Interview with Eric Cabello of Drughoney by Aria Cabello
Flyers by Jason Sandbach
Videos by Danny Monzon
Photos courtesy of Jaime Monzon
In the age of social media, nostalgia rules. In New York City, bands of every genre seem to be looking backwards. A newfound interest in nu metal has sprung up around Deftones’ TikTok fame. So when I posted a video of my dad performing in the late 90s with his band Drughoney, I wasn’t shocked when my dm’s were flooded with praise and a proposal to write an article about them. The thing is, although I slept in a crib in front of my dad’s drum kit while his band practiced, I was too young to really experience their story unfolding. So I sat down with my dad to find out what the fuck was going on.
Aria: Drughoney was your first band, how long had you been playing drums before that?
Eric (Dad): Hmm.. a little less than two years.
Aria: Okay, so a minute!
Eric: Ehhh yeah, not that long. Your mom bought my first drum set for me when your brother was 6 months old and I practiced on my own for a while. Then, when mom was pregnant with you, I met Drughoney. I met Jason (lead vocalist) and Jaime (lead guitarist) and we got the band together.
Aria: So mom said that you met Jason at the call center… er, no, met his girlfriend?
Eric: Yes, [I met] his wife at our telemarketing job and then she introduced me to Jason.
Aria: How was Drughoney formed?
Eric: Well, Jason and Jaime had been writing songs together for a minute and they just needed a band, really, and I was the first person that joined. Both of them moved from Del Rio to San Antonio and I went over to listen to what they had written and I was like “Oh.. I could play to that.”
Aria: Okay, so you went over to listen to some songs and you were like “Totally, this is my vibe, let’s do this.”?
Eric: Yeah, “let’s do this.” We got together and practiced and we had good chemistry.
Aria: And then Miguel (bassist) and David (rhythm guitar)-
Eric: Well, actually, David didn’t come along until later on. We played for a while and recorded our first album as a four-piece.
Aria: With Miguel?
Eric: Yeah, we tried one other bass player before him and then found Miguel. We played several shows and recorded our first album with him. It wasn’t until our second album, well, before our second album, that we added Jaime’s brother, David into the mix, which really changed our sound a lot.
Aria: How so?
Eric: Jaime and David, they’re brothers, but their styles of playing [guitar] are so completely different. At the same time, they have this almost… -they just vibe with each other. Their styles mix really well. They have this nonverbal communication going on, they just kind of play off of each other.
Aria: I mean, you know I know.
Eric: Yeah, you know. It is exactly like you and your brother. It’s very nonverbal and it’s just a vibe, very telepathic.
Aria: So cool. I feel like I want to go back and ask the most basic question: what does Drughoney mean?
Eric: [laughs] You know, we just were kind of kicking around names and I don’t know… we weren’t really, as a band, heavy into drugs, although I really enjoyed hallucinogenics.
Aria: Okay, interesting. When I hear “drughoney”, I’m thinking, like, heroin.
Eric: Yeah, that sounds logical for sure. It really had a lot to do with well, definitely not heavy drugs. It really had nothing to do with use, it just was a way of describing the music. I grew up listening to a lot of metal, personally. I was very into extreme metal. But at the same time I was really into the Pixies. And we had that mix of sort of a post-punk vibe with harsh vocals mixed in. It could go from something really mellow to a raging scream. I really liked the juxtaposition of the mellowness and harshness.
Aria: Yeah, totally. I get that. What would you say the main influences were for the band as a whole?
Eric: I wouldn’t say there was too much commonality when we first started, as far as personal influences. It was just what came out of us. We didn’t really talk about music that much in the beginning. I wrote my parts to the music that Jaime had written. But, as we grew together, as a band and as friends, we had a lot of different influences. Definitely grunge music, definitely Tool, and the burgeoning nu metal scene that really started in the 90’s with bands like Limp Bizkit. Their first album was completely out there, there was nothing like it before. And, Deftones, again, there was nothing like it. But then also, 90’s era emo was also a huge influence because we were skate punks from the 80s and a lot of the original emo bands were punk musicians that wanted to sing and play something different. They were still raw, you know. The Get Up Kids, Texas Is The Reason, and Braid were bands that influenced us.
