Travis Clark - I ride - Dirt Rider Magazine

Myspace.com/wethekings_

My dad was really big into motocross. It was kind of his midlife crisis and his way of being an adrenaline junkie. He bought me and my younger brother an 80 and a 60 to start us off. Mine was the big wheel so I could barely touch the ground. We weren't supposed to tell my mom 'cause she would have freaked out... My dad taught us everything about riding. It was my first passion, before music.When I was 16 and my brother 15, he wanted to take this jump and have me film it. He was going to jump over me, look completely back at me, point and then land. That's what was going to happen... He ended up getting airlifted out to the hospital and my dad said, "Now we're going to have to tell your mom." She freaked out, sold the bikes, and we weren't allowed to ride again the rest of our childhood. played a show out in Anaheim, and I met this girl who was a rep for Fox and Honda. Honda sent me a bike, a CRF230F. This was before I'd bought my house so I had to ship it to my parents' house. It was like a movie. There's a knock on the door and there's a dirt bike in front of the house. So I was like, "Hey...by the way, I got a dirt bike." I think I was 23 and still scared of my mom. I'm still scared of her actually, but she definitely took it easy on me. She said, "You couldn't wait until I was in the grave to start this again?!"Before I walk out on stage I get this nervousness or anxiousness that I can't explain to anyone, this feeling like you're about to be on cloud nine. When I don't have shows, riding is the closest thing to that feeling.There's a momentum or a flow, almost like a time signature, that happens when you're on the track and you get into the groove of things. It's the same thing for music. You have a climactic part, you have these verses that are maybe struck down a bit... It's crazy how parallel two completely opposite things are.I think our music's upbeat because I am an adrenaline junkie. I love fast feel-good music, and when I'm riding, I ride fast and I feel good. They go hand in hand.