cheddatom

1 hour ago, Leonard Smalls said:

If you're playing with 'em again say hi from Big from BarfRoco!

We are! Whether I remember.... I'll do my best

40 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

I remember Les (Fruitbat) breaking his arm at our party in our insalubrious Georgian housing co-op house on extremely salubrious Vincent Square, Pimlico.

I don't think the other residents liked having a row of what looked like punk squatters overlooking their cricket pitch-centred square - they called the police! 

Heh, Les is so lovely and mild mannered in person. I'd never heard of Carter USM but after I met the guy I looked them up and what a wild ride! Tackling schofield on Smash Hits 😂

We did 3 in a row with Abdoujaparov at the weekend. They're lovely guys and such a good band. We arranged to share the drum kit and bass rig.

The first night was the Golden Lion in Bristol. It's a pretty cool venue room at the back of a pub, but weirdly, the pub punters have to go through the venue to use the loo, which made the doorman's job very difficult. Even more difficult that the job was forced onto our merch guy last minute. A bunch of young guys tried to get into the gig, talking too loudly, over confident, and perhaps a gurn or two... anyway, Tommo our merch man made short shrift of them. Since starting my own venue I keep noticing all the little things I don't like in other venues. Here we had: multi coloured XLR, PA hanging from the ceiling by metal angle and wood screws, spot lights at pretty much 6ft from the stage floor (mild concussion), lighting rig attached to a thin piece of wood attached to some plasterboard... Anyway, it was rammed and we had a great time

Bideford Palladium Club on the Saturday, which is a very cool venue, but kind of out of the way. The guy says he's struggling so if you're out that way please go to some gigs! The sound was awesome and the room is fantastic. Green room upstairs with a random selection of objects was good fun. Someone glued a fake Oscar to the ceiling but it was down again by the time I left. More japes - I'd noticed a parking fine on our van before the show. I waited until after to tell the others. It turned out to be a yellow PCN plastic document wallet with a random bit of notepaper inside! We have no idea who it was. I suspect the venue owner did it to prevent us getting a real ticket.

The King Arthur in Glastonbury on Sunday. We knew ticket sales were low, but we know a couple of people who live in Glastonbury, and it turns out they had no idea the gig was on. They've not seen it on posters or in local press or anything. There were loads of gig posters on the outside, some from last year, some gigs coming up, and a big brand spanking new gig list with Jan, Feb, Mar on it, and no mention of our gig. We got inside, the sound engineer is the guy "promoting" the show. Our frontman asks why there are no posters around and SE says "We did have some up". Our frontman laughed and asked "Were they nicked?"... SE obviously feels a bit awkward and goes on a rant about how he's not allowed to put posters up around town any more but FFS he might as well have forgotten he booked the gig at all. Apparently his door staff called in sick last minute too, giving Tommo the job again.

SE chews my ear off about drums and gear while I'm setting up, and I know I should have seen this coming, but he said he needed 10 minutes to plug everything in, so we went to the shop, and on my return this f&^%$er was sat playing my kit. This might be snobby but I spent more than £3K on my cymbals and I don't let anyone play them. I let him know I wasn't happy, he got awkward and defensive, and we got on with sound check. To be fair it sounded excellent, he really knows his stuff, but by this point I'm losing the will to live. Abdoujaparov played first, and they were great, but obviously playing to 10 people in a cold venue gives a different vibe to the previous two days. I tucked into the beers and did my best.

It was a long drive home to Stoke!

We played at Artisan Tap in Stoke on Saturday. It was absolutely rammed, "sold out" and then some! Ace night with everyone singing along. We played just the acoustic songs but that was still over 1hr45. Still, the quieter sound means it's an easier gig for me on drums. At one point I noticed the gate on the acoustic guitar fluttering and had to ask the sound engineer to turn it off. To be fair he's always fantastic, but I wonder why anyone would put a gate on an acoustic guitar in a live situation? They want to strum a chord and sustain it, and a gate will always kill that. 

We played Bootleg Social Club in Blackpool on Saturday. It's a very cool venue. No other drummers so I could leave everything set up, which is always a big bonus for me. The two acoustic acts were ace! I was a bit worried 'cos I've not been playing at all. I am not gig fit! I warmed up for hours before but still ended up with cramp towards the end of the 20 song set! It was great to be back out gigging anyway. I'll do my best to take photos and keep up to date on here

On 18/12/2025 at 19:54, lurksalot said:

There’s a band called Headsticks that might be worth booking , quite loud but do a half decent show 😁.

 

hope it goes well Tom.

 

fo you have a website/facebook / promo space to keep an eye out on ? 

Yes, if you go to rifffactory.co.uk/gigs they're all on there. Headsticks are playing in April which will be my first chance to play on my own stage! 😂

20 hours ago, CPCustomdubwise said:

Think it's absolutely brilliant that you are doing this, and all power to you!

