Two generations of musical firepower come together in the Appice Perdomo Project, a high-energy collaboration between legendary rock drummer Carmine Appice and acclaimed producer/multi-instrumentalist Fernando Perdomo.

In this exclusive interview with Real Music Hype, the duo opens up about how the project began, their remote creative process, their views on streaming, AI in music, and where they hope to take things next.

How did the Appice Perdomo Project come together, and what made you want to collaborate in the first place?

Appice: Basically, I got a call from Tom Dowd’s daughter, who was our producer at Rod Stewart. And she said there was a guy that wanted me to play on a session with him. And because of her, I found out what’s going on. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have bothered.
So I gave Fernando something to play to, of mine. And he did a great job. And then he gave me some of his, and I liked it a lot, and we went back and forth a couple of times. So we liked each other’s stuff, so I said let’s do a project together.
Basically, that’s how it really happened. It was very easy.

Perdomo: I randomly posted on Facebook that I wanted to work with Carmine and asked if anybody had a connection with him! My friend, Dana Dowd (Daughter of Tom Dowd) hooked us up! Carmine sent me a demo of something he was working on… That became the song “Funky Jackson” on the first album we made “Energy Overload”.

How would you describe the sound of the project to someone who’s never heard it before?

Appice: It’s basically instrumental progressive rock. Kind of like Jeff Beck or Mahavishnu kind of stuff. Not as crazy, but a little more rock than that. So it’s rock jazz instead of jazz rock.
I think that’s a good way to describe it. Rock jazz, instrumental rock jazz.

Perdomo: It’s a return to the golden Age of instrumental albums, which was the 70s! Jeff Beck, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to forever, Weather report! It’s high energy rock ‘n’ roll that’s happens to be instrumental! It’s not shred though… I’m not a heavy metal guitar player! Every time Carmine Appice compares my guitar playing with Jeff Beck I blush…. Jeff and Carmine have worked together pretty much every decade since the 60s. He knew Jeff inside and out! It is the biggest compliment I’ve ever had about my guitar playing.
Did you know that Carmine was the original intended drummer on Beck’s Blow By Blow? So this is his chance to make up for that not happening.

What’s your creative process like – are you writing and recording in the same space or working remotely?

Appice: Our creative process is a few different ways.
Sometimes I would give Fernando just a complete drum track, or give him parts I create like verses and choruses.
And sometimes he would give me a track that we’d maybe edit a little bit, and then I would put the drums to it.
And sometimes we would just work together over the phone, talk about different vibes that we want to do.
I would put down a drum track, and he would put down a guitar track, and then we’d talk on the phone, and we’d edit it and fix it.
So it was all done like that. It’s all done remotely. We’ve never sat in the same room and done anything. He has his studio and I have mine. And it’s pretty cool.

Perdomo: Carmine lives in Florida…. I live in California. We work remotely, but that actually works really well because we’re both very busy session musicians. We have three ways of working.
1. Carmine sends a demo
2. I send a demo
Or 3… I write to a complete Carmine drum track.
Three is my favorite way.
I am a drummer as well, so I could totally understand where all the hits are and almost predict what the drums are gonna be like.
Carmine’s drumming has been part of the Soundtrack of my life…. He is such a major influence on me.

Is there a particular track you’ve released that stands out to you or has a cool story behind it?

Appice: I think one of the tracks that stands out is Drum City because of the video.
The video we did was awesome. I had done some artwork with a friend of mine, Ed Heck, who is a famous artist.
I drew drums that looked like a city, and then he would colorize it. I did two or three things like that. I did Stonehenge, I did that.
So when we did the video for Drum City, we named it after the painting. And we said, let’s use the background as the painting, as the background for the video.” Then the video editor said “I could animate things in it”. I said, “That’s fantastic”. So we did.
So we animated two or three of my paintings as the background for the Drum City music, and it came out fantastic.
It’s one of my favorite tracks. That one started just with the drums. As I said before, I gave Fernando parts that would sound like a verse, and then a chorus, and then verse and then chorus. Then there’s an area for a solo, and it went great. It came out really fantastic. That’s one of my favorite tracks we did.
It’s a lot of favorite tracks. Biker Gang was pretty cool.
We brought some guests in, friends of mine, like Billy Sheehan, Derek Sherinian, Bumblefoot. Different people would come and play stuff with us, you know. It’s pretty cool.

Perdomo: My absolute favorite is a song called little Havana/Big Havana.
It started off as a demo of mine where I wanted to show off some of my Cuban roots…. Then Carmine said let’s do a big shuffle at the end! Well, that’s a really great collaboration.
That one rocks, harder than half of the songs we’ve done, but also has the really intricate first part which to me sounds like a cross between Santana and Jeff Beck Wired era.

Carmine, you’ve had an incredible legacy in rock drumming. What keeps you inspired and motivated after all these years?

