Carmine Appice Talks Making An LP With Brother Vinny Appice
There have been so many great albums that came out in 2017, and it included a very unique first: An album from legendary drumming brothers Carmine and Vinny Appice.
Released under the name Appice, Sinister dropped in October and featured a number of guest appearances including Paul Shortino, Bumblefoot, Joel Hoekstra and many more.
So…what took so long for an Appice brothers album to come out? Carmine Appice explained to us just how that album came to be:
“You know, we’ve been doing Drum War show across the country, and we signed up with a manager last year, and he said, ‘You would probably do a lot better if you had an album out.’ He said maybe we should do a PledgeMusic campaign and put together a demo and try and get a record deal. And me and Vinny went, ‘Okay, fine’ because we need a budget to do a record, and that’s what really stopped us.”
Easily one of the highlights on the album is the track “Bros in Drums,” which offers up the condensed version of Carmine and Vinny’s remarkable story, and Carmine talked about the organic nature of how that track came together:
“I’m not a great lyricist. Every once in a while, I write some good lyrics. And so, when the chorus came, I heard the chorus and it went [sings the riff], and I went ‘Whoa…we’re brothers in drums!’ and I went, “Wow! Brothers in drums. That’s pretty cool.’ I don’t know where it came from. It just popped out…When you’re writing a song, once you get the chorus, then you know what the song’s about. So I went, ‘I’m going to write the story of me and Vinny. I started singing a melody to the chords, and I came up with, ‘It started in Brooklyn way down on 41st street.’ And I was actually going to sing the song, but the day I went into the studio, my voice was fucked. I could not hit it the way I wanted to…My favorite part of the song of the song is ‘My mother said he’s driving me crazy just like you used to do’ and ‘Is that my brother on TV? That’s where I want to be!’ I asked Vinny to do that, but he wouldn’t do it, so I did it.”
For the latest on Appice, including upcoming show dates, head over to AppiceBrothers.com.
Erica Banas is a rock/classic rock blogger that loves the smell of old vinyl in the morning.