 

Quick question re your punters, just wondering what the guy to the right of your second picture is waving....if you look closely....

🥴

hah, I had not noticed that! No idea what it was but I can assure you there are/were no weapons, real or "play"

Thanks everyone! 

The opening week was wild. We're limited to 70 capacity but the first night was probably slightly over that. We had Static Dress play as their drummer is our best mate. There was only one unforeseen problem. The condensation and spilled beer made a mockery of our consumer grade garage floor paint. People were slip-sliding all over the place. The first job the next day was to mix balsam in with a new tin of paint, and get that down in time for the gig the following night. It did the trick!

We had 5 gigs on the opening week, staffed by mates, played by mates, and attended by all and sundry. Loads of people travelled in to Stoke for these gigs and it really felt like the centre of a scene for a moment. And we made money!

Then we realised we'd not booked any more gigs, and we have overheads to pay, and big bills to pay, and loads of debt... So now we start the long slog of learning how to make money out of a venue. At 70 capacity it's difficult to appeal to bigger touring bands. The other side of that is an other-worldly PA system that out-classes any venue of this size (that I've seen). Proper lighting, green room, potential for live recording etc. so we hope to tempt some names in for "secret" or "super intimate" shows. Otherwise we're perfectly suited to local multi-band line-ups, and the "toilet circuit" in general.

Any advice on promoting gigs would be gratefully received, and if any of you are promoters that would like to put on a gig at Riff Factory, please get in touch

On 14/12/2025 at 11:16, Rayman said:

I brought out the Meteora last night for our last one of the year, via my regular gigging amp head now, a highly portable TCBQ500 into a house cab. Great sound on stage on off, great job by the sound man. Super loud and nice and clear too.
 

 

 

Good crowd and a great little venue, awesome parking and access, backstage area and kitchen, definitely looking forward to coming back. The Meteora is such a fantastic bass, I need to use it more.

 

 

Hah, just realised this is my venue Riff Factory! I love your set mate, great band!

I've been slacking again due to the venue we've just opened. I'll do a thread on that when I get time. 

On Saturday night we played the Lexington in Islington. Coming from Stoke we had to pickup a guitar that was left behind a few weeks before in Chessington. A total of 6 hours crammed into Vantanamo (named because I don't fit into the van, and so have to spend hours in twisted positions) had me pretty grumpy. Load in up a huge fire escape almost finished me off. The headliner was old friends Abdoujaparov, and I managed to relax while they sound-checked. The venue is very cool, classic old London venue. The set went very well, we won over some new fans, and I left the stage soaked in sweat. Ace gig! Then I had the pleasure of sampling the bourbon bar downstairs. Four Roses and Buffalo Trace were delicious. Here's a photo

The next morning we were up bright and early to travel up to Katie Fitzgerald's in Stourbridge where we played a matinee show. Load-in time was 1pm. We arrived at 1:10pm. The owner who actually lives there let us in at 1:30pm 🤷‍♂️

The place was full of our fans singing at the top of their lungs and we loved every second of it.

I've not been very active on here recently. We're opening a venue at Riff Factory in Stoke (adjoining my studio) so I've been putting all of my time and effort into that. Anyway, @lurksalot appeared at our gig last night and prompted me to check back in

Yesterday was an early afternoon gig. Doors at 2, support from 2:30-3:15, us on at 3:30-5. All very civilised. Not particularly well attended (we've filled the same place before), but we still sold loads of merch and had a great time. 

Last weekend was funnier. We went to Bristol to play to about 15 people in a pub that stank of damp and mould. The stage was sagging with holes patched up. I didn't really fit on the drum riser. I had to ditch two cymbals and pull everything uncomfortably close to me. We stayed at a Premier Inn, one without a restaurant attached. Our bassist was extremely grumpy about the lack of breakfast. We walked to the pub over the road in the morning, but they didn't do veggie sausages. There was a starbucks back near the hotel but the guitarist objected to starbucks as apparently they give free coffee to the IDF. We found a Sainsbury's with a cafe. On the drive there we passed another Premier Inn, this one with a restaurant attached. On arrival at Sainsbury's, it turned out their cafe was starbucks too 😂 So about face, pretty much back to where we started, where someone found a greasy spoon. The bassist was so hangry I thought he was going to cry and I was dying of laughter

Up to Guilford then for a weird punk festival in an old club in the middle of a housing estate. Great atmosphere! I was told I couldn't use my own drums as is often the case on these lineups. Seems a bit much when there were no acts after us, and the house kit was held together with gaffer tape, but I just suck it up and get on with it. Our frontman/boss had been promising a curry in Guilford, but the punk festival had a BBQ and vouchers for the bands, and he insisted it'd be rude not to. My turn to be hangry this time 😂 

We made up for it last night with a banging curry in Northwich

14 hours ago, lurksalot said:

Headsticks, at a small dive in Northwich , great little place.

