It’s funny how different people and things come to your attention. I didn’t intend to set out to do a feature on an extreme stunt bike rider. In fact, I think I was actually researching something on the guys in Biohazard, but I can’t remember. All I know is that somewhere along the line I came across a link for a site called www.stonefilmsnyc.com, which was the homepage of a guy named Drew Stone who I remembered from a Biohazard/Onyx video shoot in Thompson Square Park in the early ‘90s. (At that time, I think he was still working with Parris Mayhew of the Cro-Mags on video stuff.)

Anyway, in clicking through Drew’s site, I discovered all the stunt rider stuff. Being a nut for that kind of thing, I called him up and had him send me over a few DVDs to review. He’s got footage on these things of all kinds of crews, and the original idea at the time was to try to interview a different guy from each crew, with the first one being Kyle Woods from TripleXtreme.

If you’re a regular reader of Crusher, you know that I’m horrifyingly slow at getting things posted sometimes, depending on what life throws at me. Can’t be helped. It is what it is. And even at the time, it took me about three or four calls back and forth with Kyle to get an entire interview.

When we finally did get it coordinated, it was about 8am or some ungodly hour as such—definitely not a time that I’m usually up and about, being the nighttime rocker chick and all that. But, wedid have a good little chat, although it seemed he was interviewing me more than I was him in the beginning.

There’s also a bunch of pics for you to look at with awe and amazement, and if that’s not enough, then, dammit, hit the link to his team’s site and find out more.

KW: Wow.

CN: I do a lot every time I update, because I get so many.

KW: Yeah.

CN: And I want to be fair to everyone.

KW: Is it local stuff or what?

CN: Punk, metal, hardcore, industrial, noisy loud rock stuff--local, national, and international....

KW: Okay.

CN: What do you listen to more of, hip hop?

KW: Um, no, to tell you the truth, I don’t really know anymore. I enjoy the blues mostly, but I don’t really have time to listen to a lot of stuff honestly. I try to listen to everything, just whatever’s on, I’m down with it.

CN: Right.

KW: For instance, I don’t own a single CD anymore, they’re all gone, I threw them out when I moved. And you know, I don’t play anything, I don’t go out to a club and go, “Oh, I want to go to a hip hop club!”, or “Oh, I want to go to a metal show!”, whatever’s around, I’m into it.

CN: Right.

KW: I’m a hardcore dude, I’m into hardcore shit, whatever it is.

CN: It’s a good way to be, you know? What a lot of people consider fun, for me, is actually work.

KW: It’s become work?

CN: Well, even when I go to a show, it’s work, because I’m handing out flyers, and schmoozing other writers and publicists and musicians and stuff, you know?

KW: Right.

CN: So it’s just a big network soup up here. I mean, Drew (Stone, the director) can tell you about that.

KW: Yeah.

CN: Because he was in with the bands up here, and he did videos for a lot of our mutual friends, and people that I wrote about back in the day, so there’s a big cesspool up here, and my world’s getting increasingly smaller.

KW: Yeah.

CN: So I decided to find new people like you to put into it.

KW: We’ll spice up the venue a little bit.

KW: Nice.

CN: Yeah, you gotta be chill where you hang out.

KW: Yeah, you gotta have a good place.

CN: So, when did you start riding bicycles? Because that’s where you started before you went into motorcycles, right?

KW: Not really, I mean I didn’t start getting crazy on bicycles, I just kind of started riding a motorcycle and went pretty crazy on it.

CN: About what age?

KW: I think I had my first bike when I was 11.

CN: Where were you living then?

KW: Uh, Del Rey. Del Rey, Florida.

CN: Yeah, I grew up in the Carolinas. It’s very similar terrain, you know, the whole suburban vibe, you’ve got a lot of places to ride. My brothers were always into the BMX bikes and jumping the trash cans, pretending they were Evil Kenevil.

KW: Well, my first bike was an Enduro bike, like a half dirt/half street bike, but I just spent more time in the street when I was a kid.

CN: Right.

KW: I was just kind of nutty on that thing, like stand on the seat and drive backwards, that kind of shit.

CN: And how many times did you wreck before you perfected those moves?

