DEVILDRIVER

Revolver joins frontman Dez Fafara in California wine country to toast the release of The Last Kind Words and put a satanic spin on the movie Sideways.

By Dan Epstein
Photos by Zach Cordner

“All right!” says Dez Fafara, greeting Revolver in the lobby of a posh Santa Barbara hotel with a hearty laugh and a firm handshake. “You ready to go and drink some wine with me?”

Having just returned home to California from a three-week run of European festival dates, the DevilDriver frontman is currently in full-blown relaxation mode. Unlike some rock stars, however, Fafara’s not a sleep-until-sundown kind of guy; it’s only noon, but he’s already taken his wife and three sons out for breakfast, gone for a walk on the beach with his dog, visited his favorite record store, and re-filled his prescription (“for stress”) at the local medical marijuana dispensary. Of course, that’s all just a warm-up for today’s main event, a tour of the Santa Ynez Valley—better known as Santa Barbara wine country—with a very thirsty Revolver in tow.

These days, the Santa Ynez Valley is best known as the setting of the hit 2004 indie film Sideways, starring Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church as two middle-aged friends grappling with their identity issues and career disappointments during a wine-tasting road trip. There’s no trace of angst or self-doubt hanging over today’s excursion, though; not only was DevilDriver’s recent European jaunt a rousing success—the band’s ferocious performance at England’s Download Festival inspired what many believe was the largest moshpit in history—but the band is about to release The Last Kind Words (Roadrunner), their third and strongest album to date. In the meantime, Fafara has five weeks off to spend at home with his family before heading out on the road again, so he’s a pretty happy camper right now.

“I love this whole area,” he says, as our rental car wends its way through the rolling hills above Santa Barbara, the Pacific Ocean sparkling brightly in our rearview mirror. “It’s a great place to come home to. Whenever we’re driving back at the end of a tour, I’ll open all the bus windows; you start smelling the ocean air about an hour before you get here, and you know you’re coming home.”

Though Fafara’s never actually seen Sideways—“Everybody’s been like, ‘You should watch it!’” he laughs. “I’m like, I live here!”—he’s more than happy to retrace some of the characters’ footsteps from the film. Being of Italian extraction, Fafara “grew up with wine on the table,” and he’s evolved over the years into a fairly serious aficionado of the grape. “When I started touring, I realized that beer just makes you fatter, so I switched to wine,” he explains. “After awhile, I was able to drink enough that I started to learn what I liked and what I didn’t. You find what you like by tasting; you’re not going to get it out of a book.”

Our original plan was to start off at a tasting house in Solvang, a kitschy faux-Danish town that—thanks to its proximity to the local vineyards—boasts a number of excellent wine shops and tasting houses alongside its ubiquitous clog stores and smorgasbord restaurants. But as we roll north along Highway 154, Fafara decides that we should make an unscheduled detour to the Gainey Vineyard. “Oh, Gainey is killer!” he assures us. “Wait ‘til you see this place—they’ve got all these chandeliers made out of antlers!”

Gainey Vineyard, as it turns out, holds some historical significance for Fafara. Five years ago, during the contentious sessions for Coal Chamber’s final album, Dark Days, he would sneak away in the off-hours to record demos with the band that eventually became DevilDriver. Those demos were done at a studio just a half-mile from Gainey, and Fafara would often stop by the vineyard for a little liquid refreshment. “Being here today, it’s bringing it full circle,” he laughs.

Though one can safely assume that the chipper middle-aged lady behind the Gainey reception desk doesn’t see many customers with tattooed faces on a daily basis, she doesn’t bat an eye as Fafara introduces himself and tells her about our wine-tasting mission.

Lady: What’s the name of your band?
Fafara: DevilDriver. It’s heavy metal.
Lady: Oh, fun!

She explains that the vineyard is offering seven different wines for tasting today; the “tasting fee” is 10 dollars per person, and we get to take our impressively large Gainey wineglasses home with us. It sounds like a reasonable deal, and within minutes we’re standing in Gainey’s Spanish-tiled tasting room, checking out their 2005 Sauvignon Blanc. “I tend to avoid white wine, but that one’s good,” says Fafara. “I wouldn’t want to drink a whole glass of it, though.”

