from playing drums to playing the keyboards?
Well, I had a piano at the house and always had a little keyboard, so I kind of taught myself how to play. I never really took it seriously in high school. But, uh, for one, in high school I went to a lot of Grateful Dead shows. My next door neighbor’s older brother invited me to a show at Giants stadium when I was fifteen. So, started to do a lot of Dead shows and started to learn a lot of Dead songs on the piano. Once high school was over and I moved to Vermont, a lot of my friends were Deadheads and we were going to Grateful Dead shows together. When Jerry died, there was a concert that was kind of a gathering of Deadheads and we put together a Dead jam, and since I knew all the music I played keys obviously, and it was the first time I had played in front of people, like, a concert setting. It was awesome, I was like “holy shit, this is what I want to do with my life.” It was kind of a turning point for me. A couple weeks after Jerry died my friends that were in this regular band contacted me and were like “Stoops knows all the Dead stuff.” I was nineteen and I was like “well, I’ll give it a shot.” I was really nervous playing for people at the time.
So now you’re playing with Kung Fu. How did that whole project come about?
I was playing with the band RAQ for years, I joined around 2002 and we toured around the country for a long time. And then I met my wife who was on tour with RAQ, and we were married within 7 months, we fell in love really quick. And then we got pregnant. I was going to take a break either way, and decided I’ve been in Burlington for 12 freezing cold winters, why not get out of there. I had a good friend that lived in South Carolina, so I could move my wife down there. We moved and within one day were in 80 degrees on the beach, it was awesome. My little boy was born in Charleston, and for a couple of years we started missing our family so we moved back up to the Northeast. Within a month in the northeast I sat in this jam and met Dave Livolsi and sat in with him. It was a good fit and I wanted to start a band with him, so we spun around ideas for members. I knew Adrian Tramantono pretty well. Tim Palmieri and Adrian Tramantono, they played guitar and drums respectively, were in a band called The Breakfest. I knew those two guys, Adrian grew up in Connecticut when we were younger in the nineties. He won Best Drummer in the state and all this stuff. And Tim Palmieri played guitar, was one of the best guitar players around and kind of revolved around the Dead scene. It was really cool that they were available and local enough to be able to play the project. It started out one of our friends had this very small venue that only held about 150 people. They had no stage, no PR, but they wanted to have a lot of music in there, so we pulled the band together and played on Monday nights. We had a residency there for a few weeks and after a while sold out there, so we were like, “well, maybe we should start touring.” We started playing in several places outside of Connecticut where The RAQ, Deep Banana Blackout or The Breakfest had been playing. The bassist at the time Dave Livolsi used to play with Jazz is Dead and John Scofield so we played where he’d been touring. We kind of just pulled our resources together as a band and starting touring, and just went from there. We started getting festival offers, recorded an album, really organically. No one got in the band and said “Ok, by next year we’re gonna tour,” it kind of happened by itself and it was really neat.
How far do you think you guys are gonna take it?
We’re going to keep running with the project as long as it’s still moving. We’re not getting any younger, and this project is really working for us. Touring in a band you can get a little disheartened sometimes. The peaks are often and the valleys are deep, so it’s at times a lot to deal with. We might have felt a little bit jaded from our last projects, but everything is going right with this band. We got really lucky, we’ve been showing up and crushing it. There are young fans that are energized and into the project which is awesome, as long as young kids are coming out, people in general are coming out, we’re going to keep playing.
Do you guys have any albums in the future?
Yeah, we’re completing work on our second album right now, actually the guys were just up my ass the last couple of days to get some of my stuff done. But hey, you’re a father as well so you know what it’s like to have a shit ton to do. So we have a deadline, we should have all of our stuff in by the time we go to Bear Creek next week. We’re looking forward to the wintertime in the next couple of weeks. Bear Creek is pretty much the last festival of the year, I think, of 2012. So it’s the last chance for us to be at a festival as a band. In fact I just got off the phone with Norm Dimitrouleas of The Werks about an hour ago, bullshitting with him because I’m going to get to see those guys. Actually that’s where you and I met, Taco, was the Werk Out. I was talking to those guys about where we’re gonna be, what we’re going to do together down at Bear Creek, stuff like that. It’s always nice to be friends of bands. A couple weeks before a festival like that your phone starts blowing up with different bands like, “Hey…” So I’ve got some fun times coming to me.
Is there anyone you’ve ever wanted to collaborate with that you haven’t had the chance to?
Oh man, yeah. I would like to collaborate with everybody. I’m one of those guys, I want to be everyone’s friend, I want to know everybody. But if it was one person… you know, it actually happened it was really weird. Last summer a friend of mine was organizing a benefit for an organization in China that helps Chinese infants get adopted by other people in the world. Not just by people in America, but people in other countries that want to adopt. There are a lot of kids out there that need love, and need homes. Anyway, long story short, he was having a benefit concert in Connecticut, it’s a private event, but a fundraiser, and last year they had Dave Matthews Band, and they had Tedeschi Trucks Band, with Herbie Hancock. So they asked me if I wanted to help keyboard check the rehearsal session and I was like “Absolutely!” So I met Herbie, got a chance to hang with all those different musicians which was cool, but Mr. Hancock, you know I had to call him Mr. Hancock, I can’t go in there like “Hey, Herbie!” Mr. Hancock was a pleasure and an honor, and he’s like “oh, you’re a musician, too,” and I said “yeah, we actually cover one of your songs,” and I played a couple bars as actual proof and he was digging it. So that was awesome. If there was one guy I would collaborate with it would be Herbie.
Other than Stoops do you have any other nicknames?
I do have another nickname, Taco, and that would be Taco. That was actually, to give your readers a bit of our history, when we met you were like “I’m Taco,” and I’m like “Hey, so am I, I’m Taco.” The band gave me the name back in 2003 or 2004. I think there was a drunken night in Memphis, Tennessee, or something, where we hit a Taco Bell up and got one of those 30 packs of tacos, so hence, Taco Stoops. So that was cool to meet the other Taco. But there can only be two. If we ever meet a third we gotta shut that shit down quick.
visit www.kungfumusic.com/
interview by Taco
