Drummer Freese Gets the Joke, Plus a Lot of Job Offers

Q: How are a philosopher and a drummer alike?

A: Both perceive time as an abstract concept.

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In the music world, nothing generates a laugh quite like a good drummer joke, and there are a zillion of them.

Vandals drummer Josh Freese has heard them all since he first started pounding away at age 8 in his parents’ house in Placentia.

Today, he’s one of the most sought-after musicians in Southern California. In addition to his dual-citizenship as a member of the Vandals and platinum-selling alternative rock group A Perfect Circle, he’s toured or recorded with Guns N’ Roses, Devo, former Replacements leader Paul Westerberg, Dweezil Zappa, Suicidal Tendencies and School of Fish. And that’s just the short list.

Freese came close to joining Pearl Jam six years ago after drummer Dave Abbruzzesse was fired, but after auditioning and waiting eagerly for a verdict for a couple of months, he saw the job go to Jack Irons.

Additionally, Freese keeps busy year round with a variety of commercial assignments playing for radio and TV advertisements.

This year he also put out his first solo album, “The Notorious One-Man Orgy,” with a guest appearance by his Pearl Jam pal Stone Gossard, one of a very few cameos on what is otherwise a one-man show belying another joke: “What’s the best thing about albums by drummers? The guitar solos.”

Freese is having the last laugh because he not only plays drums, but virtually all the guitar, keyboard and other instruments. He also wrote and sings all the songs.

“Most of the reviews so far have been good. They usually say something like, ‘Wow, a drummer made a cool CD,’ ” said Freese, who turns 28 on Christmas Day, over a bowl of gumbo at a Huntington Beach restaurant recently.

“For sure there’s that old stigma, like the joke: ‘What do you call a guy who hangs around with musicians? A drummer.’ But I never take any of those things personally. If someone does make that joke, I go, ‘Yes--but they’re not talking about me.”

The first thing that stands out about his album is that there’s not a drum solo to be found.

“With the exception of maybe one or two songs, the drums were the last thing I thought about,” he said. “I could rattle off a bunch of drummers who have put records out in the last year that you’ve never heard about because they’re only advertised through drum magazines and sold to drummers.

“For my record, I just happen to be a drummer. I can play some of that stuff, but it’s like, ‘These are the songs that I wrote.’ It’s got nothing to do with showcasing a drum circus.

“Most of the songs were written on guitar and they’re super simple and straightforward,” he added. “Because it’s my record I could play whatever I want, but I approach it just like I would playing on a Juliana Hatfield record or Paul Westerberg record: Here’s the song, it’s a simple pop song, you do exactly what’s called for. You don’t try to showboat, you just play for the song.”

The one-man path was more the result of practicality than ego.

“It was easier for me to do it this way just because I knew what I wanted to hear and I knew I didn’t have any money to pay anybody else. It was just easier to rely on myself every day. Plus, I was so busy I wasn’t able to block out a month of time to work on it. I would work on it for one day, then I’d be off [on other projects] for a month. Then three days would open up, then wouldn’t be able work on it for two weeks. . . . It was always real quick; at the drop of a dime I had to move.”

His lyrics often reflect the skewed perspective you’d expect for one who has spent 10 years with the Vandals--lots of self-effacing humor put across in blitzkrieg musical settings.

He also credits his appreciation for the bizarre to his dad, tuba virtuoso Stan Freese, who for more than three decades has led bands at Walt Disney World and then at Disneyland, which is what landed the family in Orange County when Josh was 6 months old. An offbeat picture of Stan Freese in a leopard print coat and little else loading a tuba into the back of his car appears on the back of the CD jacket of Josh’s album.

Because his pianist mother and grandparents also were musicians, it’s natural that Josh and his younger brother, Jason, became interested in music early and that both are now in-demand players in their own right. (Jason, said Josh, is a superb saxophonist who also knows his way around keyboards, and recently toured with Joe Walsh’s band.)

At 14, if not earlier, he was already telling people he wanted to grow up and become a household name. When they’d ask “Such as?” he’d say “like Buddy Rich.”

He’d already made enough of a reputation to go on a world tour at 15 with soap opera actor turned singer Michael Damian, which he said was the best and worst possible way to be introduced to life as a professional musician.

“We had a nice tour bus, nice hotel rooms, sold-out shows, really good money and tons of girls,” he said. “Then I came back--your first tour being everything you thought it would be, tenfold--then I joined the Vandals, which was way more fun and way more real. But the next thing you know I’m in a van pulling a U-Haul and saying, ‘What do you mean we’re all staying in one room at Motel 6?’

“I came off that tour with such a false sense of reality on every level. But I have to say: It hasn’t been that much fun since.”

The final frontier for Freese would be a solo tour.

“I used to say there’s no way . . . I’d ever do that,” he said. “The idea of strapping on a guitar and fronting a band has always scared me half to death.

“It’s always been really easy being quote-unquote just the drummer, and not having to deal with a lot of the headaches I see other people having to deal with. But it’s even more my stage fright. I’ve been behind the drums my whole life--it’s like a security blanket. Standing in front of people and opening my mouth kind of freaks me out.

“But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I realize, I could do it, and I probably will,” he said. “Next year I’d like to make another record and then put [a band] together and go out and play.”