Welcome to Citizen. We have a very special guest today, drummer, Pete Pirata. How you doing?

I'm doing good. Thanks for having me. Yeah, for sure. Is that your kit in the background

or is that, is that an illusion? Is that like a fake background on Zoom or some shit?

No, I'm actually sitting in my drum studio here at my house, so that's the best background

I've got. Sure, that's real. That's probably become the standard, right? If you're a musician,

you got to have a studio at your house just in case these days. Yeah, I mean, it's everything

is done so remotely. I get hired to play for people all around the world. They're like,

hey, can you put drums on this or creating loops or stuff like that? You really have to have

your own space. I think it's probably harder for drummers because of the noise factor. This is

three walls thick in here. It's really soundproof, so I don't not just piss off the neighbors,

but I don't drive my wife and kids nuts either. It's great. It's been a godsend to have this the

last few years of transitioning into the different kind of line of work to be able to work from home

and to keep moving forward. Yeah. I think people probably know you best from your work with

the offspring. Give me some of your background. Tell me your history. How did you get into music

and then give me some of the highlights? Absolutely. I grew up in upstate New York. My dad was a

middle and high school band instructor. It was always very musical in my household. He was

very into Frank Sinatra and big band stuff and my mom, like Neil Sedacca and pop artists and

things like that. My brothers and I gravitated towards Kiss. It was an interesting musical household

for sure, but when I got out of high school, I moved to LA and went to a performing art school

there for drumming. When I got out of that, I just started working all over LA, working different

jobs, playing in bands, trying to get something started, ended up in a band called Face to Face,

which is a seminal Southern California punk rock band. That was my first real big

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