The Darren Rademaker Interview
What hasn’t Rademaker done, and where hasn’t he been in all his epic years surfing the sonic soundscapes of music? A veteran in the iconic industry who supported bands such as Billy Idol, The Feelies, Meat Puppets, and The Pixies, Rademaker occupied several outstanding outfits, most notably The Tyde. A blistering body of work that echoes the legendary layout of Soft Machine’s volume-based catalog, the band has ultimately stood the test of time by demonstrating a retro resilience in sound, survival, and soothing situations. From Illinois to Florida, LA, and back to the Sunshine State, Rademaker, alongside his brother Brent, a member of the legendary Beachwood Sparks, has sealed their legitimate legacy in music and its harmonious history just as all sonic siblings have of the past. Not everyone is offered this unique universality in the timeline of existence, but if the moment should manifest itself, you seize it.
Photo: Daniella Murphy
From Illinois to Florida, LA, and back to the Sunshine State, when did you first begin to connect with music and was this relevant to your household growing up with your brother and longtime bandmate Brent Rademaker? Who were some of your earliest influences during your formative years, and how quickly did the gap from learning to play to wanting to perform and record music happen for you?
Back in Illinois, when I was a child, there was a home movie of me with my Beatles record player in the early 60s. My brother Brent is rollerskating in the background. I was probably about five, and he was probably about three, so that would be my earliest music memory… The ‘60s were filled with AM radio and all the big influences you hear today. What I remember liking in the early days in Illinois was the Guess Who, the Beatles, and, of course, the Partridge Family were big in our world. Brent was really into the Jackson 5. It wasn’t until we moved to Florida that we started playing music when we reconnected with our father. I learned how to play guitar in church camp. My dad didn’t think I would be talented enough, but I still have that guitar. I remember, taking only a few guitar lessons. I wanted to play “Annie’s Song” by John Denver and Elton John, songs that were too hard on guitar, but my teacher taught me the blues and “House Of The Rising Sun.” We had a family band with my dad and my brothers. Brent and I had a stepbrother, John, a talented musician. We were like little monkeys on display playing for people in the old folk’s homes, etc. I started playing ELP, Bad Co., Stones, etc., at my dad‘s music store on Friday nights with other musicians. I never felt good enough to do it until the Ramones came along, and I learned the “Its Alive” album. And then more punk came along, and that was easy to play. I’m talking about British punk like Buzzcocks, 999, and The Jam. This is how I got into playing in my first real band, the Strait Jackets. Although we recorded an album that just came out posthumously a couple of years ago, we didn’t get into the recording process until we had a new personality.
You've lived so many lives over your career that spans four decades, tell me about some of your earlier outfits such as The Straight-Jackets, A New Personality, Shadowland, and The Summer Hits. Tell me about those early days in the local Tampa, and LA scene, and how much has changed since the 1980s and 1990s.
I had a band with some skateboarder friends called the Driveways, and we opened up for the best local punk/power pop band, the Strait Jackets. After a couple of gigs opening for them, they pulled me aside one night and asked me to join. I was only 17 and felt like I’d made it. They were the coolest guys I’d ever seen. We played a couple of times a week in bars in Tampa and had a great scene of about 25 people. Other locals would come out to see this punk rock stuff. If you listen to the album, it’s more aggressive power pop, but we thought it was fun. That’s when I first started to write songs and go in a different musical direction than The Strait Jackets, in particular, I was a huge fan of the band Orange Juice. We all liked Joy Division, but I just wanted to go in a different direction through a series of weird events. I wasn’t in the band anymore, and I just started playing with my little brother and another skateboarder friend of ours, and that’s when A New Personality was born. We released a 7-inch single that Sub-Pop and a few other labels noticed. I’d argue that it’s one of the first American indie pop singles in 1981, and others would agree. We were still learning to write, sing songs, play, etc., but we were doing some good stuff. We made another 12-inch record that goes for a pretty penny on Discogs. One of the songs was released on that “American Underground” compilation from Captured Tracks a couple of years ago. We got about as good as we could in Tampa, opening for everybody from the Dream Syndicate to X to Duran Duran and Billy Idol. We even made a music video for a song on MTV Basement Tapes. The labels came around, but we were just kids from Tampa who didn’t know anything. I remember our dad, who was interested in us, went to a meeting at IRS Records, but nothing happened, which is why I decided to give it all up and move to Los Angeles.