Aria: How would you describe the music scene in San Antonio at the time?
Eric: It was kind of all over the place. We were coming out of being a really metal city in the 80s’. San Antonio was always, like, the Heavy Metal Capital of the World. I grew up listening to metal but eventually I kind of got bored with some of the bands that were mellowing out. A lot of the 80’s bands that were really heavy mellowed out in the 90’s. It got boring. There were a lot of bands in the 90’s and early 2000’s that were just trying to find a sound and do something and find a niche to fit into. So, I think it was really diverse.
I can think of an infamous show that we played with The Cinderleaf, who by the way are making a comeback right now. [The Cinderleaf] had an early 90’s emo sound, Stalefish, were a skate punk band, and Violet Trip, who were a female-fronted post-grunge rock band. We would all headline at The White Rabbit and have big crowds and we were kind of “the bands to see” in San Antonio. So we decided to play a show with all four bands and made it a wrestling themed show. We got ropes for the front of the stage and each band had to do a cover of one of the other bands’ songs.
Aria: Was it a battle of the bands?
Eric: No, it was more for fun. We were definitely comrades in arms. But yeah, that was kind of the idea, we were kind of smack-talking each other but we were all friends, definitely. We would hang out all the time and go see each other’s bands when we weren’t playing shows together. So that was a fun show to do, except we were on last and we partook… quite a bit. The bartender was also a friend and she kept feeding us pitchers of Heineken all night, so by the time we got up there, let’s just say we didn’t play our best show. But it was still fun and an example of just how disparate the scene was at the time.
Aria: Wow, yeah. It’s interesting living in New York right now and going to shows and there are bands playing shows together and sound so different from each other. Like, it’ll be a skramz band with an indie band with maybe a rock and roll band and it’s just more about the comradery and ethos of it all.
Eric: Exactly, I’m glad that that exists. I have gone to many shows where it feels like you’re watching the same band, four times in a row, back to back. It’s so much more fun when you can mix styles.
Aria: So, I’m wondering if you remember Drughoney’s first show. How was that? I know that can be really nerve wracking.
Eric: I do remember and it was very nerve wracking. It was at the White Rabbit. They gave us a load in time and we made sure to be there exactly at the load in time. It was probably something like 6:30 pm.
Aria: Responsible rockers.
Eric: Well, this was our first show and we didn’t want to look bad by showing up late. So we showed up and of course there was nobody there, like zero people, there was nobody there at all, so we just kind of waited around. But we were so excited by the time we got up there and a lot of people showed up. In fact, we set the record at the White Rabbit at the time for attendance for a local act. Everyone from Del Rio showed up because Jason and Jaime both were extremely popular there. We didn’t know anything, we thought that was just kind of a normal thing. And over time we found out that sometimes we’d just be playing to your girlfriends and the bartender. That happened a lot too. But our very first show was very well attended and that gave us bigger heads than we probably should’ve had. We loved it and it gave us the opportunity to play a lot more. They were like “Oh wow, these guys have a draw.”
Aria: Yeah, you guys became San Antonio legends of sorts. Why do you think people connected to you so much?
Eric: We had a unique sound. I say that, but it was probably derivative of a lot of our different influences mixing together. I go back to the Pixies, who drew on a lot of different sounds. We drew on their sound, plus a lot of the influences that we ended up having. We were like sponges at that time, we soaked in everything that we listened to. Everything that was new, we would listen to and it eventually would come out in our music. So we weren’t one particular style. And definitely, an even bigger part of it, there’s no way that I could not say that Jason himself was a huge, huge part of our draw. I mean, he was an extremely charismatic guy. Whether you met him on the street or if he was on the stage. He had a lot of charisma and people were drawn to that, for sure.
