Interview with Ilan Rubin about Travis Barker and "The Dream Walker" creative process

Alright then! Moving onto Angels & Airwaves: You’ve had Blink 182 connections as far back as receiving drum lessons from Travis Barker extremely early in your career...

Yeah, when I was 10 or 11 years old! It was funny, because I hadn’t met Tom until three years ago, and I haven’t talked to Travis in a very long time. There was always a friendly yet sparse relationship between us. It would be years before bumping into each other somewhere, being like, “Oh, how’ve you been?” and having that catchup talk. Interesting thing... since joining Angels and Airwaves/joining forces with Tom, this is the most I’ve seen Travis in ten years!

I know you were involved heavily in the creative process of The Dream Walker, your first full release with the band, being right alongside Tom Delonge during the songwriting. Can you tell us how you two would work together to create songs?

The album was an absolute collaboration. It worked out really well. Most of the material would start with Tom bringing the initial idea. I’d take the parts, build a melody, rebuild something, that would inspire him to build something else, which in turn would inspire me to do something else. It was a sort of push-and-pull going back and forth until we both ended up something that we were both happy with. That really is how it went for the entire process. Here’s the thing: it’s one thing to write music, but as somebody who is putting melody to a song, they have to be inspired by those chords and those chords have to give the idea.

It was part of a working relationship and strategy that Tom would bring the initial idea so that he had his melody in mind. That’s really what Tom would be more attached to is the melody rather than the chords. I’d take that, go somewhere else, and the process of changing and refining would lead to the final product. There were different levels of accent. We had a song with a melody, and I would take it and add harmonies. That would kind of change things up a little bit and inspire things here and there; let’s try this harmony, let’s try that harmony! It was just that constant collaboration that would make things work.

Being The Dream Walker is sort of a multimedia project, will you be taking part in any of the other aspects of the project, such as the reported comic and film adaptations?

All that stuff is definitely Tom’s brainchild. That is where a lot of his attention and drive goes to, which is very commendable for everything to come to fruition. I have nothing to do with that in any way, I did add the music to the animation that already came out, and I would love to be involved in that sense. My domain is very much music. Conceptually, this is Tom’s thing, and he’s had it for a long time and he’s doing a great job rolling it all out. I think my association is supplying music where its necessary.