I had a suitcase and guitar, and I thought, I’m going to join a band. It was the height of the metal scene, and there was a band called Lions and Ghosts when Jane’s Addiction was first starting. After I met them, I knew there was something different out there that we could cross with the metal scene. I got my brother on the phone and told him to get out here so we could start another band, and that’s when Shadowland formed. We practiced for months before we played shows, and by the second show, we had all the labels coming around. That was when getting signed to a major label was a big deal, and we did it. We eventually signed with Geffen Records, but it was probably one of the worst experiences of our lives, to tell you the truth. They convinced us before we made it by putting us in the studio with people we didn’t want to work with, but we always went along for the ride. We were just too naïve. I blamed people in the past, but I wasn’t writing the best songs or singing how I wanted. I’m not embarrassed by those records, but they’re hard for me to listen to. There’s some good stuff there. We had people from the Waterboys, the Dream Academy, and even Robert Plant play on a song (harmonica), which should’ve saved some money. But we got shoved aside in the system. Our ANR man got married right when our record was coming out. We were on tour with The Meat Puppets and The Feelies. We played with Mudhoney and the Mekons and opened for The Pixies. One day, I think we were playing in Chapel Hill, and I heard the song “Strange” by Galaxie 500 from a TV speaker in a Mote 6l. I bought the “On Fire” record in Chicago the next night. We started playing “Blue Thunder” at the end of our set, and now, years later, I’ve become friends with Dean. It’s bizarre because that moment changed my life, and I told him after I met him a few times.
Everything just went to shit, and that’s when we decided to go back to our Indie roots. They weren’t calling it grunge, but we were super into Dinosaur Jr., Teenage Fanclub, Swervedriver, Ride, and most Creation bands. Anybody who knows me knows that I’ve been the biggest Felt Head since they started, even Lawrence will tell you that. No one cared about them in America. After a couple of major labels showed interest in us, we decided to do it ourselves. With the help of a lady at a publishing company who had signed Beck, we went to New York to record with Wharton Tiers, who also recorded Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., and Unrest. They were another big favorite of ours. We went on the road with Sebadoh and played with Pavement, Royal Trux, and everybody in the Indie scene; nobody respected us, thinking we were fake because we had been on a major label. Years later, most of these people in Indie Rock finally gave us our due. I had a lot of great comments from a lot of people who were contemporaries. The Summer Hits was an offshoot of my friend Rex. He mentioned that he was playing bass and started writing songs, so I helped him out. We would go to the studio and bang them out in about four takes, and then we started getting interest from labels around the world. We made a series of 7-inches hoping to be like the ‘60s records that we listened to that we were certain no one else was listening to, hoping that someday in the future, someone would listen to us in the same way, and that happened! My brother released a CD compilation of all the 7-inches, and years later, on record store day, we finally saw it on vinyl.
A band that has been tonally trucking for nearly three decades, tell me about first forming the band with your brother, and future member of another LA classic, Beachwood Sparks. Similar to the mighty Soft Machine, the band has released five full-length LPs all sporting the number of their respected place in the band's discography. Each album is as classic as the one before, exploring the depths of culture through the water and its natural elements, to the radical rhythms of cosmic Californian
consciousness, what does the band mean to you after all these years?
