The Rods
A Good Reason Why I Can’t Slow Down

06.09.2025

This interview came up quite unexpectedly, but it was something we wanted to do ever since we saw The Rods live at Sweden Rock Festival in 2014. The U.S. heavy metal three-piece fronted by David “Rock” Feinstein, the cousin of late Ronnie James Dio, put on a very energetic and uplifting performance that made us both dive much more seriously into their back catalogue and look forward to their subsequent releases. Even though the band are no youngsters (David turned 78 in January this year), they keep on touring and recording albums, and what’s more, these are great albums, as we were happy to tell him at the end of our conversation. Let’s not forget that the band also features drummer Carl Canedy that produced a handful of landmark metal albums, including the full-length debuts of Anthrax, Manowar and Overkill, and that David played together with Ronnie in Elf back in the early 70s, and that should give you an idea why we were so keen on booking an interview slot as soon as the opportunity arose. And David, as expected, turned out a great storyteller…

The title of your new album, “Wild Dogs Unchained”, coming out September 5 via Massacre Records, suggests, at least to us, that it is going to be an album of re-recordings, especially as the band were never happy with the way the original “Wild Dogs” album sounded back in 1981. But in fact, there are three old songs on the album, and the rest is totally new music. How did such an album come together?

You know, it’s weird, because for the album before that (“Rattle The Cage”, 2024), when we signed to Massacre, we needed to come up with songs, and I was like, “Oh my God, I’m the major songwriter, and I can’t write ten songs in a hurry to get this album done!” (laughs) It’s not that easy to do. This particular album, I had been working on some songs, but there was a song called “Make Me A Believer”, an old song I wrote many many years ago. That was a great song, but we never really did it live, and Freddy (Villano), our bass player, said, “Oh, we should do that song!” I was like, “I don’t know… We’ve never really done this song for whatever reason”. Sometimes you try to do a song live and it just doesn’t come off right. But I said, “OK, let’s do it”. Then Carl said, “You know, “Hurricane” is one of the most popular songs on that album (“Heavier Than Thou”, 1986), maybe we should re-do that”. And the other song, “Wild Dogs”, which has always been a very popular song, is another song that, through the years, we have never been able to pull off, getting it to sound right live - for whatever reason, I don’t know, we’re only a three-piece band. Carl, who wrote that song, had been bugging me for it seems like years, “Rock, you need to come up with a heavier version of that song!” I thought, “Ok, I’m gonna really put my mind to it”. So I came up with this arrangement for the song, and I played it to Carl, and he loved it - “Oh, it’s great, we need to put this song on the album”. That’s how those three songs came on. It wasn’t for the lack of other songs, because I wrote the other songs on the album and I had more songs that we could have filled it with, but we wanted to put those on. So it’s kind of a mix of re-doing the old and popular and showing the audience that there’s something new. Some of these songs on the new album are different than normal Rods songs. 

I always was the major writer in the band, but back in the day I wrote a lot of songs that fit the era of time. We were a three-piece band, I wrote about partying, sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, the whole thing, so we became the American Motorhead basically, you know. Working with Ronnie prior to The Rods, I was in a position where… Ronnie was a phenomenal writer also, but I was in a position where I could write basically anything, and Ronnie could sing it. Ronnie was so talented that he could sing anything, but with The Rods I was like, “Now I am in a position where I have to write a song that I can sing”. I’m not the greatest singer in the world, I’m not really a singer, I’m more of a stylus than anything, and I was put into the situation when we’re a three-piece hard rock band, and I need to write songs that fit the era and that we can do live. With this new album I wanted to change… When Ronnie passed away, and Ronnie and I were very close, it really made me think that I need to get more serious about what I’m writing. I’m older now, I don’t want to just write about sex, drugs and rock’n’roll anymore. In fact, some of the older songs we do, I’ve talked about it with Carl, and I said, “Carl, I’m kind of embarrassed of even singing these lyrics when we do these songs live again”. I wanted to write a song that Ronnie would sing, a song that Ronnie would write, and I wanted to get more serious about my writing and write songs that people could relate to as to what was going on in the world. Songs on the new album like “World On Fire”, “Tears For The Innocent”, “Eyes Of A Dreamer” - those are the songs that than the normal Rods songs. But to me they’re my favorite songs, because they show something new, they show something different, I’m proud of the lyrics that I wrote, they’re meaningful, and when the people listen to those songs, I think they can understand the point that I’m trying to make. To answer your question that I kind of forgot all about in the first place (laughs), that’s how the new album came about. It’s the new and old.

You have the three-headed dog on the album cover for the third time in a row. Who drew it this time? 

