Despite what his Blink-182 and Box Car Racer bandmate Tom DeLonge said recently, Travis Barker isn’t “in, like, 10 bands.” The drummer does have a third group, though – one without ties to the dude ranchers who made him famous.
Barker plays drums in a trio with Rancid singer/guitarist Tim Armstrong and bassist Matt Freeman called the Transplants, and they’re scheduled to release their debut album in the fall.
After Barker explained his work ethic in a Box Car Racer interview earlier this month, it became clear how he managed to find the spare time.
“[Blink-182] tours eight or nine months out of the year, and then you have those other months that you can sit around and be productive, or you could just sit on your butt. Why not do something, you know?” Barker said. “I like staying super busy. I just get as much done as I can, ’cause I hate sitting around, procrastinating, or being bored. It’s not my deal.”
After Blink-182’s Pop Disaster Tour with Green Day comes to a close at the end of the summer, Barker will hit the road with the Transplants, and the notion only excites him.
“A tour is like a vacation for me,” Barker said. “I mean, you get to hang out, do press, play music. If you want to call that a job, it’s not. I mean, it’s a job [in the sense that] you have to do it every day, but it’s more fun than anything. You could never look at it like, ‘Oh man, this sucks.’ ‘Cause it doesn’t.”