Chris Vrenna: Confessions of an audio-addicted Tweaker | ||
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Grammy-winning producer, drummer, engineer, remixer, songwriter and programmer Chris Vrenna has scored and remixed for film and video games, and produced, engineered and remixed for all sorts of artists including David Bowie, U2, the Smashing Pumpkins, Marilyn Manson, Green Day, the Wallflowers and Nine Inch Nails (NIN) — for whom he was the original drummer. Now he releases his own songs under the band name Tweaker. Chris Vrenna first got into music at the age of five. “I had a big thing for marching parades and marching bands. My dad realized that, as the bands marched by, I’d always be marching with them in time, and that I would beat on things in time, so he thought, ‘Well, that’s kind of unusual,’” says Vrenna.
“I was in the percussion ensemble of the Erie Youth Orchestra — that was my very first European tour. We did a two-week tour playing Copeland music, all American composers, when I was 16 or 17,” reflects Vrenna. “I was the pit drummer for two seasons of musicals for Erie’s Playhouse Theater, so I know how to read charts.”
When he was 15, he started a punk rock band. “I’ve never played in a cover band. I played originals my whole life. Even back then we were writing original stuff,” he says. Enter Trent Reznor When he was a senior in high school, Vrenna met Trent Reznor. “He was in an electronic synth band in Cleveland, the Exotic Birds, that did fairly well, and I was in a synth band in Pennsylvania,” says Vrenna. “My keyboard player and he were good friends. Trent was selling his Linn drum so he could get the Linn 9000, so I bought it.” Vrenna and his friend started going to Cleveland to see the Exotic Birds play. Soon after high school, when Vrenna was going to college at Kent State in Cleveland, he got a phone call from Trent, asking Vrenna to join the band. Vrenna joined for 18 months, until the band broke up. That’s when Trent started writing his own music, which became the Nine Inch Nails’ “Pretty Hate Machine” album. When that album took off, Vrenna joined the band for the live tour, and to help with programming. He later received a Grammy for his work on NIN’s live version of “Happiness In Slavery.” Leaving Nails Behind Vrenna decided to leave Nine Inch Nails in 1996, a year after NIN played a co-headlining tour with David Bowie. “We did the Marilyn Manson ‘Antichrist Superstar’ project and the summer after that, I felt it was time to move on,” says Vrenna. “I was changing, and my tastes changed, and I didn’t like living in New Orleans.” So Vrenna left the band and moved to Los Angeles. “I got out here around Christmas. I’d just finished unpacking the last of my boxes, was sitting down making a list of all of the industry people I was gonna call on the day after New Years break when I got a phone call,” says Vrenna. “It was the tour manager for the Smashing Pumpkins saying, ‘I got your name from so-and-so… Do you know how to run StudioVision… Pro Tools… do you understand the MIDI beatclock? And like drum machines?’ And I said, ‘Yeah…’ So he goes, ‘Great, because I’m trying to find somebody who can be Billy’s programmer on tour.’” From Pumpkins to Roses The tour manager asked Vrenna if he could be in Portland the following night. He agreed and started the job programming for the Smashing Pumpkins right away. “I was Billy Corgan’s programmer for four months after that because he was still on tour but had all these other commitments — for remixes and productions,” explains Vrenna.
“We were carrying a mini laptop StudioVision writing rig on tour, and while they were up on stage, my job was to engineer, program and keep it all running,” he adds. “We also had a VS880, an MC-303 and a rackmount K2000. It was great… a totally different scene, but it was weird to be on tour but not on stage,” he admits. “It was just what I needed though, because it was an immediate — ‘Boom! You’re onto something else.’” While he was on tour with the Smashing Pumpkins, Vrenna got a call from Axl Rose, who invited Vrenna to come down and hang out with the Guns and Roses for a while. “I did for a couple weeks, but then decided I didn’t want to join the band,” says Vrenna. Next page: The Record and Remixing U2 |  |
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