Union Of the Fred Joins the Army

The idea of becoming an overnight rock star is a dream that most people who are into music, even just as avid listeners, almost invariably harbor. Who doesn't want the adoration of thousand of fans and the opportunity to make a living creating art and doing what you truly love to do? And for a prospective professional musician, the idea that they'll suddenly be recognized for their talents is a potent motivator. The thing is, those kinds of dreams almost never work out, and most musicians get hit by reality and either go back to school or get day jobs. But don't tell that to former Chicoan and Union Of the Dead drummer Fred Telles.
Fred moved from Chico to Southern California at the end of summer 2001 with the rest of the Union Of the Dead - Cliff Greenwood and Gerardo Wackenhut - and shortly thereafter, found himself playing drums for Hellcat Records recording artists, Tiger Army. Fred initially met the Tiger Army guys through a mutual friend, a guy who was from Ukiah, where Tiger Army started, and who came to school in Chico, where he met the UOD boys. This mutual friend hooked up the two bands, and over the last couple of years, they'd gotten to know each other a little bit. When Fred first moved to Southern California from Chico, he was looking for a job. Because he wasn't interested in delivering pizzas anymore (while in Chico Fred worked at Woodstock's and part-time in the Synthesis' sales department), he contacted Tiger Army.
"I knew them from before, and it just so happened that their drummer quit right before a big TSOL tour they had booked. He [the drummer] quit a week before I had called - [I] actually [called] just to see if they needed a roadie for their tour, and they asked me to play drums."
That was in August, and according to an enthusiastic Fred, things couldn't be going better.
"It's going incredibly great, awesome," he said over the phone as Tiger Army makes their way from Tucson to Tempe, Arizona. When Fred first joined the Hellcat band, he knew much of the group's earlier material, but with only a week to prepare, Fred had a lot of work to do on the newer Tiger Army songs.
"The music on the first album wasn't too tough to learn, just because I had listened to it so much before I joined the band. I just had to learn some new stuff I had never done before, so I had to pick that up and now it's getting much better. Plus they've given me some freedom to throw some of my own style in there too, which is really nice." And though Fred's having a great time, touring with a professional band is definitely a learning experience as well a dream come true. "Man, when you play at a bigger level, you see how much more professional it is, how much it can be like work sometimes. You gotta be on point, and the physical requirements of the tour are pretty hard, too. It's something you have to exercise and get ready for. It's weird. We don't have roadies on this tour, so we have take care of all our own gear. The guys we're touring with all have roadies, though."
Tiger Army is currently on the road with Sick Of it All and Dropkick Murphys. "It's crazy, they're total bad asses," says Fred, and the tour itself is doing really well. Across the nation, kids are packing medium- to large-sized venues, and Fred's playing to the biggest crowds he's ever been in front of.
"We played to 2,600 in Worchester, Massachusetts, and it was rad," he remembers. "We also played a Philadelphia venue that held 1,900. That felt like a stadium show, and it feels weird to show up at a club and have the people there treat me crazy-good. It's like, come on, I'm just a punk rocker. I'm just not used to having people like loaders at clubs come and carry all my stuff in and out for me. It's really weird. And it's crazy to drive across the country and have people come out to see us and they know our music, even though we've never been there before.
"We stay in hotels every night," Fred continues, expounding on the luxuries of road travel with a band that's got an established following. "It's kinda nice to be making enough money to be able to do what we want on tour. We're not struggling from show to show, or just trying to make sure we have enough gas to make to the next gig."
So what about Union of the Dead, the former Chico trio punk rock trio that launched Fred's professional drumming career? Will the fame and fortune of nightly hotel rooms, van tours and teenaged groupies lure Union of the Fred away from his first punk rock love? Not likely.
"We're still together," Fred flatly states about the future of UOD. "In fact, Cliff's on tour with us right now, as the Tiger Army roadie and merchandise sales guy, so that's cool and a lot fun. But we're still together, and that's good because this might be kind of an 'in' for us. People are starting to wonder who I am and they find out that I'm in Union Of the Dead, and then they look out for that name. So we've gotten a little bigger from this. Kids go onto the Tiger Army Web site and it tells them who I am, and they check it out. People have been e-mailing the Tiger Army Web site and asking about Union Of the Dead, and kids have been coming up to me at shows and asking about us."
Union Of the Dead actually opened for Tiger Army at the band's latest Epitaph CD release party in Los Angeles, and Fred has been playing drums in double duty. Union Of the Dead might be Fred's band, but Tiger Army is really cool and it's paying the bills for now. Fred says that his foreseeable future definitely involves Tiger Army.
"We've talked about doing more stuff together, like more tours in the next year that they've asked me to do. So for right now, I'm pretty set." As a rock drummer in his mid-20s, Fred's doing better than most college graduates his age: he may not be a millionaire, but he's got a job in his field, he enjoys doing what he wants, and he recognizes how lucky he is. And even though Fred's long-term future with Tiger Army may not be set in stone, it sure beats the hell out of delivering pizzas until Union Of the Dead gains their own success.
"Fuck yeah it does."

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