Matt Palermo, drummer for the St. Louis-based alternative rock band Ludo, tells The Kirkwood Call about where the band began, what it is doing now and where it is going.

The Kirkwood Call (KC): Give us a little back story on how Ludo formed.

Matt Palermo (MP): Tim Ferell and Andrew Volpe formed it in the beginning stages and they started fooling around acoustically for a good few months playing some of the originals like “Girls on Trampolines” and…“Hum Along,” playing basically in Andrew’s Toyota Camry. They covered a lot of ground and they did their thing for a while, then Tim Convy knew Tim Ferell through playing in another band in high school and whatnot and brought him on board. So it was Tim, Tim and Andrew from St. Louis and they put out an ad in the classifieds online, they were in Oklahoma at the time. [It] just said drummer and bassist wanted. I responded, met them and they were great dudes. I really liked their music, and I liked their work ethic and their ambition. They had a lot of drive and were very enthusiastic, and that kind of roped me in, and I wanted to be a part of it. So I flew back to Houston, dropped out of school and decided to join them.

KC: How long have you been playing the drums?

MP: Let’s see, I started playing drums when I was, what was it, sixth grade? What is that, 12 years old? I started playing percussion for the school band and I did that all through middle school, grades six through eight. Then in ninth grade I marched snare line, then I quit. I quit because I just didn’t want to do it anymore, I wanted to play sports. And then, not but a year later, there was a drum set in my attic, it was my older brother’s, and I just picked it up and started playing. I started playing an actual drum set when I was fifteen. And yeah, I just started playing with random buddies and friends, whoever had a guitar around and led to kind of getting around to playing the actual drumset.

KC: Did you always know you wanted to be a professional musician?

MP: I just wanted to do something with music. I don’t think I thought in terms of being a quote unquote “professional”. There’s many different ways you can take it. What I wanted to do, I wanted to play in a band, I liked playing in a band. I liked playing drums and I liked playing rock music, you know, so it kind of just eventually went that way. And I didn’t know what was going to come up with Ludo because when we started it was just in some crummy little house in downtown Crummyville, Oklahoma. We really had nothing. I guess just pure drive and ambition. And then we just kept going and it turned into something cool.

KC: Regarding being a quote unquote “professional” musician, what are the best and worst things?

MP: Well there’s more pros than cons for me personally. I think that’s the same thing for everybody who chooses this path. Well, to start with the pros, you get to travel all over, see a bunch of places you wouldn’t see otherwise. It’s not for everybody but if you’re the type who likes to fly by the seat of your pants then this is what you should be doing. I mean, we dropped everything we were doing to do Ludo from day one so it was awesome to say, “Hey, we’re touring around the country. Sure, these shows aren’t fantastic and sure, none of us will make money, and you know, you’re living kind of uncomfortably.” I mean, you’re living on people’s floors and eating horribly, pretty much unhealthy, you know, Taco Bell at two in the morning. None of it sounds that fantastic on paper but, you know, when you’re touring around you get to see a bunch of places you’ve never seen and meet a bunch of new people and seeing people like your music, really slowly but surely. There’s ten people that come to see you in a city you’ve never been to before and that makes it all worth it. It’s a slow-moving process but, yeah, mostly all pros for me.

KC: Is the payoff worth any discomfort that may come along?

MP: Yeah, I mean, again, it’s not for everybody. If you like flying by the seat of your pants and you like kind of not knowing where you’re going next and what your plans are one month from now, or freaking out about whatever it is you’re freaking out about, like not having enough money or whatever it is, the situation’s always different. But if you’re that person who always likes that set schedule and always likes that comfort, then being in a band is not the lifestyle for you.

KC: If the musician thing hadn’t worked out for you, what do you think you’d be doing now?

MP: I have no idea. I’d probably have a desk job somewhere and have some, hopefully, hopefully comfortable suburban lifestyle. But then I wouldn’t be happy with it so I’d go back to trying a musician. That’s probably what I would dream for, if I’m not going to be a musician I’d at least like to have some money. I don’t know, I have no idea.

KC: Why did you decide it was a practical decision to be a musician and follow that as a career?

MP: I don’t know if it was as much a decision as more of a, “Hey, this seems right up my alley, what I want to do. Cool, I found a group of guys that wanted to work on the same goal. All right, cool, this is working out!” It just kind of went that way. It was more of a natural thing than an actual, “All right, this is the job I’m doing and I’m going to pursue this and I have no idea where I’m going to start.” I didn’t make the decision before I found the band.

KC: Why does Ludo continue to frequent St. Louis as a venue?

MP: Well, Tim, Tim and Andrew are from St. Louis so that was pretty much our home base for a while. Basically that was where we had the most going on with our band. It’s a lot easier to build in a city that you’re living in than some city far away, you know? We got to show up to shows at the Pageant or the Creepy Crawl or wherever the venues were at the time and we’d hand out a bunch of demo CD’s to the crowd, whoever’s pouring out of the show, just try to get anyone and everyone to look at you, your music. So it grew, naturally, faster than anywhere else we played, just being that we had to do more groundwork there. You don’t want to come back to St. Louis every other weekend but you do want to keep wandering back. It was just the best city for us to play in so we just wanted to keep it there and we’ll always continue to keep coming back.

