In The Whale
Denver, CO
Eric Riley – drums/vocals
Nate Valdez – guitar/lead vocals
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How long have you been musicians? How did you get into it in the first place?
ERIC: I started playing percussion in the school band in junior high. I got a drum kit for Christmas when I was 13 and never looked back. I continued to play in school band throughout high school and was a music major for two years in college. All the while dabbling in many different kinds of heavy bands. I got serious about trying to play in bands full time right around my second year of college when I dropped out.
NATE: When I was 15, my dad decided that my little brother was the musical talent and gave him a guitar. I was not to touch said guitar. Needless to say, my brother was not interested, and me being me, I promptly stole it and fell in love, playing along to the Meat Puppets, Nirvana, and other various noisy punk bands, and I eventually started my own band in high school. I’ve been mostly self taught with a little help from my school music teacher along the way.
What have been some of your major musical influences, past or present?
The big ones are Deftones, Clutch, Helmet, Every Time I Die, and Rage Against The Machine.
How do you approach songwriting as just a two-piece band? Is there a specific way you make up for lack of low end, or does that even matter in the way you write?
Nate writes all the lyrics and a big chunk of the instrumentals, brings it to Eric and we work on it together at practice. Eric adds the sort of finishing touches before the song is finished.
For our live show, Nate runs an A/B pedal out of his pedal board. The first signal goes into an octave pedal and into a bass amp, the second signal goes into a guitar amp. So, we’re able to get that low rumble without adding a third member or sacrificing the low end. In the past we’ve hired bassists to record, and Nate has recorded bass. But, for the current recoding, we ran it like our live set, and (our producer) Steve Evetts was able to get a nice gritty bass tone that we were happy with.
Nate, what drew you to using pedals initially? Have you been using them throughout your playing career? How have pedals helped you shape your sound or influence the style that you’ve created?
Early on, I used pedals because I honestly didn’t know about amp distortion. I’ve always approached it in the way that the amp should be a sort of blank canvas, and the pedals are your paint. So I always try to make my amp sound as clean as possible and add to it from there. Necessity has also always been a big factor. I grew up in a very small town in the middle of nowhere, so when I was learning and crafting my sound as a guitar player, the closest music store was a Guitar Center 90 minutes away in Pueblo, CO. That doesn’t leave much time for trying out this or that, or talking with your local music store guy, asking for suggestions, swapping gear, etc. It was always about just getting really basic stuff and working with that. Only later on did I realize that many of my heroes in the grunge era were doing the same sort of thing, just making it loud and fuzzy and simple.
What do your current setups look like? Take us through your rigs/gear?
ERIC: I play a 4-piece Pork Pie drum kit. 22” kick, 13” rack tom, 16” floor tom. I play a 14” Pearl Export series snare that I’ve been using for years and for some reason sounds incredible. I’ve played really nice expensive snares and nothing seems to compare to that Export, at least in the live setting.
I’ve always used Evans heads, EC2’s on my toms, HD Dry on my snare, and EMAD on the kick drum. For cymbals, at the moment, I’m using Ziljian 15” A Custom hi hats, a 20” Meinl Byzance medium crash, a 20” Meinl dark crash, and a 22” Meinl medium ride.
I just started using an Axis Longboard kick pedal and I’m absolutely in love with it, and I’ve used Vic Firth Extreme 5B drumsticks for the past decade.
NATE: Currently I’m using a 1981 Fender Bassman 135 head with a matching Fender 2×12 cabinet, and an Ampeg V4 bass head with a matching 4×10 cabinet. Like I said earlier, really simple. My pedals are as follows: an Elecro-Harmonix Big Muff, an Ibanez Tube Screamer, a Dunlop Original Cry Baby wah pedal, a Boss OC-3 Super Octave to drop the bass signal and then another one that I sometimes use for the guitar signal, and a Planet Waves tuner that is beat to hell and back that I’ve had forever and somehow still works! My guitar is a Gretsch Duo Jet Double Cutaway with a bigsby that I’ve had for almost a decade. I’ve replaced three tuning pegs, broken the neck and put it back together. I’ve also taken out the neck pickup since I only use the bridge, essentially turning the toggle switch into a kill switch. Goodby resale value! I only use Mogami Gold cables, thanks to their amazing lifetime warranty that I take advantage of heavily.
Favorite type of pedal?
Big Muff, no question.
What are the last 5 albums you each listened to?
ERIC:
Isis – Wavering Radiant
He Is Legend – Few
Beastie Boys – Hot Sauce Committee
Kimbra – The Golden Echo
Gojira – Magma
NATE:
Underoath – Erase Me
Deftones – Diamond Eyes
PUP – Morbid Stuff
The Menzingers – After The Party
Bob Mould – Sunshine Rock
What’s up next for In The Whale?
Hopefully touring a lot of 2019, and possibly a new record sometime in 2020.
Thanks so much to Eric and Nate for taking the time to answer some questions! Make sure to go check out inthewhale.com, and check their tour page to see when they’re headed to a town near you! Cheers!
Check out some of our other interviews here:
Kyle Sipress of The Devil Wears Prada
Mike Hranica of The Devil Wears Prada
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