For over 40 years, Carl Canedy has held down the beat for American metal powerhouse, The Rods. His hard hitting approach, coupled with Garry Bordonaro’s thundering bass lines, David “Rock” Feinstein’s mega riffs, and a triple vocal attack would cement the band as a US counterpart to the NWOBHM. He’d also spend the better part of the 80s producing such legendary acts as Anthrax, Overkill, Exciter, Possessed, Blue Cheer, and others. When The Rods aren’t touring and recording, Canedy keeps himself busy with his own namesake band, as well as a new outfit named The 450s. We sat down with Canedy to discuss his ongoing projects, production endeavors, and the future of The Rods.
Greetings Carl and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Carl Canedy: I’m doing great Joe! Thanks for having me.
Thank you for taking the time to do this. I want to start with something that isn’t The Rods and that is your latest project, The 450s. Truthfully, I’m not sure how this flew under my radar. I got an email with the promo, saw your name attached, and knew I had to check it out. How did this band come together and who plays with you?
CC: It’s an interesting thing. What happened is I manage and produce both bands that the members of The 450s are a part of, Young Turk and St. James. We’re all friends. St. James is from Connecticut and Young Turk is from Miami, but they were coming to my studio, so they all hung out and became good friends. After all these years, we’ve remained friends. The bass player, Bob Jacobs, he really wanted us to do a project together. I thought it was interesting because Jimmy (Jacobs) is a great songwriter, and Rhett is a great songwriter. It was interesting to see what would come of it. Bobby put it together and it turned out to be great. The collaborative nature of the project was great. Jim and Rhett really did a great job together. That’s what happened. It was really…I hate saying “organic”, but it really was organic.
We were scheduled to do a writing session in Atlanta, but I had pulled a muscle, so I couldn’t get on a plane at 5 in the morning. There was no way. I never made that writing session, which I think was a blessing because Rhett and Jimmy basically fleshed everything out. When I got to Miami and we were all in the same room, I had a couple of little arrangement ideas, but nothing that would hurt the music. We recorded live. What you hear is us in a room together. I think that’s why the album has such a powerful feel. These days, everything is done remotely. You lose what you gain by being able to perfect things in a remote situation. You sometimes lose that whole feel of a band playing together. That’s what we had. I was really pleased how tight the rhythm tracks are.
Whereas The Rods and your namesake band specialize in traditional metal, The 450s play a dark, raw brand of hard rock, reminiscent of 70s Aerosmith and Motörhead. Did you purposely set out to try something radically different with this band?
CC: No. This was a really a case of what we did and what we wrote. Rhett has a certain way of writing. Jimmy has a certain way of writing. Interestingly enough, when the two came together, it was that Rhett is very rhythmic and has a lot of Latin influence. He’s a great lyricist and super talented guy. Jimmy on the other hand is also that, but he’s more in the rock vain of Van Halen, Aerosmith, and the 70s. I think it was just the two of them hearing a lot of their influences, and then when we all got together and worked on things, you’re hearing everybody’s influences. It was amazing because we’ve been friends for so long that it was really easy to perform as a band. It just came together. It was really fun for me.
Most of the recordings I do now are done remotely. Being in a room with the band and working on things and saying, “Let’s try this.” or “Let’s take this tempo a little differently.” It was a huge. When you’re recording remotely, the tempo is dictated. You’re not changing the tempo. If you have to change a part, you have to send it all back to everybody and they have to redo the parts. So a lot of the times, unless it’s something major, you just let it go and say, “Yeah, it’s cool. I’m not gonna bother anyone.” Here we can make those little changes and I think that end result was fantastic. I’m incredibly proud of it even though it is different from the other music I’ve done. This is raw and powerful.
Is the plan moving forward to turn The 450s into a full fledged touring and recording outfit, or is it mostly a studio project?
CC: That’s our goal. It’s a very, very difficult task, but we’re working toward it. We’re gonna have a writing session soon and we’re working toward a new album.
Onto The Rods, it’s been a few years since the band’s last album, Brotherhood of Metal. Much has changed since then. For one, there’s the addition of singer Michael San Ciro. This isn’t the first time The Rods have recorded as a four piece, having done Heavier than Thou (1986) with Shmoulik Avigal on vocals. Are there any major differences for the band working with a lead singer?
CC: There have been some changes. One of them is that Mike is no longer in the band. I love Mike. He and I are working on another project together. I can’t announce it, but it’s gonna be some pretty big news. However, it was decided mutually by Mike and all of us that, at this point, The Rods have done 42 years with David singing. We should probably carry on like that for the last couple of albums. For our new album, Shockwave, we have 12 songs written. We’re just waiting for my drum tracks, which I’ll start at the end of this week. It shouldn’t take too long for me to map out all of my drum tracks. That album is basically written and guitars and bass are done, as well as most of the vocals.