He’s a great artist, he’s from Chicago, he’s a friend of Freddy, the bass player. Eric Philippe has done a lot of our album covers, he’s from Belgium. He’s great guy, we’re great friends with him, he’s a great artist, but when there came time to do the last couple of albums, he was just so busy that he didn’t have time to even come up with an idea. We felt really bad about it, because we had established a relationship with him. And for “Rattle The Cage” we were under a time restraint when we needed to get it done right away. So Freddy said, “I know this guy, he lives in Chicago, his name is Mark Rizzo, he’ll do an album cover”. Within a day, he came up with two or three things for us to look at, and they were phenomenal, they were exactly what we were looking for. For this new album, we wanted to have the dogs and we’ve worked that dogs thing for a long time (laughs), but we wanted them to be unchained, which means they’re free now, free to do what they do. Being caged, being chained - that’s over with now, they’re free. I’m always writing about freedom and doing what you want to do and that that kind of thing, and maybe some of the songs on this album relate to that. But he did a phenomenal job, as he always does, and it’s a great cover.

As far as we understand, apart from the band, you run a restaurant in New York, and Carl works as a real estate agent. But what does Freddy do outside of The Rods? 

Freddy works for a company called Glyph Technologies, they make hard drives and things that related to that. What he actually does there is beyond my knowledge, because I’m not really into how it works together, but that’s what he’s done, and he’s worked for them for a number of years. He does 9 to 5 days when he’s not working on music. My restaurant is in my home town, I live in Cortland, NY, which is in upstate New York, it’s about the center of the state, a 2.5 hour drive to the city. The town that I live in is a college town, Cortland State University is here. I’ve had this restaurant for a number of years, it’s never been something that I wanted to do, it was a kind of a fluke, but I got into this business years ago, my grandfather knew the people that owned it, it was a confusing situation (laughs), but I ended up being the owner. Again, I never had any experience in the restaurant business, except for cooking things (laughs), and I’m not really a drinker, to be honest with you, I might end up with an occasional glass of wine now and then, but that’s about it, so I know nothing about the bar. But I’ve owned the restaurant for a number of years now, it’s been a success for me, I’m very happy. It’s basically my social outlet because nowadays when the band is not travelling much if I don’t see somebody that I know at the restaurant or at the supermarket, that’s about the extent of my social life right now. (laughs) I live in a small town, and when bands play in town, the bars are filled with college students, and that’s not my thing.

How did Freddy get a job with The Rods? Were you auditioning bassists, or was Freddy the only candidate?

Well, I’ll go back further than I need to go but… When I left Elf – I never planned to leave Elf for ever, Ronnie and I were like brothers and I have today so many strong feelings – the things that we did together and the situations that we had together and the good times and all that, but when I left that band I just needed to get away from the whole music business for a while. I figured that I needed a couple of months off, and then I would come back. When I think about it, I don’t think it was fair on my part because I left the other guys in the lurch. We were very tight with the guys in Deep Purple, because Roger (Glover, bass) and Ian (Paice, drums) produced the first Elf album (“Elf”, 1972), so we toured a lot with Deep Purple back in the day, they were the greatest band in the world, playing arenas. We were tight with those guys, so when I left the band, the other guys moved to California, and as history proves, Ronnie went on to be the singer in Rainbow because of the association with Ritchie (Blackmore, guitar). I knew at that point there would never be another Elf band. Of course the question that would never be answered is: if I had never left, would Ronnie have ever gone with Ritchie, or would we have created our own success with the band Elf? But that’s a whole different thing.

After a number of months went by, I did nothing, I lived in the woods, I sold my truck, I hardly listened to the radio at all. I fished, I hunted, I trapped, I cut firewood. I lived in a log cabin, it was in the middle of nowhere, I lived off the grid. (laughs) And all of a sudden I decided to write songs again. I picked up a guitar, and I went like, “Geez, OK, maybe…” I didn’t really have any money, and I thought, “Maybe I’ll put a band together to play some bars around town”. I started looking for a drummer, and I went to see this band that Carl played in. It was local, and when I saw Carl playing with that, I was like, “He’s a great drummer!” I met Carl that night and I said, “Hey, do you wanna start a band?” He said yeah. I knew another kid that was local that played bass, and I asked him, I said, “Hey, do you wanna play bass?” He said yeah. I wanted to get a singer in the band, but there weren’t any singers around. We started this band to play bars, just to make 50 bucks a night to live on, for groceries or whatever. All of a sudden I started writing songs, we did demos, and we did this album (“Rock Hard”, 1980) on our own. A guy heard us and wanted to be our manager, so all of a sudden we had a manager, then all of a sudden we had a record deal, and the next thing I know is that we’re touring Europe with Iron Maiden. One thing led to another - The Rods were formed basically to play bars and all of a sudden we’re making albums and on tour with big bands. It kind of took a natural turn. 