KW: When I was young?

CN: Yeah

KW: Oh, I don’t know. I’ve wrecked so many times, I have no idea. Right now, I’m on like, my eighth concussion, so I have no clue how many times I’ve wrecked, but many, many times.

CN: You’re on your eighth concussion?! What, you had another one recently?

KW: Uh, let’s see, what was my last one? When the bike flipped over on me in Lakeland, probably about a year and a half ago.

CN: Ah, man.

KW: Pretty nasty. We still crash. We crash probably, I don’t know, probably every other time we ride, but nothing bad, you know, it’s like relative to bad crashes.

CN: I was watching the DVD here, the Urban Street Bike Warriors, where you guys were doing it in the parking lot where the semis dock up, and your buddy crashed and he broke one of the arms or something on the thing, and you took it to the shop and were fixing it?

KW: Oh yeah yeah yeah, that was Joe, when he crashed. We crash like that all the time, we don’t really get hurt.

CN: Really.

KW: Just because we try something, we’re not really sure if it’s going to work or not, so we just kind of go for it.

CN: You gotta do it that way.

KW: Yeah.

CN: Kind of reminds me of that song that’s been out for a little while now, and the lyrics go, “Scars heal, glory fades, all you’re left with are memories made. Pain hurts, but only for a minute, life is short, so go on and live it, ‘cause the chicks dig it.”

KW: Right, that’s pretty much the truth.

CN: Isn’t it? (laughter) You know, who wants to date a bookworm? I want somebody who gets out there and has fun.

KW: Yeah, I know. They all say they want the hardcore extreme guys, and then they get ‘em, and they’re like, “How come you don’t have a real job?” after a little while.

CN: But it is a real job, or at least, it’s really hard work.

KW: Yeah

CN: It’s really hard work to work at being that…

KW: It’s a lot of hard work, yeah, but I mean, money’s crazy. One month you might make a lot of money, the next month you won’t see nothing, you know?

CN: Well that’s why you’re similar to musicians, you know?

KW: Right.

CN: It’s totally the same with them. They’ll be touring, and just live on ten dollar a day per diems, you know?

KW: Right.

CN: The record will be platinum, and they may not see money for months and months, so…

KW: Right. (Laughter)

CN: I don’t know, you probably get the chicks that are all into you, and then they want you to stop riding-- you ever had one of those?

KW: That happens a lot, they get you and then try and steer you towards doing something else.

CN: Same thing in music. You see these chicks that are totally groupie type chicks, they go after the guys in the band, and then when they get them, they bitch and complain about them being on the road and playing.

KW: Right, because all they think is that they constantly have chicks throwing themselves at ‘em.

CN: Because that’s how they got ‘em. Because they know that’s what they did.

KW: So they try to take you out of it. I don’t know, that’ll do nothing but piss people off.

CN: Oh yeah, because usually the musician ends up sitting at home in his armchair watching MTV going, 'goddamn, I need to get out of this house before I kill this woman!' So where have you been this year already? You said you were at Daytona?

KW: Um, wow…um, Daytona…man! I don’t know, I have all these places written down actually, on my computer.

CN: Right, and you just kind of go from place to place. I think my brother’s the same, like, he knows where he’s gonna be eventually, but he can’t tell you linearly.

KW: Right, I mean the problem with us traveling, and it happens with the people I know, is that being traveling, we kind of lose track of where we are and where we’ve been and everything is kind of the same.

CN: Well yeah, that’s where the famed joke comes from, you know, “Is it Tuesday? This must be Cleveland.” Because the rock bands get the same way on the tour buses, it’s like, “What day is it? Is this New Jersey?”

KW: You don’t even really know anymore, you remember doing stuff, but you don’t remember where. “When’d we blow up that rental car?” “Dude, I don’t know, but I remember doing it.”

CN: See, that’s why you’ve got to have the videographer and the journalist with you to keep track of that stuff.

KW: Right.

CN: That way you don’t have to worry about it. You just live it, and they document it. It’s a good thing.
So once you started learning how to do the tricks, how did you hook up with the others guys? I mean, did you start with Triple Extreme?

