After introducing the audience to singer and principal songwriter Dexter Holland and bassist Todd Morse, The Offspring’s longtime guitarist Noodles turns to his right to introduce the band’s newest member, the drummer who replaced Josh Freese after Freese was called up to replace Taylor Hawkins in Foo Fighters.
“We have a special treat for you tonight, too,” Noodles says. “Back behind Todd on drums, not only was he a teen phenom and a local legend, this is Grapevine's own Brandon Pertzborn!”
“So, this is where all the good drummers come from,” Holland adds (the late Hawkins was also from Fort Worth) as the crowd goes wild.
Brandon Pertzborn is just as surprised by his career trajectory as you are.
The new drummer for The Offspring will return to his hometown when the band comes to Dos Equis Pavilion on Aug. 13 with Sum 41 and Simple Plan, but the journey home has been as improbable as it has been incredible.
“I started taking drum lessons in sixth grade,” Pertzborn says by phone from his home in Los Angeles, “but I hated it because they were trying to teach me rudiments, and that was boring to me. I quit, developed my own style, and then I went back [to taking lessons] just to refine and improve on it.”
Pertzborn spent his high-school years going back and forth between Colleyville Heritage High School and homeschool as he developed a love for drumming. “I went to Colleyville Heritage, 10th and half of 11th grade, but the second half of 11th and my senior year, I was homeschooled because I didn't care about anything else except music,” he says with a laugh. “My parents were beyond accommodating and beyond understanding to allow me to focus on drums full-time.” After graduating in 2013, Pertzborn decided that he was going to offer drum lessons for a living while playing in some bands around Dallas, one of them being alt-rock band Drayter.
Former Drayter singer and guitarist Cole Schwartz has nothing but good memories of his time playing with Pertzborn. Schwartz met Pertzborn when the young drummer from Grapevine’s Fellowship Church auditioned for the band, and the two soon became close friends.
“When we were playing together, he was definitely my number one musical collaborator,” Schwartz says. “We’d always be bouncing off different ideas with each other, jamming different riffs. His willingness to get better and perfect his craft was always something that I noticed from day one working with him, and that energy transferred over to me, making me want to work harder and get better at my craft.”
Drayter managed to come up a little in Dallas’ alt-metal scene in the 2010s, finding itself opening for some bigger names and even landing a short run of dates with Stone Sour. While all the backstage antics would generally be a distraction for a teenager, Schwartz remembers Pertzborn always being strictly business.
“The whole main focus would be about the show,” Schwartz says. “Brandon was always doing warmups and loosening up his wrists and stretching and getting in the zone, in the right mental space and never concerned with other people or all that extra stuff that comes with backstage life of being in the band.”
Drayter had recorded an album, Nine, with Pertzborn on drums, but the latter's work ethic and undeniable skills caught the attention of every band Drayter played with. As much as Schwartz wanted to keep Pertzborn playing in his band, he felt early on that Pertzborn wouldn’t be playing for Drayter forever.
“Ever since I met him and knew him and started working with him, I always knew that he was sort of destined to be playing bigger venues and playing with bigger bands,” Schwartz says. “So, it was always just kind of a matter of time before that happened.”
Pertzborn plays drums as lead singer Dexter Holland performs at Dos Equis Pavillion.
Vera "Velma" Hernandez
“I'm sure I mentioned there that I can play in the studio, I can tour, I can do anything, but I know it was primarily meant to get me more students for drum lessons,” he says.
Not long after posting the ad, he got a response from none other than the founder and guitar player for legendary punk band Black Flag, Greg Ginn, who asked Pertzborn to come to Austin and audition for the band.
One audition and little over a week later, Pertzborn was a member of Black Flag, getting ready to tour the country.
“I'm sure you can imagine, that was completely life-changing from just a normal high schooler from Grapevine to essentially overnight be playing with Black Flag,” he says.
