cheddatom

The album is out now! Streaming links here: https://headsticks.ffm.to/thebestthingontv CDs, Vinyl and bundles here: https://headsticks.co.uk/shop And the only other video we've managed to do so far...

you listened to Vulfpeck and didn't find anything remarkable about the bass playing? Wow!

Very late here, last week we did Wednesday 6pm and Thursday 9pm at Bearded Theory Woodland Stage. It's a big festival and really suited to us. I camped over for the weekend after the Thursday set which was loads of fun. Great crew, great sound, great crowd, doesn't get better

Sometimes you just have to leave before the end of the gig. I think there's a polite way to do it. Say bye to the band(s) before they go on if possible. Should be common courtesy really.

I'm on drums in Headsticks but our bassist is awesome. He's playing a Fender American P into an Ashdown Rootmaster into a Barefaced stack. Impeccable timing, tasteful fills, a proper bassist's bassist. The full album is out 1st June but there are a couple of singles out already. Here's God Song featuring the legendary Steve Ignorant in the video P.S this is recorded, mixed and mastered by myself and I always welcome any constructive criticism

Yeh, same line-up for almost 14 years now! I think the main reasons we've done relatively well are 1. We're all pretty flexible with our jobs so we can finish early to get on the road and take random time off etc. 2. Our frontman makes and sells merch for a living, so in the early days, he'd sell the merch to the band on credit giving us time to build up cash. He's also constantly changing designs etc. so merch became a big thing for us, and brings in the cash to fund the physical product. We've been keeping the diary pretty clear the last year or so hoping for more support slots to bigger bands akin to BigRedX. Unfortunately it's not paid off for us. The one offer we had was a full tour for £80 per night. We're too old to be sleeping in the van so it'd cost us circa £500 a night for hotels, fuel, food etc. Worth the risk in some opinions but we didn't take it in the end.

Yeh it's frustrating Paul. Bearded Theory went great, then they put us on on the Wednesday afternoon this year! We played Beautiful Days a few years back, went down a storm, never asked back. etc etc. I think maybe we're just too old to really get anywhere. Anyway, it's good fun and pays for the beers!

Extensive gigging for decent fees means we've always had the cash for physical products. We're a very lucky band in many ways!

hah, nice one, I should probably go see it for myself, it's only round the corner!

The album is going to be distributed physically through FOAD Records, not sure what the deal is there but I think they made the vinyl. 100 each of 3 colours. CDs are through a company called Birnam https://www.birnamcd.com/ I'd guess we went for 1000 of them and it'll take 18 months to shift them all - that's been the case for the last few albums I'm not sure about costs sorry, as you can tell, I don't get involved in that side of things.

The guitarist and bassist are fine, obviously, it's just the frontman who has an unusual sense of time. We often have to follow him if he skips half a bar etc. but keeping the drum fills simple, with snare hits on the backbeat, tends to help a lot.

Hah, we're still a small time band Paul! We have a loyal following on that scene but it's probably 500 people at the most. We don't get any air play or playlisting and we're struggling to get bigger gigs/festivals

I'm from Stoke so kind of proud of this, but to be honest I've never listened to much of Lemmy's work. I did think he was known as a pick player, but this statue shows fingerstyle. I guess he did both else someone would have pointed it out already?

We have an album out next month. We're doing CDs and limited edition Vinyl. We put it up for pre-order this morning on our website and we've already had 20+ orders, so clearly, it's working for us. We'll sell them at gigs too

Eh Up Mi Duck festival on Saturday night. All day drinking tends to mean a lot of early nights at these festivals but we were on at 9:15 which is a good time to start. Quick line check and sound was ready in under a minute. Sounded great from behind the kit and loads of compliments afterwards! A single error - When I do any "out there" fills, it can put the singer right off. I try to concentrate and use the same fills over and over, keeping anything slightly "jazzy" for the recording studio. Unfortunately as the huge crowd were so into it, I found myself go to auto-pilot - enjoying the crowd response and "vibe" instead of concentrating on the drums. Out came a particularly off-beat fill (I'm sure any drummers would appreciate it) and sure enough the singer went half a bar out! Ooopsie! 🤣 Other than that, an absolutely flawless gig and such positivity from the crowd I'm still buzzing two days later We sold loads of merch. The new songs from our forthcoming album are going down great and people seem to know the words already! We put it on "pre order" this morning and we've already had orders for 20+ CDs and a load of vinyl and bundles. Very cool

It'd be worth asking someone out front if it's coming through. If it's just on stage who cares? ...but yeh when I used to play small pubs with just vocals and acoustic guitar in the PA, I would turn the snare off in between songs and for intros etc. In that scenario, the rattling is much louder relative to the volume of the vocals and guitar.