KW: Well, the whole thing kind of started out as a hobby at first. It was like, I had a motorcycle and I always liked it, and I was always kind of stupid and crazy, but I didn’t really know about stunts. I was, I’d say, 18 years old, and I’m driving around on my bike and meeting up with people, and we used to go to this one spot every Friday where everybody’d meet up, and there’d be like 400 people there, and like half of ‘em would leave at a certain time and they’d all follow each other and go do drag racing. And some of the people would go and do road racing, like hitting turns and stuff, and there was one other crew that had all ratty looking bikes, and I followed them one day, and they went to a spot and started doing stunts, and I was like, “Yo, that’s what I want to do.”

CN: Mmhm.

KW: So from that day on it kind of grabbed me, and I’ve been doing it ever since, but you know, again, it started out as a hobby and it was just fun, and I heard about a contest and went out there, and started winning. Little by little you get better and better, and you start beatin’ the top guys, and it just snowballs from there.

CN: It’s true. So is Triple Extreme the first club you’ve been in, or were you in other groups before?

KW: No. That was the first and only group, to tell you the truth. There was another crew around where we lived, and they were a really big crew, and everybody knew who they were, and coming up we would get laughed at a lot cuz no one knew who we were, so we had to struggle with that. And the only way to overcome that is to become…so, ya know, we pushed it every day as hard as we could, and we became by far the best team in Florida.

CN: Mmhm

KW: That was our gig. We started from there, and we’d go to contests, travel all around the country, beating people left and right. Next thing you know we were the team to beat. It seemed like within one year we became one of the best teams in the country.

CN: There you go. Those PBR (Pure Bred Riders) boys are pretty crazy, huh?

KW: Yeah, they’re good fun.

CN: They’re a bunch of fun, good ol’ boys. People I grew up with were like that.

KW: Yeah they’ll get down and fuck it up. They’re cool.

CN: I like that one in the DVD where you did the twelve o’clock and then you pull the gun out of your pocket and crack off a few shots.

KW: Yeah?

CN: That was quite cute. So how did you get started doing stunts in films?

KW: We were doing a show in Miami, and a guy came up talking to us about doing stunts and things, and we were just kinda bullshitting with him, and it ended up he was a stunt coordinator for 2 Fast 2 Furious. And he was like, “Hey, ya know I’m looking for a couple of motorcycle stunt guys. Do you guys wanna be in it?” And were like “Hell yeah.” So that’s just how it kinda started. That was our little audition without us knowing it. And then we got a small part in there. But he couldn’t offer us all the stuff he wanted us to do, so he ended up giving us other parts doing car stuff and shit like that, so it turned into a lot of different things.

CN: Right.

KW: And again that snowballed, too. We met a bunch of other stunt people from there in the regular stunt industry, and we call them and hang out all the time and exchange contacts. It’s pretty good.

CN: That’s cool. So you did 2 Fast 2 Furious. You didn’t do Biker Boyz though, right?

KW: No, no, no, no. We did CSI: Miami.

CN: Uh huh. And there was the first Fast and Furious, right?

KW: No, just the second one. That’s all. Otherwise, I don’t really watch a lot of TV. None of us do. We don’t watch TV. We don’t really listen to too much music. We just kinda exist.

CN: Do what you do, huh?

KW: Yeah, as far as actors, I have no idea who these people were on the show. Like, I didn’t know the difference between the clean-up guy and the director. I don’t know any of these people.

CN: [laughs] Nor did it matter cuz you were just there to do your stunts anyway right?

KW: Yeah, we just kind of hang out and shit and do our own thing.

CN: And you also do these documentary type films with Drew?

KW: Yeah there’s a lot of different directors around the country who are doing those. So we do that. MTV we’ve been on recently. That “True Life” show—whatever it’s called.

CN: Really? When did they film it?

KW: Uh, Drew actually will draw on that. You can’t get ‘em to quote that.

CN: Yeah I was gonna say it hasn’t aired yet. So anyway what’s the usual day schedule like for Kyle Woods?

