Ex-ICED EARTH Drummer: JON SCHAFFER Is 'A Really Hard-Working And Dedicated Guy'

Chad Bowar of HeavyMetal.About.com recently conducted an interview with acclaimed drummer Richard Christy (ex-ICED EARTH, DEATH, LEASH LAW, CONTROL DENIED). A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

HeavyMetal.About.com: It's been about two years since you've been with ["The Howard Stern Show"] full-time. How much do you miss being a full time musician?

Richard Christy: I miss it a lot. I love touring. Luckily I have my dream job to keep me busy. I work about 14 hours a day now and totally love it. I do like traveling the country. I miss that a little bit. I miss getting up in front of crowds. I still go to shows all the time. Once in a while I get to sit in with bands. I sat in with SHADOWS FALL and a few other bands. That brings the feeling back, too.

HeavyMetal.About.com: How did you end up meeting Chuck [Schuldiner] and becoming a member of DEATH?

Richard Christy: Steve Childers from BURNING INSIDE and I were walking through a B. Dalton bookstore in the Altamonte mall in Orlando one day and we saw Chuck reading a recording magazine. We freaked out and did a double take. We stopped and talked to Chuck. He was so cool and so nice. We told him we had a band called BURNING INSIDE and talked to him for a long time. I would see Chuck at shows every now and again and at parties. When I found out that Chuck needed a drummer, I found out through my friends in the band WICKED WAYS who were good friends with Chuck. They recommended that Chuck give me an audition, so I called him and auditioned a few days later. It went really well.

HeavyMetal.About.com: Did you have any problems working with Jon Schaffer in ICED EARTH?

Richard Christy: No, I got along with Jon great. He's a really determined guy, and as long as you do your job he's cool. We had some great times on tour. He's a really hard-working and dedicated guy. I never had any problems with him.

HeavyMetal.About.com: You also did some tour fill-ins for a couple different bands during that time frame, right?

Richard Christy: That was in the year 2000. It was a busy year. I was in CONTROL DENIED at the time. I joined ICED EARTH and DEMONS & WIZARDS that year and went on tour with INCANTATION. John McEntee from INCANTATION called me in April of 2000 and it happened to work out that I would be able to tour with them for a month and a half. A few days after I got home I flew to Europe with DEMONS & WIZARDS. That was a lot of fun. It was a big contrast. The INCANTATION tour was in a van playing small clubs to around 300 to 500 people a night. Then we went to Europe on a big tour bus with DEMONS & WIZARDS playing festivals that were about 10,000 to 20,000 people each weekend.

I actually had a lot of fun on both tours. The INCANTATION tour was a blast because I've been friends with all those guys since the mid '90s when I lived in Missouri. We had a lot of freedom. When you tour in a van you're able to do a lot more then when you're in a bus. If you have a day off and want to go camping or see some sights you're free to do that. With a bus you have to park somewhere. Those guys are big horror movie fans, so I went on the Internet and mapped out a whole horror movie tour that went along with our tour. In each city we'd do to we'd go to different sites from different horror movies, like the mall from "Dawn Of The Dead" when we were in Pittsburgh. We went to the lighthouse from John Carpenter's "The Fog" when we were in San Francisco and went to all the shooting locations from the original Halloween when we were in Pasadena. The coolest thing of all was the bar and abandoned house where they filmed John Carpenter's "Vampires". It was out in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico. We had about three days off in Albuquerque so we'd go out to the desert and drink at this bar where they filmed "Vampires". It was really cool.

Read the entire interview at HeavyMetal.About.com.