This guy named Steve Starmer was the first bass player, he was a local guy, and he ended up leaving the band for personal reasons. At that point we needed to find a bass player, and there was another local guy named Craig Gruber who actually played with Gary Moore, he played with Rainbow for a while, and he was a local guy from my home town. He was a great bass player, but he had some personal problems after a while, and he didn’t really fit with the whole thing. He ended up leaving the band, and that was a mutual thing – Carl and I wanted to find somebody different, and he wanted to find something different. Here we were, Carl and I, again looking for a bass player. 

Gary Bordonaro was the guy who was local, he played in a club band, and before we even had an audition, we met him socially. I said, “Oh, he’s perfect, he’s five foot two inches tall” – cause I’m not very tall myself – “he looks great with the band”. Then he played with us, and it sounded great. He became our bass player for the duration of most of the albums, and then, I guess it was three or four years ago, he just decided to retire. He just didn’t wanna do this anymore. Carl and I were at a point where we didn’t know if we would also give it up, or if we would try to find another bass player. Me being the writer, I wanted to write songs, I wanted to record and things like that, so we decided to continue.

Freddy was someone who lived in the area, and he was playing in a local band. We went to see him play, he was a great bass player, and I asked him if he wanted to come to an audition and play in the band. He said yes, and he’s been our bass player ever since, on the last couple of albums. 

It seems that The Rods, at many points in the band’s career, wanted to have a dedicated singer- Shmoulik Avigal, Rick Caudle, then just recently Michael San Siro, but after a while you would always come back to the three-piece format. Why is it never working out with the fourth guy?

When we formed the band originally, we wanted a singer, and we actually got a singer. He was phenomenal, he was great, but the guy who was our manager didn’t like him and didn’t want him to be in the band, which was a huge mistake, because the guy was a great singer. We were stuck without a singer, so Carl sang some songs, Steve the original bass player sang some songs, and I sang some songs. If I wrote a song, my voice was more appropriate to put it across, and if Carl wrote a song maybe Gary would sing it because Gary was a singer also, and even Carl sang lead on some songs. We spent so many years as a trio, and the style of songs… I never wanted to be a singer, I never took a vocal lesson, I never did anything vocally, I just put this out of my mouth the best I could. (laughs) I consider myself a stylus rather than a singer because I was able to put a song across good enough. Then after some years we thought, “Maybe we should look for a singer”. 

The first guy that came was Rick Caudle. He came around after we had taken a break. We weren’t arguing, we just took a break because we got sick of the business end of it and managers and all that. I had written a bunch of songs that were not really Rods style songs, songs that I didn’t hear myself singing, songs that really needed to be sung by a real singer. I told Carl, “We should do this album, take all these songs that I have written, put them together and get somebody that can sing them”. There was a show called “Star Search” on TV, it was like today’s “America’s Got Talent”, and Carl sent me a VHS cassette of Rick appearing there. I thought, “Oh, this guy is great, he’s got a great voice”. We called him up, he came to Cortland, my home town, and he ended up singing… He stayed here for a week, he learned the songs, he sang the whole album in a week, and that became “Hollywood” (1986), which was more of a project. It’s called a Rods album now, but it was really a project that we did, because the songs on the album were not really Rods-style songs, and it had a different singer. Anyways, Rick did a great job, but he ended up not sticking with the band because we didn’t feel that we wanted to go that route. We had established ourselves as an American version of Motorhead, and we wanted to stay a three-piece band. 

Later on I wrote a song called “Make Me A Believer” which is actually on this new album. We did a live show, and Shmulik came aboard. Shmoulik was a friend of ours, he lived in our home town - he was from a different country, but he lived here – and he wanted to sing. He ended up singing at this live show that we did, and it became an album. (laughs) It became the “Heavier Than Thou” album (1986). Shmoulik wasn’t really the right style for what we wanted to keep. And the other thing is that we had gone so many years establishing our identity that it was too difficult to change it. So Shmoulik never really became our singer.

After Gary left the band, and Carl and I were deciding: “Do we quit, or do we keep it going, or do we actually restructure the whole band and be something?” It was a wrong time to do that, as we had gone so many years, we established fans, we established the band for what it was. Mike is a great singer, he came and sang a couple of times, but it felt like he didn’t fit with The Rods. He wasn’t right for us. At that point we decided, “We’re just gonna stick with what we’ve got, like it or not – who cares, we’re gonna do it our way”. And that’s the way it worked out in the end. 

The Rods haven’t played live since the fall of 2024, and we don’t see any confirmed tour dates for the future at the moment. Do you intend to play live in support of “Wild Dogs Unchained”?