KC: Where do you get some of the random ideas you have for your shows, such as themed concerts, sing-alongs and asking people to bring guitars so you can smash them onstage?

KC: There’s no rhyme or reason behind that one, they just start popping up.  Like someone will just throw out, like for instance, the Space Dracula’s Basketball Expo, it was just kind of thrown out like “Hey, what are we gonna do to make this unique and different and interesting? Since we don’t have an album out, what can we do to make it interesting? Oh, maybe some themed things would be interesting, because that’s very Ludo-y and the crowds are so great and willing to participate, however dumb it is.” So yeah, something just gets thrown out, like an idea and the ball gets rolling. “Hey, let’s throw out some themes,” then ridiculous stuff gets thrown out and then we eventually land on Space Dracula’s Basketball Expo. It’s very Ludo. I feel like the worst idea Ludo has, the better it is.

KC: What kind of music would you define Ludo as?

MP: I know we dubbed the term at some point ‘Adventure Rock’. I know we’ve gotten “Weezer meets Queen” before, and I think that made us all smile, we thought that was pretty cool, kind of following the Broken Bride thing. It’s like a quirky, fun, pop rock.

KC: What is your favorite song that Ludo has written?

MP: That’s a tough one because I feel like Ludo’s songs are all over the board, I think Ludo is a fun band and what we love more than anything is playing our songs live. One of my favorite songs to play live is probably Lake Pontchatrain, I love playing that one, I would rank it up there. I go back sometimes and I look at Broken Bride and what Andrew wrote and I think the entire thing is just so well done. If I can cheat and say all of Broken Bride, then I say that. It’s definitely my favorite piece of work that we’ve done.

KC: You’ve probably gotten this question a million times but who is your biggest inspiration as a musician?

MP: Well, what got me into drums were drummers. What got me into music, personally, was a bunch of weird random ones. For some reason, I look back and kind of laugh now, even though I still think he’s great but I think the band is kind of cheesy, I still look back and like Chad Sexton from 311. I just loved his sound, I love that snare sound, and I loved his style and he was very marching style like I was. That’s really what pushed me over. I used to like a lot of heavier stuff, like metal stuff, oddly enough. I just took a bunch of turns and twists, meeting new people and seeing what they liked, their favorite bands. Then I turned into being a Beatles maniac, then I got into classic rock. There’s just so many things across the board that kind of shaped me and got me to where I was going in terms of influence. I don’t know, it’s kind of a hard question to answer always, and you were right, it gets asked all the time and I never know how to answer it, ever. I’ll have to solidify an answer to that at some point.

KC: What are you listening to on your iPod right now?

MP: Let’s see, I actually went to Best Buy last Tuesday and I purchased a CD, and I know you don’t hear that story that often, but I purchased the new Red Hot Chili Peppers. That was the most recent one I bought, other than that I’ve been listening to a lot of The Decemberists, I think they’re fantastic. There’s a band I’m sure you’ve heard of, Ha Ha Tonka. Their new album, Death of a Decade, is incredible. I’ve been touring around with Pilots a lot and we listen to that all the time. Let’s see, let’s see here, a lot of Wilco lately, that’s been played on my CD player or iPod. Yeah, those are the most recent ones I can think of.

KC: What advice do you have for high school students who may want to become professional musicians?

MP: Don’t. Don’t do it. There are so many different paths and so many different approaches to music. It’s different to think, “Yeah, I want to be in a band, I want to be in a rock band.” But again, there are many different paths, many different ways you view it, the ways you view being a musician and what you want to do with that. If you want some rock band advice, can tell you the Ludo way.

KC: What was the “Ludo way?”

MP: It was all groundwork. It was making use of anything online, anything new that popped up. At that time, there wasn’t Facebook and Myspace was just starting. It was a different world back then, everything’s changing and it continues to change. You hear horror stories all the time about the music industry being worse and worse and worse every single year. And it’s true, you know? Everybody’s losing money and all these labels are losing money, and who knows what’s going to be the next big breakthrough. So the only remedy to that is tour. Tour, tour, tour, tour, tour, tour, tour. And whatever that means, you don’t need to like hop on a tour with other big bands because that’s nearly impossible to do if you’re not best friends with somebody in the band or have a booking agent or whatever works out in your favor to get you on these tours. You gotta start by playing really crummy venues. You gotta start by playing for five people, then hopefully that will turn into fifteen and so on and so forth. Just travel, play shows. Tour, I say that loosely, whether you’re going to stay just in the state of Missouri or just in the state of Texas, it doesn’t matter. Just go play shows, go play shows.

KC: You play in two other bands, Tommy and the High Pilots and The New Heathers. Do you have any other jobs?

MP: No, I play music full-time. There wouldn’t be one complaint I could ever have about being able to say that. Because I know people, they can’t really grasp the idea of that, like “Oh, you play music for a living? What?” I mean, there’s nothing glamorous about it, it’s a lot of struggling. But yeah, I’m able to do this for a living and it’s fantastic.

KC: What does Ludo have coming up that we as fans need to be excited about?

MP: Well, I don’t know what I’m at liberty to talk about or not so I’m just going to play the I-just-play-drums card on that one. I just play drums. One thing I could give you is there may or may not be A Very Ludo Christmas this year. But I just play drums.