Eric Friedman of Tremonti – Laying down Riffs and Touring the World!

By: Rob Cavuoto

Tremonti guitarist, Eric Friedman, is Mark Tremonti’s right hand man and partner in crime on his solo CD, All  I Was, 

Assuming both guitar and bass duties on this long-awaited solo debut, Eric and Mark thrash out riffs and trade licks with a fierce intensity that’s remarkably heavy and instantly infectious.

Though Eric’s guitar upbringing is based in the blues, he offers the perfect balance to Mark’s metal shredding, creating an incredible chemistry. All I Was is an assault that’s relentless from the first song to the last, burning down all expectations in its path.

I spoke with Eric, while Tremonti is on tour in Germany, about his fantasy beginnings with Mark and his fabulous fretwork on All I Was.

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Robert Cavuoto: You have a great story about how you met up with Mark Tremonti. Can you share it?

Eric Friedman: Yeah, it’s definitely something that felt surreal at the time. I was a serious guitar player at a really young age and at 15 years old started a blues band. I had an endorsement deal with Fender, as well as a manager.

I was at NAMM and stood in line with about 150 other people to get Mark Tremonti’s autograph at the PRS booth. My manager, Robert Knight, a renowned photographer, put the bug in Mark’s ear that I was a guitar player.

So when it got to be my turn, we had something to talk about. He said, “Hey, man, I’m about finished up here. Do you want to go check out some amps and maybe play some guitar?” And I was like, “Heck, yeah”. We went over to the Rivera booth and kind of just traded licks.

Ever since then, Mark and I just became really good friends. We play all kinds of music together and Tremonti has been a long time coming ever since then.

Robert: How did it get from there to playing guitar and bass on his solo album?

Eric Friedman: Mark and I have always jammed together. I’m real close with his family and he with mine. We’re always hanging out late nights, jamming, and recording ideas. We were always talking about one day putting a band together. He’s got all these heavy riffs that he wants to get out of his system.

He’s like, “Let’s do something with these riffs.” So, we got together, with my friend Garrett Whitlock [drums] we started going through all Mark’s ideas. Before we knew it, we had a couple of tunes we were playing.

I have a Pro Tools rig on my computer so I demoed out all the songs and sent them to Michael “Elvis” Baskette after the fact. We did a live demo, then played bass after the fact. He loved the tracks and we ended up doing a record. We originally wanted Wolfgang to play bass, but he was real busy with Van Halen.

I played bass on the demos, so why not just do it on record?

It just built from one thing to another. Now it’s a full-on band and we’re touring the world. I couldn’t be happier.

Robert: It’s a dream come true in many ways. How does someone with your background end up playing metal?

Eric Friedman: I love blues guitar like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix, Albert King, Hollywood Fats, all these clean blues players.

As a kid, I had a brother who is five years older than me and played a big role in introducing me to music. He had high school buddies playing Metallica and Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden.

All that kind of stuff that’s not necessarily metal, but it was like the bridge going into metal. Then my friend started getting into heavier bands and I loved learning all those guitar riffs and stuff.

After Submerged I got into Daughters of Mara. We were assigned to Virgin Records and got a record deal. We didn’t get a chance to put it out, but we did a record there with G.G. Guard who did Rage Against the Machine. Doing that record and being part of that band really had a lot to do with me buckling down and learning some metal guitar riffs and just playing more aggressively, using your right hand like a machine gun, as opposed to just doing blues-type stuff.

That was pretty much the transition for me. And then when Mark said, “Let’s do these heavy riffs, with this type of band,” it was just kind of like, perfect.

Robert: Tell me how Mark’s metal style and your blues and metal background meshed together to form the sound of the band?

Eric Friedman: I think it’s a cool when you have two guitar players that aren’t identical, when there are different voices. And I think it kind of gives them a reason to be in the band.

Frankly, you can’t have just a bunch of the same thing. Texture-wise, you’re playing a song. I think it’s cool to almost play producer. As a second guitar player you get to do swells and atmospheric things and jangly parts or double in with the heavy rhythm to make more of an impact.

I think its part of listening to each other and playing the right role. Blues first is a metal thing. I think you hear that most in our lead. Live, we have our spot where we trade off leads and we know we have a little free moment’s worth. It’s not planned, just off the cuff stuff, but you’ll definitely hear it then.

Robert: All the songs have varying levels of distortion and tone. For example, “Leave It Alone” and “So You’re Afraid” are very different tonality wise from “You Waste Your Time” and “New Way Out.” Tell me how you came across all these tones as well as how you tried to make them unique and different for each song.

Eric Friedman: For the main bass rhythms, when you do a record you try to add somewhat familiarity in the tone, so when you go from track to track, it doesn’t necessarily sound like a different band.