When wine-tasting, it’s traditional to start out with the white wines, but reds are far more to Fafara’s liking—although, like Giamatti’s Merlot-hating character in Sideways, he can be pretty picky about reds, as well. “I’ve never found a Cabernet that I was a fan of, and I never liked Merlots,” he says. “I like Chianti, Syrahs I can do with, but the Sangiovese grape is like the Holy Grail of grapes for me.”

In addition to its more obvious virtues, Fafara also extols the health benefits of red wine. “I believe red wine has one of the highest antioxidant rates on the planet, aside from blueberries and pomegranates, and it’s incredible for your heart,” he explains. “You know how they say to take an aspirin a day for your heart? Drink two glasses of wine a day, and you don’t need an aspirin. Although, if you’re having heart problems, don’t listen to me,” he laughs. “Take your medicine!”

Fafara would probably prefer a slug of medicine to Gainey’s 2005 Chardonnay, which he dumps into a nearby bucket after only one sip. “Something about it just reminds me of my mom sitting by the pool, drinking white wine out of a box mixed with 7-Up,” he laughs. “I know that’s kind of an uneducated way of putting it, but it’s the truth!”

After another, somewhat more appealing Limited Selection Chardonnay, we move on to the reds with a 2005 Syrah. Fafara swirls the Syrah around in his glass, admiring the way that the oils slowly drip down the side. Raising the glass to his nose, he inhales deeply, swirls the wine around again, and inhales for the second time. In wine lingo, this is known as “volatizing the esters,” a process which brings the inherent scents and flavors of the wine to the fore. “That’s the bottle,” Fafara announces. “Unless we find something better, that’s the bottle. That is so good; you can really taste the oak.”

After tasting a Merlot and a Riesling—neither of which particularly charm Fafara’s palate—we repair to the winery’s picnic area, armed with a bottle of the Syrah, and grab a table in the sun. Rows and rows of grapevines recede into the distance, glowing bright green in the early afternoon sunlight. “It’s unbelievable out here today,” grins Fafara. “It’s a perfect day in California! I’ve been home from Europe maybe 48 hours, and I’m fighting some jetlag, but some red wine and nice California weather should help!”

Sitting and sipping in the California sun, Fafara radiates the confidence and contentment of a man who’s worked hard to get where he is. From the time DevilDriver first came onto the scene in 2003, Fafara has steadfastly refused to cash in on his previous association with Coal Chamber, the popular nu-metal band he led from 1997 to 2002. Instead, he’s built a new following practically from scratch, touring tirelessly and opening for as many bands as possible. “To work it from the ground up is going to get you some adoration in the end, because people will appreciate that you started over,” he says. “We’ve done so much touring in the past five years, but we’re only now preparing to go out on our first real headlining tour.”

Though DevilDriver’s self-titled 2003 debut was fairly uneven, 2005’s self-assured The Fury of Our Maker’s Hand—and the band’s reliably intense live shows—proved to critics and fans alike that Fafara’s substantially harder-edged new outfit was the real deal. And now, having made believers out of an army of skeptics, DevilDriver has upped the ante with The Last Kind Words
. Not only does Fafara positively spit fire on gut-punching new tracks like “Not All Who Wander Are Lost” (the album’s first single), “These Fighting Words,” and “The Axe Shall Fall,” but his bandmates— guitarists Jeff Kendrick and Mike Spreitzer, drummer John Boecklin, and bassist Jon Miller—have also clearly evolved into a formidable entity of their own.

“We knew that this time, we had to make a record that was not the predictable, sing-songy-chorus-to-get-radio kind of thing,” Fafara explains. “We had to make something that’s against what people [in mainstream metal] are doing right now, and every member of the band really stepped it up on this record. I mean, we’re not saying we’re the heaviest or the fastest; but if you like hooks and grooves, and you like it heavy all the way through, then you’re going to love The Last Kind Words.”

While Fafara prefers not to analyze his lyrics in public—“I’m still figuring them out myself,” he laughs—he says that a lot of the album’s songs are rooted in issues of personal responsibility, and the rejection of organized religion. “I was raised Catholic,” he explains, “But my grandmother and mother were Christian Science, I went to a Baptist school, and my father was Lutheran. I ended up turning towards paganism, because it just felt more real—and I found out that Christians and Catholics stole everything from them anyway,” he laughs.