“I think it was pretty much over at that point,” Schwartz says. “That kind of put us on hiatus, and I told him to run with that because that was definitely a way better gig than local bands at the time. It's always one of those bittersweet things — we're losing our best member of the band, but also, this is a great friend of mine, a great musical collaborator of mine, and so I really was just extremely happy that he finally got an opportunity to be going into a world where he deserves to be.”
After touring with Black Flag, Pertzborn found his way into LA band With Our Arms to the Sun, but he didn’t stay with them long after the band opened for Doyle from The Misfits and John 5 of Marilyn Manson.
Pertzborn went on to tour with Doyle and play on Doyle II: As We Die in 2017. This was between recording and touring with rap punk band Ho99o9 (pronounced “horror”). And in 2019, John 5 called Pertzborn to let him know that Manson was looking for a new drummer for his tour. Pertzborn not only got the gig, he also recorded on Manson’s We Are Chaos in 2020 after the tour. He’s also played with Limp Bizkit, Corey Taylor and Suicidal Tendencies — each one navigated through word of mouth and video evidence of his drumming chops.
Watching Pertzborn is hypnotic. While many drummers approach their equipment with stoic control, Pertzborn throws his whole body into it, striking the drums by instinct rather than coordination, disconnecting his mind from his body and letting the backbeat take control.
“That’s how I feel the emotion of the music,” he says. “When I see anyone play, I want to see them convey the emotion. That's how I just convey the emotion of the song. It's not something I really think about.”
Since the beginning of his life on the road, Pertzborn has spent some of his free time uploading drum covers onto YouTube and Instagram as a way to learn more about the craft from other artists' material — typically from bands that he grew up with.
In January 2023, Pertzborn posted a drum cover of The Offspring song “Hammerhead” on YouTube.
“I really didn’t think anything of it, but then, in the very beginning of March, I get a call from The Offspring’s manager,” he says. “They gave me probably four songs to learn, and I went [to the audition], having learned almost the whole set so I would be prepared. If they threw anything out at me, I could say, yep, I know it. Got it.”
By late April, Pertzborn was attending his first rehearsal with his new band, getting ready for a European tour.
It’s all a little unbelievable, isn’t it?
“Believe me, that's still how I feel about it,” Pertzborn says. “It still doesn't make any sense to me. I just went from a completely normal high schooler in Grapevine to … is this real?” he says laughing. “How did this happen?” One reason may be Pertzborn’s absolutely fearless approach to taking the stage with so many well-established bands.
“I love the pressure,” he says. “I love the responsibility. I love the time crunch. I love when I get the call, I have to learn X amount of songs in X amount of days. And I love the adrenaline of stepping on stage for the first time.”
That kind of confidence can only come through dedicated practice and a deep appreciation for the responsibility he is taking on.
“They are established bands and you need to play the parts a certain way, but I think most of that is just respecting the parts,” Pertzborn says. “Growing up, I listened to every style of music from rock to punk, to metal to jazz, to reggae, to anything in between. So, anytime I'm jumping from one project to another — whether it's Manson or Suicidal Tendencies or Offspring or anything in between — my approach isn't much different at all because I've grown up listening to all styles of music.”
It's this wide-open ear to all genres that Pertzborn credits with his ability to move through all of these bands with ease, and it’s his first bit of advice for aspiring drummers.
“In the very early stages, and this sounds so cliché, but just play as much as possible, play as many styles of music as possible, " he says. "And even if you don't like particular styles or genres of music, try to find something about those styles that you can take from.”
Pertzborn also stresses the importance of playing with as many people as possible.
“That was huge for me,” he says. “You can play in your room all day long. You can be the best drummer in the world in your room. All of that goes out the window when you start playing with other musicians.”
Pertzborn has also proven that a drummer can move to the front of the stage and expand the audience in many ways inside and outside the performance space.
“Just put yourself out there,” he says. “For me, that was finding kids at school who played music, and then it was posting on Craigslist. It was putting up YouTube videos, just any medium to get yourself out there.”
