Greg Tribbett was born in Peoria, Illinois, on November 7, 1968. By the time Mudvayne made The New Game in 2008, he had a pretty good idea what listeners thought of him. “I know some people think that I can’t play solos, only rhythms!” he told Guitar World. He’d asked his bandmates about putting more leads on the record. On “Do What You Do,” he stepped on a wah for his solo. It was the only effects pedal he used on the album.
Tribbett’s first guitar teacher played an Ibanez, and he took to those guitars early. He liked how close he could set the strings to the fretboard. When he helped form Mudvayne in Peoria in 1996, one of the musicians he started playing with was drummer Matt McDonough. Their partnership outlasted the face paint and the stage name Gurrg that Tribbett wore when “Dig” introduced the band’s major-label debut, L.D. 50, in 2000.
The two had a way of starting songs that left room for the bass to do something unexpected. Tribbett would play McDonough a riff, and they’d work out how the drums fit against it. Bassist Ryan Martinie listened to what they had before deciding where his part should go. On “Not Falling,” the verse slips bars of 5/8 between stretches of 4/4. Tribbett credited years of playing shows together for their ability to follow one another through those turns.
Sometimes the drummer’s first instinct settled the arrangement. Tribbett had the main guitar figure for “A New Game” in his head before he played it for McDonough. The drummer answered with a blast beat. Tribbett liked the combination so much that he wanted to stop there and work it out while they could still hear what had just happened.
With Hellyeah, Tribbett got to hear what another drummer would do with one of his riffs. He and Mudvayne singer Chad Gray recorded the band’s 2010 album Stampede at Vinnie Paul’s house. Tribbett recalled to Live Metal that he was idly playing the figure that became “Order the Sun” when Paul heard it and wanted to try it on drums. Guitarist Tom Maxwell joined in, and what started with Tribbett playing around the house became the slow, heavy song that closes the record.
When Tribbett and McDonough got back together to write for Audiotopsy, they hadn’t played together since 2009. Tribbett arrived with ideas he’d worked out on acoustic guitar, including the intro and verse to “The Calling.” Over a weekend at McDonough’s house, he found the guitar part for the chorus, and the two worked out the shape of the song. That still left singer Billy Keeton without a vocal hook.
The melody finally came to Tribbett during the Orlando recording sessions, just as he and Keeton were heading out for beer. As Tribbett recalled for antiMusic, he hummed it to Keeton on their way out the door. When they got back from the store, Keeton went in and recorded the chorus. “The Calling” appeared on Audiotopsy’s 2015 debut, Natural Causes.