KW: Oh my God, um, it’s never the same thing. Like for instance, this morning one of my other partners is taking a shower right now, and we're gonna ride down in an hour and a half to the airport to finish filming for the day. I do a little bit of everything. I used to own an auto repair shop. I still have a shop that I work out of every once in a while. Sometimes I’ll fix cars if I’m not riding or filming. So I make sure I’m fully busy all the time. Sometimes I fix boats, I mean I do everything. You name it I do it. Whatever makes money I don’t care I do it.

CN: That’s usually what works with me too. I used to work at set schedules. I’d try and have a set schedule; it never worked out that way.

KW: I’m glad you don’t have one.

CN: And I’ll be happy when they invent a day-stretcher cuz I need more than twenty-four hours.

KW: I know. So do I.

CN: (laughter) When I was talking to you the other day I was asking you about what you were filming currently.

KW: We’re doing a "how-to" motorcycle stunt series. I got a five DVD set. Basically, it shows step by step how we do all our stunts—everything from how we learned how to wheelie, all the techniques and very detailed all the way up to the most complicated wheelie you could possibly do.

CN: right

KW: And then, ya know, stoppies, which is like on the front wheel—all that stuff. It’s everything you could ever want to know about stunts, if you’re interested in it, and it’s within five DVDs.

CN: Wow. That’s gonna cause a real sensation of bodily injuries.

KW: Oh yeah. We’re probably gonna get sued. But we decided not to worry. Like we’re ready to get sued if that happens. It’s either gonna be a huge hit, or we gonna just fail miserably, get sued and have to change the company name, so…

CN: Yeah, right.

KW: Going for it. We don’t know what’s going to happen yet.

CN: One or the other. There’s never been a "how-to" like that.

KW: Our normal distributor, she’s like, “I don’t know, it’s kind of a liability…” We’re like, “Well, ya know whatever. If you don’t want it, you don’t want it," but the thing is selling off the shelf already.

CN: Yeah, right.

KW: And it’s working out for us.

CN: And you figure, look at the success of things like Jackass…

KW: Yeah it’s nowhere near as bad as that.

CN: Right. You gotta weigh in-between, ya know?

KW: The only thing I can say is we call it a “how-to” but it’s not really a “how to.” It’s more of a documentary on how we do it. It’s like this is our trials and tribulations and exactly what we went through to get where we’re at as far as learning tricks and stuff. I mean obviously it’s a "how-to" the way we explain everything, but technically we could be in court going, “No, no, no, no. Just showing you how I do it.”

CN: Yeah, exactly. So what is the most difficult stunt that you have mastered so far?

KW: To be honest the more boring it looks, the harder it probably is. Like circle wheelies are probably one of the hardest out there.

CN: Really?

KW: Yeah, that’s where you’re going really slow, and you’re doing a circle in maybe a five foot radius.

CN: Right.

KW: It’s like, the faster, more dangerous looking stuff is the easiest to tell you the truth.

CN: Yeah, well you’ve got centrifugal force and gravity and all that stuff helping you out.

KW: And with the slow wheelies you’ve got none of that. You’re balancing the bike and you’re working the break and you’re working the throttle at the same time. Like it’s a big pain in the ass, but it’s no where near as exciting. Like people look at that and they’re falling asleep.

CN: Right.

KW: Like if you’re a rider, you appreciate it. You see it the first couple times and your like, “Wow, that’s impressive.” But if you watch it all day you’re like, “Eh, what’re you gonna do, fall off and stub your toe?”

CN: What is the one that’s like a front wheelie but you spin around one hundred and eighty degrees?

KW: On the front wheel it’s called a stoppie, and when you spin the one-eighty, it’s called a one-eighty stoppie. And that whole thing came about in Mission: Impossible, and that was all camera tricks. That was Mission: Impossible II, I think. But it was like “Oh my God, it’s insane! You can’t do it!” Next thing you know we’re doing it.

CN: I was going to ask you about that because at first I thought, “yeah maybe it is stunt riders,” but you’re telling me it’s camera tricks.

KW: Nah, that was all camera tricks. They had a stunt rider to do most of the stunts, but he couldn’t do that one. Like the Hollywood stunt riders they have, or so-called stunt riders, are usually just older guys who aren’t afraid to crash a motorcycle. But they’re nowhere near the competition riders that are out today.