We wanna play live. Since we had a reunion like 15 years ago, we’ve never had a manager, and we don’t still. No manager, no booking agent, nobody who represents us. We’ve done it all ourselves. When people realized that we were out playing again, again we pushed this into Carl’s hands. (laughs) People would call, “What do we need to give you to come and play our festival in whatever country?” It’s just plane tickets, a place to stay, a hotel, food, ground transportation, and a lot of times we never even asked for a performance fee, because it was a country we’d never played in before and we had never realized that we had fans in those countries, because before we never had the Internet. So we would go to those places and play. In the last year, because of Massacre putting this deadline on us to get these recordings done, we turned down jobs. We turned down countries and festivals that wanted us, because we were under the time restraint of getting this album done. And in return, the album was never released, and we never played live jobs. We should have taken the jobs, but we didn’t know that the album was gonna have problems. Right now as it stands, we have nothing booked for 2026, because they book all these festivals years in advance. I’m hoping that after we release the new album, it will spur some interest for us to come in and do some shows in different countries. Last time we played was last October in Australia. We played Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, those were the last shows we played. 

The only time we saw The Rods live was at Sweden Rock Festival in 2014, and we remember that the band looked very happy on stage, the three of you and especially yourself looked like you were having a great time. Is that a correct impression?

(laughs) Well, that’s always been us. We’ve always put having a good time first. It’s stupid because music almost became secondary to the whole thing (cracks), but that’s the reason why we were there. But with us having a good time, I think, the audience is also having a good time. If Carl made a mistake or Gary made a mistake or I made a mistake, it’s no big deal, we just keep going, it’s not anything that’s gonna make or break anything. Our main focus was having a good time, and being there and trying to make the crowd happy, and doing what we love to do. It wasn’t like we were making lots of money doing it, we were there for the fun of it, for having a good time. So yeah, we were having a good time, we have a good time every time we play whether it’s Sweden Rock or some small place for 100 people.

David, you’re telling such interesting stories, but we’re afraid we’re going to run out of time soon. Before we finish this interview, there is one more question we’d like to ask: as Carl has recently published a memoir, and Ronnie also had a book, have you considered writing your own book about your life and experiences? 

I’ve been asked that a number of times. I knew Ronnie was writing a book, he was doing that for years, and Ronnie was the person that would write everything by hand, not on a tablet or computer, he would write it out with his pen. Carl’s book came out, he had been working on it for a couple of years, but he had somebody else working on that with him. People ask me because I could talk to you for hours and hours and tell you stories about everything. Sometimes I get criticized that I get carried away by talking too much, but I like to talk to people that wanna hear what I’m saying. Anyways, I never thought of a book because I do have a lot to put in a book, but I’m not an egotistical person, I’m not a person that promotes myself, I’m not a person that takes pictures and puts them on Facebook, like, “I’m here, I did this and I did that”. I’m just not that type of person, and I felt that writing a book would put me in that category. It’s funny because my nephew, my sister’s son, who’s actually written a number of books and travelled the world on his own, told me, “Uncle David, I wanna write a book about you”. I said, “OK, fine”, and he started to interview me like a year ago. He had everything written out, the questions that he was gonna ask me, and I didn’t even remember some of the things he asked me. He’s currently working on that, and my position now is that I have to find some old pictures, when I was a child and so on, and I haven’t done it yet. Anyways, to answer your question – at some point in time there will be some kind of book that he will put out that will have a lot of my stories, and it should be pretty interesting.

In the new song “Rock and Roll Fever” you sing, “Got a good reason why I can’t slow down”. It’s amazing because most people of your age sit at home and do nothing, and you keep going and putting out great music. So what’s your reason why you can’t slow down?

For me, I miss playing live. Playing live for me was a big release, and I miss it a lot. The new songs on the album, like “World On Fire”, “Tears For The Innocent”, “Eyes Of A Dreamer”, are the songs that can relate to everybody. When they hear the lyrics, they should know what the point was that I was trying to make when I made those lyrics. I constantly have things going through my head - titles, lyrics, things like that. I’m not a person that sits around and watches TV a lot. Maybe at 10 o’clock at night I do, but I’m not that person, I wanna keep going as much as I can. Ronnie once told me… Ronnie asked me to join the Dio band back in the 1990s, and for personal reasons I couldn’t do it, but he said, “Rock, you gotta do what you can”. And I never forgot those words that he told me; as long as I can do this, I’m gonna do it, and that’s just gonna be it. 

The Rods on the Internet: https://therods.com/ 

Special thanks to Barbara Francone (Neecee Agency) for arranging this interview

Interview by Roman Patrashov, Natalie “Snakeheart” Patrashova
Promotional photos used courtesy of Neecee Agency
Live photos by Natalie “Snakeheart” Patrashova, taken at Sweden Rock Festival 2014
August 27, 2025
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