And it doesn’t require millions of followers. Pertzborn’s YouTube shows just under 15,000, and just under 38,000 follow him on Instagram. Clearly, it’s about whom you reach and not how many. Building that personal connection is Pertzborn’s final bit of advice.
“What I always tell people when they get into the touring world is that it is just as important to be a good musician as it is to be a cool person,” he says. “When you think about it, on tour, you're only playing for an hour to 90 minutes a day. That leaves another 23 hours that you're just hanging out with people and the guys in your band. Even if you're the best drummer in the world, if it were to get around that you're not cool to hang with, you're not going to get any calls.”
Former bandmates, like Suicidal Tendencies frontman Mike Muir, would agree. In April, when it was clear that Pertzborn would be leaving Suicidal Tendencies to join The Offspring, Muir took to the band's official Facebook page writing, "Being in Suicidal I've had the honor of being on stage and recording with some absolutely amazing musicians. Having Brandon Pertzborn on drums the last couple of years has been such a pleasure. ST has had so many incredible drummers and he just STepped up and killed it behind the kit. But away from the drums he was such an absolute joy to work with and be around. Always a smile, no situation every got him down, always up for every challenge. I will definitely miss touring with him, but I'm extremely happy for him as he goes off to a new challenge."
Pertzborn’s newest bandmate, Noodles, would agree.
"We’ve played with a bunch of great drummers over the years, and Brandon incorporates what was best about each one of them,” Noodles says via email. “He hits hard but can also bring it down when necessary, and every hit is consistent and powerful. He’s got a great sense of groove yet also brings some real punk rock energy. He’s just a super cool guy and a blast to play with."
While everyone in The Offspring is looking forward to the U.S. tour after tightening up together on the European tour, Pertzborn says Dallas “is the show I'm looking forward to the most.”
The homecoming gives Pertzborn time to reflect on where he came from and how far he’s come since his high-school days attending shows at The Door in Deep Ellum. “I think that's where I went to one of my first shows, and I remember thinking when I was a teenager, if I could ever play The Door, I've made it,” he says. “Like there's nothing bigger than this. This is it.”
Though he can look back and explain how it happened to him, Pertzborn really has no explanation for why it all happened to him.
"When I was spending most of my time in Dallas, my whole dream was just to be able to tour, but I didn't know how to get into the world," he says. "It's kind of like the Wild West out here. There's not a blueprint. The fact that somehow it worked out for me, and I'm coming back to Dallas and playing Dos Equis, I’m absolutely thrilled."
Pertzborn is sincere when he says that. Hearing him speak, one can easily sense the boyish excitement, He's still filled with awe and immense gratitude for what he gets to do every day.
"I don't feel any different than I felt as a 19-year-old right out of high school from Colleyville Heritage," he says. "I'm still the same exact dude. Believe me, none of it's lost on me."
Back at Dos Equis Pavilion, a clock counts down to The Offspring’s appearance on stage, but in the darkness Pertzborn can be seen being led to his drum kit by flashlight. When the countdown ends, it's Pertzborn who starts the set with the opening drum solo of The Offspring’s first single, “Come Out and Play,” from the band's breakthrough album Smash.
There is no doubt that Pertzborn feels the magnitude of returning to his hometown, bathing in the spotlight’s warmth as his solo is highlighted in “Want You Bad.”
However, always the professional, the stoic Pertzborn doesn’t reveal his excitement to the audience. Even at the curtain call, he just smiles and waves to the audience after bowing with his bandmates as though it were any other night.
The tour will continue through early September, with a stop near Chicago where his old friend, Schwartz, works as a creative director at a marketing agency.
“Whenever he rolls through on tour, I always try to make an effort to hang out with him,” Schwartz says. “Every time I see Brandon, he's always the same personable guy who I remember. I really don't think he's changed much. Probably just gotten to be a better drummer.”