CN: Exactly.

KW: But through trials and tribulations we’ve got into the movie industry a little bit. So we’re working our way into it, but that’s a tough gig. All the older stunt men want to keep you down. They don’t want to help you out at all.

CN: Well that’s the way it is in anything. It’s the same way in the music industry with the new bands coming up. They’ll say, “OK, you can play on our bill," but they won’t give them enough stage room to do anything, or the sound man will give them half power. Ya know, same kind of shit.

KW: They make them sound like shit.

CN: Yeah like it’s well known in the industry that this is just a given that’s going to happen to you.

KW: That’s pretty much what happens to us. They act all nice to our face over at 2 Fast, 2 Furious, but it turns out that most of them are just dickheads.

CN: They’re jealous, ya know, if they can’t do what you can do.

KW: When they’re looking at us, we’re half their age, we’re way more talented, and we’re about to take their jobs.

CN: Yeah, they’re not gonna be too nice.

KW: Naw, they’re not too happy about it.

CN: So you think you’re gonna do anymore Hollywood work?

KW: Yeah, definitely. I’m working on my resume and everything right now. I need to talk to a couple potential managers and figure out how I want to go about doing that, but yeah, absolutely, I plan on doing a lot more of it.

CN: You should get an agent, dude.

KW: I don’t know. The agents are mostly for the actors and everything around here. But I haven’t really met any that say they do anything with stunts. It’s usually kind of like a group. Like you meet the stunt coordinator and you’re on his little list. I mean, the guy knows me, but he’s got ten other older guys that are like, “Man, don’t hire him. I got a wife and kids, and a family to feed, blah blah, I’ve been with you forever…” That kind of stuff.

CN: Yeah but see, you’re lucky in that you’re kind of attractive, so you could parlay it into an acting gig as opposed to just a stunt-guy gig. So you got that for ya.

KW: Other than the fact that I got tattoos. Sometimes they hate that.

CN: Oh please, they just stick a patch of fucking latex on it and put some makeup on it, and you never see it.

KW: I hear ya. I hear ya.

CN: If they can make Michael Jackson into a white, fat man…

KW: Right

CN: (laugher) Like that one short movie he had where they made him a middle-aged fat white man...

KW: laughter

CN: Yeah, so I think you’d be good doing a little more acting.

KW: It’d be fun. I'd definitely like to give it a try. See how it goes. I’ve got promo tapes and the whole nine yards that we usually use to book gigs with.

CN: Now I was looking at one of these DVDs, and then I was looking on your site at your resume, and you were in that snowmobile movie?

KW: Slednecks--yeah those guys like to spice up their films--they’ve been coming out with a lot of other stuff looking around for whatever they can get. They took some street bike stuff when we were out in Daytona a couple years ago. And they’ve been emailing me every once in a while and they’re like, “Hey send me some more stuff!” I just send them stuff, and they hype me up in their film, and that’s just how it goes.

CN: Oh, Okay. I didn’t know if you were actually riding a snowmobile though.

KW: Oh, no, no. I’ve seen snow like, once when I was a kid. I don’t play with that shit.

CN: (laughter) You’re definitely a Florida boy then, huh?

KW: I was born and raised here, and I’m not leaving.

CN: (laughter)

KW: I don’t go anywhere in the winter. I don’t like that stuff.

CN: Ya know, snow is a four-letter word.

KW: Yeah, exactly.

CN: And I hate the shit. So is rain, as a matter of fact. They’re really annoying, especially to women when you’re trying to be all cute with your hair and stuff. It’s OK for a few minutes. It’s pretty to look at. But I don’t want to have to walk in it.

KW: Right, the rain’s really bad down here.

CN: Oh, I know. I used to go to Florida for vacation a lot.

KW: You never told me that.

CN: Yeah, we used to go down to Florida a lot. My dad would get the Open Road camper and we’d drive down one coast starting at St. Augustine, Daytona, down to Miami, and come back up and stop a Walt Disney World on the way home…(long silence) You there?

KW: Yeah. Eggs--gotta start the day--breakfast of champions.

