Red Hot Chili Peppers Reuniting In The Fall

`That`s the plan,` Smith tells Billboard.com, noting that what was announced as a one-year break turned into two for the quartet.

Drummer Chad Smith has October circled on his calendar for the Red Hot Chili Peppers' return to active duty in the recording studio -- after he completes another tour with supergroup Chickenfoot and releases the first album by his instrumental side band, Chad Smith's Bombastic Meatbats.

"That's the plan," Smith tells Billboard.com, noting that what was announced as a one-year break turned into two for the quartet after touring to support 2005's "Stadium Arcadium."

"Everybody was like, 'Y'know, I really like having this time off, not being a Chili Pepper and doing other things ... It'll be two years in September, so now we're ready. You can't force people to play when they don't want to play or aren't ready to play or whatever -- not in our band, anyway."

Smith expects that bassist Flea and guitarist John Frusciante may come in with musical ideas, but the group most likely will "do a lot of improvising and jamming and songs will come out of that, too. That's what we usually do. I don't know why it would be different."

No prospective release date has been considered yet, and Smith says he and his bandmates also "haven't talked about" who will produce the album, though he acknowledges with a laugh that Rick Rubin, who produced the group's last five studio efforts, "always ends up being the guy."

The looming Chili Peppers sessions do make Smith "the bad guy" in Chickenfoot, but the other members of the all-star group have assured him they'll accommodate his schedule. The quartet, which begins its next tour Sunday in Halifax, Canada, also has filmed recent shows in San Francisco, Atlanta, and at this year's Montreux Jazz Festival, and plans to document at least one more for a possible DVD release.

Meanwhile, Smith is excited about introducing the world to the Meatbats, a group he formed a few years back with guitarist Jeff Kollman and keyboardist Ed Roth as an outgrowth of their work with former Black Sabbath member Glenn Hughes. They first performed live in 2007 and have continued to work together intermittently.

"It's all very loose," Smith says. "It's instrumental music -- power, funk, rock music. It's a niche. We're not going for the Mariah Carey crowd or anything. It's just really fun and they're great guys and we just have fun hanging out and playing."

In addition to their debut album, which comes out Sept. 15, the Meatbats have recorded a second set of songs that Smith predicts will be out in early 2010, along with a live album at the Baked Potato in Los Angeles. "We have three albums in the can, and none of them are out yet," Smith says with a laugh. "But we won't wait very long. It's not like we're putting out singles and we have to have some kind of strategy. This is stuff we can put out whenever it feels right."