Chad Bowar: It's been about two years since you've been with the Stern show full time. How much do you miss being a full time musician?
Richard Christy: I miss it a lot. I love touring. Luckily I have my dream job to keep me busy. I work about 14 hours a day now and totally love it. I do like traveling the country. I miss that a little bit. I miss getting up in front of crowds. I still go to shows all the time. Once in a while I get to sit in with bands. I sat in with Shadows Fall and a few other bands. That brings the feeling back, too.
Do you still keep in touch with your friends from the world of metal?
Yes. I still see tons of friends that I made through the metal scene and tons of industry people that I've known for years because I see them at metal shows here in New York. I still talk to all my old bandmates and friends that I've known from the metal scene for the past 14 years. I still stay in touch with the metal world and I'm still writing music and playing drums every day, so I'm still staying in touch with the metal scene.
Back in the day you were with a band in Kansas called Burning Inside. You decided to move to Florida. How come you picked Orlando instead of someplace like New York or Los Angeles?
At the time in 1996 when we moved the Florida scene was still pretty hot for death metal. A lot of bands that we really looked up to lived there, and our guitar player Michael Estes had an apartment in Orlando so it worked out really well. Steve Childers (Burning Inside's guitarist) and I stayed with him for about a month until we got on our feet and found jobs. It helped a lot that Michael had an apartment there and knew a lot of people in the scene there. He knew it was a really good scene at the time and it seemed like a good step. For me I knew that Chuck Schuldiner from Death lived in Orlando and I was a huge Death fan. It was exciting just thinking about the prospect of meeting Chuck and living in the same town where one of my favorite bands was from.
How did you end up meeting Chuck and becoming a member of Death?
Steve Childers from Burning Inside and I were walking through a B. Dalton bookstore in the Altamont Mall in Orlando one day and we saw Chuck reading a recording magazine. We freaked out and did a double take. We stopped and talked to Chuck. He was so cool and so nice. We told him we had a band called Burning Inside and talked to him for a long time. I would see Chuck at shows every now and again and at parties. When I found out that Chuck needed a drummer, I found out through my friends in the band Wicked Ways who were good friends with Chuck. They recommended that Chuck give me an audition, so I called him and auditioned a few days later. It went really well.
Which Death albums did you appear on?
I'm on Sound Of Perseverance and I'm on the Control Denied album that Chuck did after that called The Fragile Art Of Existence.
Control Denied was more of a traditional metal band, right?
The vocals were more traditional, but the music was still very much Chuck's sound and very technical and melodic.
When you were working with Chuck in Death and Control Denied, what was the status of your other band Burning Inside?
I stayed really busy during that whole time. I would practice four or five days a week with Death and about three or four nights a week with Burning Inside. I would arrange it where I had two different drum kits, one at Death's rehearsal studio and one at Burning Inside's rehearsal studios. I would practice with Death during the day and Burning Inside at night. It really got my chops up as far as drumming goes. I would practice not only a couple hours by myself, but also two or three hours with each band. It was really a busy time. I always kept Burning Inside going throughout the whole time. One thing I loved about Burning Inside and why I wanted to keep it going was that I was able to write music in that band. I wrote a lot of guitar riffs and lyrics for that band, which I wasn't able to do as much of in some of the other bands I played in.