CN: Ah, yeah. I gotta start the day myself, but luckily record companies don’t open ‘til ten.

KW: (laughter) Right.

CN: I kind of get a reprieve, ya know. Most of the clubs are open until four anyway, so…

KW: Everybody’s just leaving, right.

CN: Yeah, totally I’m in the middle of booking a show myself.

KW: What do you do, in your position, about booking the bands, because you’re around all these other bands, and I’m sure everybody feels like you owe them a favor or vice versa. Is that a pain in the ass?

CN: Part of it is that a lot of people aren’t available because they’re on other tours already. So that’s easy. I’m starting out with friends’ bands, I mean friends that I’ve know for like, twenty years. People that confirmed with me as soon as I asked them. I didn’t have to wait for them to check their schedule or whatever. I’m doing a series of shows actually, so there’s always another one to do. Ya know if I don’t get ‘em this time, I’ll get ‘em next time. And then there’s also the thing of the different genres of music

KW: And it pretty much goes all night? That’s cool.

CN: Yeah, it’ll be fun. I’d invite you, but you already told me you never leave Florida.

KW: No, No. Not when it’s like anywhere near cold out.

CN: But it’s not cold right now.

KW: I close myself in. Anything under seventy and I’m at home.

CN: Well, yeah, ya know I had to learn how to wear clothes when I moved up here.

KW: Right.

CN: Seriously, you don’t even know. I didn’t own a winter coat.

KW: No, cuz I don’t!

CN: It does get cold where I come from, but I didn’t have the stuff you needed to live here in NYC. And being a girl, sometimes we wear heals and stuff, you can’t do that around here and walk any length of time cuz it just wears down your shoes.

KW: Right. You gotta dress for the weather and not for the look.

CN: Yeah. I remember when I first moved here being on the subway and seeing these women with these nice business suits and they have on sneakers, and I was like, “What the fuck is wrong with them? God I wouldn’t be caught dead looking like that.” And to this day I probably still wouldn’t, but I try and get around it. I’m not the kind of girl that would wear the heels at the office only and the sneakers on the train. If it’s gonna boil down to that I’ll wear the Doc Martens.

KW: (laughter)

CN: I do make some nods to fashion. At least they are paisley Doc Martens. Ya know, they’re girly.

KW: Oh yeah. As long as they look good and they match.

CN: I do have my girly ones. And then I’ve got my shit-ass pole climber boots that I wear in the mud and snow.

KW: (laughter) That’s why I’m staying here. I want nothing to do with any of that.

CN: So, how old are you?

KW: Twenty-six.

CN: Twenty-six? Oh, you’re young.

KW: Yeah I’m a little guy. We’re all pretty young. In order to do anything stupid like we do you gotta be kind of young. Cuz the older you get the more you realize you’re an idiot for doing it.

CN: Unless you’re just perpetually and totally immature like me, and you just continue on anyway. I’m never gonna grow up, I’m seventeen in my head forever. Considering…well, I’m not even gonna tell you how old I’m gonna be this year. (Laughter) At least I don’t look it. Let’s put it that way. I’ve approached that official middle-agedom, so it’s pretty scary. But when you turn around and you see that all your friends are still doing the same shit you’re doing and they’re older than you. What the fuck.

KW: (laughter)

CN: So you’re telling me you listen to blues?

KW: Yeah, mostly. Like, I really enjoyed when Led Zeppelin came out with the BBC Recordings.

CN: Yeah?

KW: That was cool. I like that kind of stuff.

CN: Oh yeah. You gotta have an appreciation for Led Zeppelin. There was one point in my life where if you were prized enough to make it all the way to my house, you would probably find Led Zeppelin on the turntable. (Laughter)

KW: Just constantly playing…

CN: Either Led Zeppelin or Bad Company because they just had that groove to ‘em. So, Mr. Motorcycle man, you still just have the small shop and go riding around, huh?

KW: We have a shop that’s kind of like home base that we fix all our stuff at. Ya know, we go in there and we break stuff, we throw wrenches around, and then we load everything up and try it again the rest of the day.

CN: I guess that’s the best way to do it. Keeps the overhead lower that way.