Most nights when DevilDriver is out on tour, Fafara can be found in the back of the bus, enjoying a bottle of red wine and devouring books about ancient cultures. “I read everything I possibly can on Mesopotamia, Sumeria, and Babylon,” he says. “I’m always looking for the origins of our religious rituals and beliefs. And oftentimes, it’s the earth—you know, worshipping the sun because it gives us life, things like that.”

As far as his own beliefs, Fafara says, “I break it down to karma, period. Whatever you do is going to come back to you three times. I’ve made it a habit never to step on anyone’s toes unless they deserve it, and then I won’t step on their toes, I’ll kick ‘em in the knee.” While some have labeled DevilDriver a satanic band, Fafara says the truth is more complex. “Parts of satanism I believe in, for sure—Law of the Claw, an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, all that. I believe in Will—the will to succeed, the will to take the steps to make something happen for your life. But I’m uncomfortable with anyone who’s adamant about anything, like, ‘I’ve got the handle on it, and the handle is satanism!’ Or Christianity, for that matter. You need to have an open mind to all of these things, but you also should be able to question them.”

Our bottle of Syrah now drained to its last delicious drop, we pack up and drive into Solvang for lunch. After a waistband-busting repast of Danish food—topped off by the deadly fried pancake balls known as aebelskivers—we find ourselves driving north on Ballard Canyon Road, following its twists and turns towards Rusack Vineyards.

“Those are Syrah grapes, right there,” says Fafara, pointing out several rows of grapevines to the left of Rusack’s dirt driveway. Impressed by his apparently deep knowledge of grapes, Revolver asks Fafara how he’s able to identify this particular variety. “Um, because it says ‘Syrah’ on one of the stakes over there,” he laughs.

Rusack’s tasting room is smaller and less opulent as the one at Gainey, but it offers a better deal—samples of seven different wines for only six bucks —and it’s even more welcoming. Dan, the white-mustachioed gent behind the tasting bar, is everything you’d hope for in a wine pourer: friendly, funny, and thoroughly knowledgeable. After the 2006 Sauvignon Blanc and the 2005 Reserve Chardonnay elicit a “Nice, but not my thing” from Fafara, Dan pours a round of Rosé, counseling us that, “There’s some fruit on it, to give the impression of some sweetness, but it’s actually very dry.”

“Absolutely!” responds Fafara, eyes brightening after a couple of sips. “That’s good. I could drink a bottle of that! But I’m ready for the Pinot…”

In Sideways, Giamatti’s character loves Pinot Noir like Slash loves Jack Daniel’s; and after a sip of Rusack’s 2005 Santa Rita Hills Pinot, it’s easy to taste why.

“Wow, that’s good!” enthuses Fafara. “I just want to sit down with that and a thing of Brie, some roast chicken, and some garlic potatoes. That’s one of the best wines we’ve had today. I’m not pourin’ this one out, boys!”

The 2005 Santa Barbara County Syrah gets even higher marks from Fafara. “It has almost a whiskey kind of finish to it; best of the day, so far.” Revolver would happily settle for a bottle of this stuff, but Fafara puts in a request for his favorite grape: “Do you guys do a Sangiovese?”

“I have one right here, but I wasn’t going to pour you any,” Dan jokes. “I’m prejudiced, of course,” he says, as he fills our glasses with the 2005 Santa Ynez Valley Sangiovese, “but I think this is the best Sangiovese in the area.”

Fafara swirls his glass of the dark and hearty red, holds it up to the light, inhales it deeply a couple of times, lets it roll around on his tongue for a bit—and then practically dances for joy in the middle of the Rusack tasting room. “This is killer!” he declares. “This wins! We hit the jackpot, bro!”

A few minutes later, we are seated in the shade of an ancient oak tree, watching a small herd of black cows grazing on the rolling hills across from the vineyard, and sharing a bottle of what may well be the best wine Revolver has ever tasted. All is peaceful and still, the late afternoon quiet broken only by the sound of clinking wineglasses. Life is good.

“Salud,” Fafara says. “Everything they poured us at the other place just paled in comparison to this Sangiovese. Gimme some goggles for my eyes, and I could swim in this,” he laughs. Leaning back in his chair, raising his glass to the sun, Fafara looks even more comfortable here than he does onstage. A portent of his future, perhaps?

“I’m not done with music yet, and I don’t think I will be until I’m 60,” he reflects. “But at the end of all this, retiring to a winery really wouldn’t be half bad.”