I probably have it set wrong. I'll ask an expert when I get chance. I have it sounding great when it's on, and when it's off it doesn't rattle, so I figured that was good enough, but yeh, if I want to do a drum solo and switch between on and off it's basically impossible. Thankfully I've not been asked/allowed

I have a pearl throw off on both of my main snares. You have to lift the whole thing up to take up the slack before you can pull the level up to fix it on. You can kind of do it one handed but it's not the easiest thing. If it was ever a problem I'd probably find a better throwoff mechanism and fit that to both, but as it is, for 99% of our gigs, no-one can hear it

I have a few snares where the throwoff is very stiff and takes two hands to get off and on When I was playing quiet folk songs in pubs with limited PA, I would keep my snare off as much as possible in intros etc. Now I play bigger venues with big PAs I leave it on. You can't hear it FOH

Option 2 every time. You can't sound check at low levels as you won't hear the low end. You have to sound check at gig level. No need for 5 minutes though! Line-check everything then do 30 seconds of a section of a song where everything gets used (IE don't check the verse without BVs, check the chorus with BVs).

here's the view from the back of the room

The Salty Dog in Northwich on Friday night. It's a small place so we easily filled it. I love this place 'cos they always have great beer. For the first time since I started playing there, they had a great sound engineer! Every other time we've played there the sound has been plagued by low end rumbling and constant feedback, however, it's always been a barman or the like just doing their best. This guy clearly not only knew what he was doing, but was also concerned with doing a good job, and he did! A very sweaty 1.5hr set and all the free beer I could drink made for a very entertaining evening

After a very long 2 months off in the hope my ribs would recover, we were finally back out last weekend. The Gifford Arms in Wolverhampton on Saturday was sold out. I was hoping for the same comedy sound guy as the last time we played there but unfortunately it was a thoroughly pleasant and competent engineer. Still, at least we sounded good but I don't have a lot to rant about! Sunday was the Hope & Anchor on a lineup supporting The Vapors. We were on at 5:30 pm which seemed very early to me but it was absolutely packed in there! I was forced to use the awful house kit. Obviously the bass drum couldn't stay still which forced a couple of errors. Thankfully my bandmates were tolerant of it this time! We went down a storm and we've seen merch sales online trickling in from London since. Result! It is so, so good to be back out gigging, even if it does still hurt a bit. Photo of my beautiful cymbals set up above the absolutely terrible house kit at the Hope & Anchor... Mini rant then: Imagine your band leader telling you that you have to use the house bass, and the A string tuner keeps slipping. You knew it was going to be terrible, you knew you could swap for your own gear in plenty of time, and yet you're forced to go with it due to others' ignorance. The band leader, the promoter, the sound guy, the headline act... everyone thinks it's fine to force the drummer to play sh*t drums but you're never forced to use a sh*t bass are you?!

Drummers are in control of so much of the sound of a band. They really should be thinking like a producer. Create dynamics, keep the track evolving, create space, fill space. Behind the kit you can turn the whole band up and down. The rest of the band will (should) follow. A side-stick is very different to a hit on the centre of the snare, which is very different to a rimshot. These are your main "back beat" options. Your right hand can go from the rim of a drum, to the floor tom, closed hats, open hats, regularly opening hats (IE disco), ride bell, ride body, crashing the ride, riding the crash cymbals... This is how you either create space or fill it As a producer, I want the song to remain interesting, so I want the beat, or at least the sound of the kit, to change from verse to chorus. If there are 3 verses, I want at least one of them to be significantly different to the others. Likewise if there's a bridge/middle 8 it should be different. I play in a band with no rhythm guitarist. A typical punk song for us would have closed hats in the verse, open hats in the chorus, ride bell in the bridge. A blues track would have closed hats in the verses, opening gradually for "builds", and I would play the ride cymbal to fill the space under solos I think a lot of drummers just focus on what they're doing rather than listening to the mix as a whole, and it really shows.

Artisan Tap in Newcastle-under-Lyme on Saturday night. Basically a home town gig for us. The local following seems to have really built over the last couple of years. For the first 10 years of the band we were more popular in Nottingham than we were in Stoke/Newcastle! Anyway, 120 tickets sold plus guest list and the place was dangerously full. We had 20 songs on the set list but our front man kept calling out random numbers. I reckon we played 30 in the end. Still struggling with my injury but what an ace night!