But yeah, there’s no lead singer any longer. We just did a show at Rose Hall. It should be up on YouTube. I believe we’re gonna wind up doing a DVD from that show, but that’s with Freddy Villano. He’s our new bass player who fits unbelievably well. It’s like playing with Craig Gruber from back in the days of working with Shmoulik. He was one of the early bass players in The Rods, until he went off to some band called Black Sabbath. I don’t know why he left for that, but he did *laughs*.
It’s been great working with Freddy because he’s a great guy. Freddy played with Quiet Riot and Dee Snider’s Widowmaker, so he’s a veteran. He also writes for Bass Player magazine. He’s a very talented guy and the perfect fit. I can’t say enough about him. I tell him all the time how happy I am he’s in the band because for me as a drummer, the bass player is part of that unit. He makes your drums sound more powerful and dynamic. He and I locked in. Live already, it’s passed the litmus test. I’ve already heard the bass tracks on this album and it kicks ass.
This upcoming release will also be the first Rods album in over 35 years without longtime bassist Garry Bordanaro. What led to his departure from the band? Were you and David at all hesitant about continuing The Rods without him?
CC: That’s a very, very good question. Nobody’s asked that yet, so I’m glad you did. Garry felt it was time for him to go. He wanted to see the world. He did see the world. He didn’t feel there was anything left for him to do. He works at Cornell. He has a great job and travels for it. For him, it was time to go. We took a long time, David in particular. I was like, “Let’s just get another bass player and move on immediately.” David was like, “Let’s give Garry time.” We did give him time. We gave him a year. He said, “I thought about it. I don’t have anything more to give.” That was it. He was out.
We waited a year before we moved on to make sure he didn’t change his mind, as well as giving him the respect of being the longtime bass player of the band. He was a huge part of the band, but once we turned the corner on this, it was the best move. In my opinion, and people will be able to see it live, it was the best move we could’ve made. If we had to make a replacement for Garry, Freddy was the guy. It was sad to see him go. There was certainly no bad blood. He just felt it was time to retire from the band.
That’s fair. We saw the same thing happen with another power trio, Rush. The whole reason they folded was because Neil (Peart) decided to call it a day. I appreciate you answering that for me.
CC: Honestly, it was a very good question.
So the new album is entitled Shockwave and I know you said there’s gonna be 12 songs. What else can you tell us about this upcoming album? Any details on a potential release date?
CC: There isn’t. We have two labels that have made offers. We just haven’t decided on where we lie. Once we do, we’re hoping to get it out the first half of 2023, January, February, March.
You played drums in the earliest incarnation of Manowar. What was that time like and why didn’t you stay in the band?
CC: I was there in the beginning for the writing session and the demo, and when the band showcased for EMI and got the deal. It was great. The Rods got their record deal at the same time. It was a case of where do you go? I love Manowar. I knew they were gonna be huge. But I also knew I liked writing songs. There would never be room for my songs in Manowar and that was important to me at the time. That was one of the decisions I just had to make. It was a really tough one, especially having been there at the genesis of Manowar, knowing how fantastic the songs were, working on them from the beginning, and knowing that this band was going to become a major, major act, which they became and still are. It was a tough decision, but I made the right one for myself.
I would agree! Besides being an accomplished drummer and singer, you’ve also been responsible for producing some of the greatest metal albums of the 1980s. What first got you interested in production?
CC: From day one, when I first started playing drums, I also started playing guitar. I’ve always been involved in that and writing and arranging, writing horrible songs, and I’ve written so many of them. I think the Guinness people are gonna be stopping by soon to give me an award for the most horrible songs ever written *laughs*. I was always interested in the arrangements and I was always interested in the recording part of it too, so it was from day one.
By the time we did the first Rods album, we had no money. We were doing this with Chris Bubacz who was in college at Fredonia University in Buffalo. We would play gigs and then we would drive to Fredonia to record when he could get time in the studio. I think we paid $1,400 for our recording there, but we couldn’t pay money. We had to donate. We bought a $1,400 piece of equipment, a Lexicon something, and donated it to the school. We didn’t have a producer, so David and I wrote the songs and we would produce it. That’s when I really took that next step as a producer.
I want to talk about some of those albums. There’s so many that hold a place in my collection, starting with this classic right here, Anthrax’s Fistful of Metal (1984). What did you know about Anthrax leading up to the recording? How were they in the studio?
CC: I knew nothing of Anthrax. Jonny Z asked me to produce this band. They showed up. We were in Elmira. We were going to do preproduction at my friend Bart Curtis’s studio. It wasn’t suited for the band. It was a small studio, but the guys were hardcore, super dedicated, and talented. On that first album, they weren’t studio savvy, so my role was trying to make sure that everything was tight and to capture the power. They were an incredibly powerful band. In the microscope of the studio, you had to be very tight. It fleshed itself out because Scott (Ian) was really tight on rhythm. Danny (Spitz) was the wicked lead guitarist. Charlie (Benante) was basically a one take guy. Once we got the mics on the drums, Charlie blew through the basic tracks like nothing.
