Tye Trujillo, the 12-year old son of METALLICA's Robert Trujillo and member of NorCal group THE HELMETS, played his second show with KORN last night (Wednesday, April 19) at Espaço Das Américas in São Paulo, Brazil. Fan-filmd video footage of the concert can be seen below.
Tye is filling in for KORN's regular bassist, Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu, who is unable to make the band's South American tour due to "unforeseen circumstances."
Said KORN in a statement: "We are bummed Fieldy can't join us on this run but excited to do a few gigs with a young player like Tye. We look forward to welcoming our brother Fieldy back when we return to the States in May."
Remaining KORN shows with Tye Trujillo on bass:
April 21 - Live Curitiba - Curitiba, Brazil
April 23 - Pepsi On Stage - Porto Alegre, Brazil
April 25 - Estadio Malvinas Argentinas - Paternal, Argentina
April 27 - Teatro Caupolican - Santiago, Chile
Fieldy will rejoin his KORN bandmates at the Carolina Rebellion festival on May 6.
Robert Trujillo told Brazil's Globo Play about Tye: "I never forced him on music. I always felt that if he wanted to embrace an instrument, great; I'd try to help him with it. So initially, at first, it was drums. And then around that same time, when he was one, he had a little plastic guitar, and he would play it all the time, just strumming it — always strumming it everywhere, to the point where the plastic was worn down."
He continued: "It's a beautiful thing, 'cause he's still a 12-year-old, and he still acts wild and crazy, as a twelve-year-old should, but when it comes to music, he's very focused. And with KORN, it's funny, because I haven't shown him anything at all for the KORN stuff — I've been too busy and I've been out of town a lot — and he's taking this opportunity very serious."
Robert Trujillo previously told the Huffington Post that Tye was "an amazing bass player and a really great writer. The bass lines that he's writing and the riffs, I'm like, 'Man, I wish I had written that.' He's coming up with stuff on his own, but he's also been influenced by players like Jaco Pastorius, but also Miles Davis or BLACK SABBATH or LED ZEPPELIN."
Trujillo added: "He's like a sponge. He loves funk. He loves James Brown, he's this little 12-year-old who's soaking up and embracing all this different music and I can tell that it's helping him creatively in what he's writing with his band."
Tye's own band, THE HELMETS, counts TOOL, ALICE IN CHAINS and METALLICA among their influences. Tye told Billboard last year, "We hate pop, we despise it. It's all the same sound."
