"I don't blend, I'm not a trend!" Davi cries out, and it's a statement that echoes with truth down the length and breadth of his long journey.
He set out on it early in his life and plowed straight into the roughest patches to grapple with the status quo.
"I was almost a normal child like any other Brazilian child, playing soccer and stuff. I could get a little "punk rebel” coz I didn't like society and school. I just wanted to get away from all that. All my life, I loved to learn new things, but at school, I could not do it, so I was sleeping or finding a way to get away from the classroom. I had my moments like when I blow up the toilet at my school, or when I put soap in the water fountain, and was always questioning the teachers. I remember when I was in sixth grade, I start a protest against having chairs in the class room, I used to think how much money the school wasted buying new chairs.... so I would refuse to use them! I set in the floor almost all the year. I love learning, and teaching is one of the most amazing things in life! I just got angry to see how we corrupted every good thing in this life, such as learning and teaching!"
One of the good and uncorrupted things in his life was his family, whose Sunday outings gave him the first taste of the notes he would later play.
"My parents are one of the big reasons why I'm still alive. Always used to take me to church and there I was surrounded by music. Amazing people. They are still married, that is a miracle now days."
"I started playing trumpet when I was 9, but never got far. Bounced around instruments, studied music theory, but could not get along with any of them until I got my bass, and let me tell you, that bass was a piece of shit. I paid $25 (12 pounds) for it. One day I decide that I wanted my $25 bass to look like a "Dave Mustaine" guitar, so I took it to the carpenter to cut for me. The only problem is that we messed up the measures. So my "flying V" bass had no buttons, and the circuit and bridge didn't work anymore, but I was so happy! My parents keep that until today in Brazil, they don't let me throw it away!"
"I took lessons for maybe six months, I had a good teacher, but he wanted to teach me how to really play and all I wanted was to learn how to play Metallica and GNR songs. When I was 16, I got fired from my first office job in Brazil. I took my last paycheck and got myself another piece of shit instrument. This time it had two strings more and it was called Guitar!" he says with a laugh. "Maybe I should have started a business with the Carpenter dude."
Speaking of carpenters, he later joined a Christian rock band out of São Paulo called Oficina G3 which was to eventually be nominated twice for the Latin Grammy Awards. He left the band to pursue his own music in the U.S., but his step towards independence took him into dark days.
"When you move somewhere that you can't speak a word of the language, no friends, $800 in the pocket, a guitar and a suitcase, man, you better be ready to get yourself in some trouble. The first three years, I was always working 60 to 80 hours a week trying to fix my papers. But after that time adjusting, getting a job, learning a little of English, I was fine!"
Or so he thought at the time. After the cancellation of his tour with Aerosmith and Motley Crue, he crawled into a deep hole, but out of its shadows came inspiration.
"That was a week before the tour would start. How would you feel if the next six months of your life was gone? I had no plans, plus the biggest change as a session musician that there probably could have been. At the time, I was living at this hole called " Black Cave " what didn't help! It was a rehearsal space that I lived at with another friend. We had a band and no money, so we decided to live there. We could rehearse at any time and record as well. I end up living there for 6 months. No running water, kitchen, or bathroom, no windows, just four black walls in the middle of nowhere in Orlando! We didn't have much money to eat or do anything else. Shower was once a week in a friend’s house... or late in the night across the street in the parking lot with the water hose. "
Never once, though, did it enter Davi's mind to quit. His dedication to music is as steady as a rock, "It was terrible, but was fun and we made some kick ass rock and roll! That was the worst and best time of my life all together. If you are a doctor you heal people and nobody questions, you are a musician, you make music. End of the story! "
Davi Drak’s story is far from over. He is currently recording his solo album titled, Unbreakable, which he describes as being a ‘kidney stone topped with a heart attack’, so grab your pacemakers!
" I enjoy creating not copying. It's hard enough for me to remember how to play my own stuff. At the moment, I’m in studio, so a normal day would sleep between four to seven hours, I spend around three hours networking, and anywhere from nine to fourteen in studio. Lots of people think that artists as slackers! I challenge any of them to follow me for a week!"
Despite the hours, urban skinny-dipping, and cardiac arrest, he doesn't consider what he does work. Music is a way of life.
"Be ready for the roller coaster. Make sure to do your homework and know your stuff very well. Focus in the music. I think that now days we have too many ‘posers’. They are everywhere in this world. So we have engineers that don’t know about it, but has a diploma! The same happen in music. You buy a drum kit or a guitar rig, learn how to play two songs, and call yourself a musician. It’s sad to see a lot of the new bands saying stuff like “We are the next big thing” or “We are going to take over the world”. It makes me feel like I’m watching 'Pinky and the Brain'. I just can’t imagine Mozart saying that to Hendrix! They did it for the love. That is all."
| written by Joshua Schrader