I was about to receive a huge publishing deal from Sony Publishing and went to the Caribbean to write songs. I didn’t write any good ones for several personal reasons, so I left that project behind and gave up the music business. I moved from the hotbed of Los Angeles while Brent started Beach with Sparks, but I stayed away from the scene and lived alone. I started writing songs that would later become the debut album “Once” by the Tyde. I moved back to the East Side to live in the Beachwood Sparks house. I remember they were playing a gig at the Smell The Old Smell in North Hollywood, and they asked me to open it instead of doing it alone. I asked another of our roommates, Bob Fay, the drummer for Sebadoh, and a buddy of mine, Ben Knight, who played bass, to play our first show as the Tyde. We wore makeup and played a T. Rex song. The Tyde went through many incarnations at the beginning of the year. We’ve had a lot of members over the years, but eventually, when it came time to make the first record, it was mostly the guys in Beachwood Sparks who came to the rescue to fill out the band. This was about a week before recording the first album, which was the best thing ever because it was very loose, making us popular. It was the first band where I was the captain of this ship. I write and sing every song, and if anyone doesn’t like that, don’t play with me.
“We made a series of 7-inches hoping to be like the ‘60s records that we listened to that we were certain no one else was listening to, hoping that someday in the future, someone would listen to us in the same way, and that happened!”
Jumping ahead to the band's most recent effort, " Season 5," I'd love to know some of the backstories to songs like "Tropical Madness," "Legend Of The Lost Art," "Let Me Hear The Music," and the album's epic opener "Heal Thyself." Are there any plans or projects on the horizon for the spring and summer? Is there anything else you would like to share further with the readers?
I had a lot of help from great people over the years, but it’s always been my project and still is. After the success in the UK and the US from the first album, we ended up with a deal with Rough Trade Records, which was a dream come true for me. We put one record out on Creation Records and a single on Sub Pop before returning to smaller labels for the last two records, “Darren 4” and “Season Five.” I’m glad you asked about “Season Five” because it’s one of the best records I’ve made. I don’t think it gets an audience for various reasons. Nobody’s gonna compare me to Dan Bejar anytime soon, but I think it’s a great record, and I worked hard on it. It’s truly a lockdown record. Those songs were written on a Casio keyboard instead of a guitar. “Tropical Madness” is a true story drinking song similar to “Boat Drinks” by Jimmy Buffett. They’re true stories from the Caribbean, Hawaii, and anywhere else there’s a tiki bar. “Legend Of The Lost Art” is the first-ever Tyde instrumental that came to me while playing the keyboards with Derek doing the drum parts. I was like, “holy crap, this is full-on Madchester!” It really should be in a car commercial or a movie. The album’s influences are Magnum PI and Miami Vice. I came up with “Let Me Hear The Music” while hiking in Elysian Park in Los Angeles.
During COVID, my wife and I ran 9 miles a day because there was nothing else to do. I was listening to Paul McCartney, and I thought about my brother and why I love songs about music, so I said let’s write a song about music. I mentioned quite a few records that I like in that song. “Heal Thyself” is my ultimate lockdown song, I mean, everybody was depressed. There was so much crap going on. There was so much going on in the world complaining so everybody complaining about other people, so much, attacking people for no reason, people making accusations, people doing horrible things to each other, and the only thing I could think of was to have this song about who cares what other people think? It’s very similar to meditation; you must transport yourself to an island or a beach. Shortly after recording the album, I returned to Florida because the beaches were open. There was a different kind of freedom here, and I was sick of city life. I go back and forth to LA, but I’m still in Florida. The big news for the springtime is that I’m about to embark on a tour with my good buddy Christopher Owens, who, if you haven’t checked out his latest record or any of the others, you should. And I’m at work writing for the next record, which will be the sixth one under the Tyde banner. Can you guess what it might be called? We also have a live album in the pipeline recorded in Northern California at Terrapin Crossroads in 2016 with an All-Star band including the late and great Neal Casal and Phil Lesh, who sings and plays on a few of the tunes. It’s the most indie rock jam band album ever, and I think it’s gonna be a triple vinyl, so look out for that soon as well.