But, as far as my guitar tone on the record, I did all my rhythms and most of my parts with a PRS Baritone. It was a kind of custom one-off guitar made for Mark. It’s a beautiful guitar. I actually take it on tour with me because you can’t quite duplicate the sound of it. It sounds really, really clean.

As far as my distortion stuff, I try to keep the gain down and not oversaturate it, because I don’t want to get all my notes jumbled together. I want there to be some kind of clarity and definition. When you’re playing and you’re doing chugs and gallops, it’s much more defined when you have the space in between the gallops

Robert: I haven’t seen Tremonti live, what you guys play live?

Eric Friedman: We recorded 14 tracks for the record but only put 12 on it. We wanted to do something live when people come to the show, they not only hear the record, they get something special.

What we’re doing now is playing every single song we recorded plus the 2 unreleased songs. I’m not sure if we‘re going to release them as they are, or we might actually have Wolfgang go in and sing some harmonies and redo the bass on one of the songs. We’ll see what happens. We haven’t really decided anything yet, but we’ll play those two songs live.

One of them is called, “Gone” and the other one is called, “All That I Got.” They turned out to be pretty strong songs, so when you think about B sides, you think about them as throwaway songs, but I think everyone’s really taken a liking to them.

Robert: Any Alter Bridge or Creed songs in your set?

Eric Friedman: No, we try to keep it separate, so we just do our songs. We were talking about doing maybe a cover, but we’re still in the stages of trying to pick a good one.

Robert: Wolfgang Van Halen is playing bass, what’s it like playing with him?

Eric Friedman: Oh, it’s amazing playing with Wolfgang. He’s a really, really good friend of mine. We’re the only two in the band who live in California. We live pretty close to each other, so we’re always hanging out and jamming riffs.

Actually, there’s a funny story about this record with Wolfgang. He always wanted to know what the track sounded like. And I’d play it on my phone, the rough demos and stuff. He seemed really into it and so for his birthday I gave him the finished product, he was so happy. He said he played it constantly and learned some of the songs just from listening to it.

That’s how he is. It was so funny because we brought him in, the night before the first gig of the tour…our very first tour. We played through each song one time. We looked at him and said, “Hey, what do you think? You want to do it again?” and he said, “I’m good.” [Laughter].

So, we went to the next song, and he pretty much did that for every song. We played every song once the night before the tour. We just went forward from there. He can play anything – a drum, a guitar, bass. He’s just so musical. He’s very, very talented. We’re lucky to have him.

Robert: Is it a little intimidating knowing who his father is or when his father comes to see you?

Eric Friedman: Yeah, when dad comes to see us. [Both laughing] .That’s always really cool. We’re really just honored to be in the company of such a great talent. It’s definitely nerve-wracking.

It keeps you on your toes and you say, “Oh, my gosh. Eddie Van Halen’s there in the audience watching me play. I hope I don’t mess up.” [Laughter] He comes in there and he comes backstage after the show and we hang out in the bus and he couldn’t be nicer.

He seems to be so happy about us out here with his son having a good time. It really kind of takes the pressure off you when you talk to him and realize that he’s like, “I just came out to see my son play a gig.”

Robert: Are you working on any new material while out on the road?

Eric Friedman: Actually, we’ve been staying up way too late, like 5:00 in the morning, 6:00, hanging out jamming on riffs. We’ve got a couple of Micro Cubes in the background. We have some guitars on the bus and we just go over riffs and back and forth. We’ve got some pretty cool stuff in the works.

We’re always trying to write, whenever the time comes. We’ve just got to make sense of it when we’re all together. That’s what we’ve been doing.

Robert: Are there any plans for the next album?

Eric Friedman: It’s a little premature to try and schedule dates because I know Alter Bridge is about to embark on stuff, and they’re doing their next record.

They’re going to be writing and working on that for a while, so we’ll see how that all pans out. We might do a couple of scattered dates. I know we’ve been kind of talking about doing a couple of tour dates in between here and there with Tremonti.

Robert: You’re also now in Creed. Can you give us any updates on Creed?

Eric Friedman: Since we’re out here, there hasn’t been much movement, but we did just get back from a few dates in South America, Indonesia and the Philippines. It was really, really cool to get out there.

I had never been to those parts of the world. Playing with that band is like a dream come true for me. When I was younger, I literally had their posters and albums on my wall, you know? And when Mark asked me, “Hey, man, we’re getting back together. Do you want to play guitar with us?” It was one of the craziest moments.

I knew everything was going to change from there. It was all positive. As far as new material, there’s been a few Creed writing sessions months back. And there’s some really, cool stuff.

I’m not sure exactly when we’re supposed to go back in the studio again. We’ve got Alter Bridge coming up, you know – kind of plan it from there.