Appice: I just love to play. I love making music. Now that I have the studio, it’s really easy to walk through the garage, go into the studio, and the drums are set up. They’re already mic’d up. I could put something in today, and next week I’ll go in and fix the drum fill. It’s going to sound exactly the same, which is easy for me, you know?
And sometimes on my latest Cactus album, I play some bass on it. We didn’t keep the bass, but I played it to put drums down.
Sometimes I start tracks like we did with Drum City. I start tracks in my studio.
So I’m constantly motivated because that’s what I do. I love to do it.
People down here, I live in Florida, they’d go “do you play golf?” I said, “No, I play drums” and that’s the truth. That’s what I play, and I love doing it.
So I’m motivated, I see things that, maybe I hear music that entices me.
I’ve written three Christian songs that I had Fernando play on. And I did my Rod show with an orchestra, demos that I needed.
Fernando played on that as well. And it was great experiences, playing all these things and working on my own studio.
I don’t mix, but I do get a killer drum sound, and that’s what’s great for me, is getting a killer drum sound, you know?

Fernando, your role as a multi-instrumentalist and producer seems central to your sound. How do you balance creative freedom with structure in a collaboration like this?

Perdomo: This is one of my favorite projects I’ve ever done. Number one I’m working with a legend. Number two he’s giving me all the freedom to be myself. There’s a mutual respect that is absolutely amazing, especially since we’re from two different generations of musicianship.
I love our collaboration. I hope we do lots more.

How do you view the current state of the music industry, especially with how technology and streaming have changed things?

Appice: Me being in the music industry for a long time, I see it as a drag. I won’t do Spotify or Apple Music or any of that because they rip us musicians off so bad. And all the royalties have gone down. You don’t see anybody with gold and platinum records anymore. It just really killed the industry, I think, when it started happening.
I think it’s gone bad. It’s great for kids, but even so, for kids nowadays, it’s very difficult to get anything going.
I made it when I was 20 years old. All these bands that are making it now are in their thirties, they spend 10 years on the internet, going around playing clubs in the van. There’s no radio, there’s no way to expose yourself except on the internet, on YouTube.
YouTube is so humongous, it’s worldwide. If you’ve got 100,000 followers on a channel, on a song, you divide it up around the world, and you know if you go into a city, you’ve got 100 people there. It’s a lot different.

Perdomo: The best thing about the collapse of the music industry is that no one’s making money the way they used to. Everyone that’s left really loves what they do.
We haven’t made any major money from our collaboration. But that’s probably what keeps us together, THE LOVE OF MUSIC.

AI in music creation is becoming a hot topic. With AI music generators like Suno and Udio gaining popularity, do you see these tools as something useful, concerning, or a bit of both?

Appice: I think it’s terrible. There’s just been an AI thing about me on YouTube titled 6 drummers I hate, and I listened to it, it’s all bullshit. I don’t hate these guys, you know?
I mean I was proud to be in, the fact that they did it with me, Jimmy Page, and a lot of big names, so they put me in with a bunch of big names, that was nice, but all the information was bullshit.
So there’s AI stuff that could be good. I heard there’s a program you can tell them what kind of song you want, the kind of groove you want, and in 10 minutes they’ll make a song. So it has no heart, no soul. The only things that I use, AI, I don’t use any AI at all. So I couldn’t tell you any more.

Perdomo: I LOVE IT. In fact, we have to love it. It’s not going away. And we need to master it so that it’s used for good and not evil.

What’s next for the Appice Perdomo Project – are there more songs or future releases on the horizon?

Appice: Hopefully, we need to find a label that would really do the job for us. Because the label we were on really didn’t do the job, they didn’t believe in it. And all the people that I talked to that had the album or looked at the YouTube, people loved it. And I loved it.
I thought we would at least maybe get a nomination for a Grammy for instrumental music, and they put us in album oriented stuff.
Like they are all records, albums with vocals. There’s no vocals on the record, it’s instrumental. So we kind of got screwed.
You know it’s been a couple of years, so maybe we’ll end up getting a record company that will believe in what we’re doing, this way it’s easier to make more records.

Perdomo: We would love to do another album… But we would need to do something different. I suggested getting a singer.

If you could go back in time, what advice would you give your younger self when you were just starting out, and would that advice be any different from what you’d tell a young artist trying to make it in today’s music industry?

Appice: I don’t even know what to tell artists today. All I tell artists today is learn your instrument, and be able to be fluent on your instrument, and try and make a living of playing your instrument. You don’t have to be a rock star. You can play in bands, show bands, wedding bands, all different kinds of stuff. You don’t have to be a rock star because again, the record business is so different now. I have no advice on how to make it today in the record business, you know? Young kids would know better than I would.
Like I said, I was lucky to make it when I was young. And I thank God all the time that I did make it and He gave me a great career that I still love at my age. And I can still play and go out and play. I do my Rod show, I do Vanilla Fudge, I do Cactus, I do Appice Perdomo Project, I do King Cobra. So I’m able to do that only because I have my studio. And I thank God that God put me in this house and I was able to do that.

Perdomo: Move to LA! It’s really tough to try to be a big fish in a small pond.
If you are good, you will get heard.

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VISIT: CARMINE APPICE’S WEBSITE | FERNANDO PERDOMO’S WEBSITE