Aria: That can really make or break a band.
Eric: For sure.
Aria: In a lot of the photos of Drughoney playing live, all of the people in the front row are girls. They were definitely like, “This guy’s hot!”
Eric: Oh yeah, that’s true. At the same time, Jason was fearless in the way that he sang, the style that he sang in. A lot of times on stage, he was so busy actually performing physically that it didn’t translate well. When he was off, when he hit horrible notes, it didn’t matter, nobody cared, because he was putting everything out there.
Aria: So mom tells me you and Jason had the same birthday.
Eric: Yeah, his birthday was March 13th, mine was the 14th. We always tried to play shows on the 13th, no matter what day it was, and we’d always try to play close to midnight so that we would have our birthday at the same time on stage.
Aria: So fun! That being said, you know I’m very into astrology, so I think it makes sense that you guys were both very social.
Eric: Jason and I were best friends. Him and I, and I’ll hands down give it to Jason, but we both were very influential on the band’s image and on the band in general. We definitely liked to be kind of out there. But he definitely had way more confidence in himself. He was very sure of himself at all times.
Aria: Something I respect about you is that you aren’t afraid to do what feels right even if it’s pushing a boundary. I think that confidence is something people respect.
Eric: That’s definitely true. I don’t ever feel like I need to fit into any kind of mold. I never have. I never want to think of myself as a punk rocker or a metalhead and I never wanted to be any part of a gang or skinhead-type group. I had friends in all of those different groups, I still do, but I don’t have to fit in or wear a uniform or anything like that. But that’s one of the funny things about the 90’s. We didn’t really have any kind of uniform. I always loved wearing combat boots. Since high school, I would say that was the one thing that I always wore.
Aria: You guys all lived together at one point so I assume you threw parties. Do you have any crazy party stories?
Eric: It was a big time party house. I can’t think of one specific time, but it was definitely a very popular place to be. We would go out almost every night but we’d always end up back at our house and we had some awesome parties there for sure.
Aria: Who were the people going to these parties?
Eric: Definitely a lot of band friends but a lot of girls, too. Girlfriends and friends and people that just wanted to hang out. It was a blast.
Aria: Were people jumping off the roof and sh*t?
Eric: There were definitely lots of shenanigans. There were definitely holes in the walls.
Aria: People love when I post photos and videos from those days. Why do you think a younger scene is receptive to that aesthetic?
Eric: It’s definitely not something I expected, but I’ve been around long enough to see that things kind of go in cycles. For example, in the 90’s people were vibing on 60’s and early 70’s style and it’s coming back again. I see that with the singer in my band, Diamond Denim. A lot of early 80s metal is also huge in Texas right now. People get nostalgic for things that maybe happened before they were born or when they were super young. When I was young I was really into Black Sabbath and Jimi Hendrix.
Aria: I didn’t know that! I had a big Jimi Hendrix phase when I was like 12 and I felt so ashamed.
Eric: Yeah, you kind of go back and see who the bands that you’re listening to listened to and then who influenced those bands. It happens all the time. I see it happening now. People are like “Oh wow, Deftones.”
Aria: You don’t even know. With social media it’s so advanced. It just takes one song going viral and then all the kids are obsessed. So nu metal is definitely having its moment again.
Eric: I think that’s cool, I respect it.
Aria: Can we find any Drughoney music online?
Eric: I don’t think so, besides a couple of Youtube videos. I’ll definitely get Jaime on that.
Aria: I want to end this by saying that Jason passed away at a young age. What is the main thing you would want to leave people with about him?
Eric: It’s a tragedy that he didn’t become someone that the whole world knows about. I think he had the charisma and the talent to actually get somewhere. I think it’s telling that there wasn’t enough room for everyone that showed up to his funeral. There was standing room only. The guy had so much charisma. I remember going to the movies and people were coming up and asking for his autograph. He had that starpower. He wasn’t full of himself. He was never uncool to people.
In Memory of Jason Sandbach, 1977-2007