Neil Turbin got a little bit shorted on that because I was trying to work with the guys on making sure everything was tight. We didn’t have a lot of time and that cut Neil short, but Neil did a killer job. I think his vocals are fantastic on the album. I just saw a critic’s choice on Anthrax. #1 was “I’m the Man”, but #2 and #3 were Spreading the Disease and Fistful of Metal. I’ve heard that over the years that they are the fan favorites. There’s no doubt on Fistful of Metal that Neil kicks ass.
Yeah, there’s so many classics on here. “Deathrider”, “Metal Thrashing Mad”, “Soldiers of Metal”: Every song is so raw and powerful. There’s something about those thrash debuts man. There’s a youthfulness to them that you really only hear on those first albums.
CC: That’s right. They were young guys who were hungry and talented. They were looking to get a major label deal and put everything into it.
Another album you produced is Exciter’s sophomore effort, Violence and Force (1984). This album comes off as far more aggressive than their debut, Heavy Metal Maniac (1983). Did you encourage the band to push the envelope musically?
CC: I have to say, and I’m still friends with the guys in Exciter to this day, we hit it off really well. I know that there were a couple of things where Jonny Z, rest in peace, I miss him so much. He was like a brother. Dan (Beehler) had such a heavy approach to his vocals and Jon was saying he couldn’t understand all the words. He was concerned about that, but I wasn’t. Dan was singing with so much power and energy. Again, I really tried to capture the energy of what the band was doing. That’s always been my approach: Try to see what the band is about and then do my best to get it to translate. It’s not easy to translate that energy from a live performance onto a recorded version. I didn’t necessarily encourage them to go for it, but when they were going balls to the wall, I was right there with them, making sure that we captured it.
On the back cover of Violence and Force, you are credited as Carl “The Sacred One” Canedy. How did that nickname come about?
CC: *laughs* I guess that’s an inside joke with the band. I’ll leave it at that. If you ask them, I’m sure they’ll tell you. But they were very kind and have been great friends over the years. They’re still a killer band who’s gotten better as time’s gone on.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of The Rods’ classic third album, Wild Dogs. What are your favorite songs off that album and what memories stand out from its recording?
CC: Wild Dogs is my favorite and least favorite. I’m a bit torn on the album. I love the songs I wrote. I love the songs David wrote. But the recording process with Martin Pearson…I think it was mixed quietly, or lighter, and I’m a loud drummer. I have some finesse now, but I still don’t play softly. Martin had me playing so hard that I literally bent a bass drum beater. For all you drummers out there, you know how hard it is to bend a bass drum beater. It’s almost impossible. You gotta be going for it. It was very hard. I had to play incredibly hard and I couldn’t play the way I played on the first album. It was what he wanted. He was producing the album. I was never for it and I was unhappy with it, but the end result is some great songs. “Wild Dogs” is one of the most popular Rods songs of all time.
The experience of being in England was really great as well. I loved that. It was fun. We were getting ready to tour with Iron Maiden, so the anticipation of all that was tension and excitement at the same time. I did love the songs, I did love the recording, but there was definitely tension there. I wanted to keep the same team, Armand John Petrie and Chris Bubacz who engineered our first album. I was of the mindset, “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” I do feel that had we kept the same team together, we would’ve made a sonically better sounding second album.
Did the band find themselves more welcomed in England amidst the NWOBHM than in America?
CC: Absolutely. When we went to England, we had no idea. When we read Sounds magazine, we had no idea of any of the scene. We did our first album and Sounds labelled us “the American Motörhead”. We had no idea of the metal scene going on in Britain, so it was a shock to us.
You were welcomed with open arms!
CC: The fans were unbelievable, without a doubt. The audiences, the press…fantastic.
I’ve heard rumors that this next Rods album could be the last. Is it true that the band who’s “Too Hot to Stop” is considering retirement?
CC: I don’t know how that rumor started. I know I probably mentioned that maybe it would be our last album. But the way we’re writing now and with Freddy in the band, he’s contributed. Garry actually never wrote a song or contributed a riff to The Rods. Every song he sings, there’s a couple that were cover songs, but every song Garry sings are songs I wrote. With that, we weren’t sure how things were going to go without Garry. The band is so reenergized now. The writing is coming along very quickly. We’re going to have material for the next album already, before we’re done with this album. I don’t think this will be our last album. Shockwave is not even close to our last album. We have at least one more, if not several after that.
For more information on The Rods, visit www.therods.com. For more information on The 450s, visit www.the450s.com.