 

they were most excellent, absolutely on it , played superbly and completely lived and owned every song they played.

 

they deserved a bigger crowd , but then even my +1 couldn’t make it. 
 

recomended ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

 

spare ear defence on the bar , you might need them 

 

 

ed to add a couple of pics 

 

Ace photos, thanks!!!

Yeh, amazing gig, although I thought it could have been louder, which is a first for me! Sam Wilkes is amazing but the keys player really stood out to me. Incredible solos

I've seen Louis Cole in various guises a few times. I am very into drums and drummers. He has the machine-like chops of JoJo Mayer but with the groove and feel of Benny Greb. It seems to me he's renowned in jazz circles but you don't see him mentioned in drummer circles very much at all. Absolutely incredible musician.

I have a real life situation here. A drummer based in Stoke started posting some pretty extreme things on social media. He would describe it as simply expressing his own opinions, but in a lot of people's minds he's crossed several lines. He's lost all of his gigs, been barred from a bunch of venues, and lost his job as a drum teacher. I have absolutely no problem with people who are opposed to immigration to whatever extent, as long as they can express their point of view without any hatred. I suspected this guy was crossing lines by accident. Because I like the guy, I imagined that he has some reasonable views about problematic immigration, but that he expresses them by sharing some unfortunate memes etc. 

So, specifically, he shared a meme about a convicted sex offender called Zainal Osman. The meme grabs a headline describing him as a yorkshireman, and then laughs at the idea that he could be from yorkshire. I thought I'd give the drummer a private message, just to point out that he could very well be born and bred in yorkshire. There's absolutely no evidence that I can find online to the contrary. This drummer just laughed at me and argued that he couldn't possibly be British. I explained the facts of the matter IE he could very well have a British passport which would make him just as British as the rest of us, and he stopped replying for a couple of weeks. Then he sent me another meme: 

I replied "I've no idea whether they're German. You can't tell by the colour of their skin, if that's what you mean?" and again he stopped replying

So, publicly he's trying to walk the "I'm not racist, I just..." line, but privately, he's being openly racist.

This guy has basically lost his livelihood because he couldn't turn off youtube, and I think that's a pretty sad state of affairs.  What's worse is it seems more and more common. People around here are openly talking about how "islam is not compatible" etc. and it's all driven by social media. It's worse than crack!

if you're using it as a limiter (smoothing out peaks) and you place it between your bass and your distortion, then the distortion will not react to your playing dynamics as much. It won't get dirtier when you dig in harder, because the limiter will tame that. For that reason, I would like a limiting compressor to be after distortion in the chain.

I love your band so much

There's loads of information on this in the Effects sub forum, but yes it makes a difference where in the chain you put it. You might be using the compressor to add punch, or you might be using it to even out dynamics, which are very different applications. The best position in your effects chain depends on what you're using the compressor for. 

Well I feel a little silly now. "use the search" indeed! 

😂

I have both a squier musicmaster and a bronco and could do with a replacement bridge to give me adjustment on individual saddles. I've had a look around. It looks like either £15 on Aliexpress (never ordered from them before) or quite a lot of money. Surely there's something fairly cheap I can buy in the UK and drop in?

And another single...

15 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

It was, at least in the acoustic stage! Couldn't see you because of the acres of black cloth on the sides of the stage!

I found the Empress, Opera and Casbah all suffered from over loud kick swamping everything at the bottom. Insufficient gating, perhaps coupled with metalhead drum obsession?

On the videos I've seen you can clearly hear everything FOH at our Opera set. Obviously the phones have a built in hi-pass which will help with the old "Subs go brrrr" problem. For us it seemed like the stage crew couldn't be arsed. The monitor guy didn't turn up until 3:06 and we were due on at 3:05, which I think tells you all you need to know

The acoustic stage is always a nightmare for sound, or at least it is since they moved it upstairs. I just get on with it. The guy running the stage is such a weird funny old punk, it's worth doing the gig just to have a good/bad natured argument with him back stage 😂

9AM start for me yesterday to pick up the guitarist and a bunch of gear, then a long drive through constant traffic to Blackpool. A bunch of jobsworth's checking the gear at the load in bay which is unusual for Rebellion. One lad stopped me

"I need to put a tag on your hardware case"

What's the point of that?

"It's a security measure, it shows that it's been searched"

Do you want to search it then?

"No, I trust you, you don't have any drugs in there do you?"

No mate, the drugs are in my other bag 🤷‍♂️

Then the stairs. So many stairs. All the way up to the Opera House to play our first set. It's such a massive stage and they barely even line checked us. The sound on stage was abysmal. They had the guitarists' amp modeller clipping so it was just a horrible fizzy mush. We struggled through but seemed to go down really well. I've seen some footage since and the sound was fine FOH so they must have had separate feeds on the guitar. Very reassuring! 

After that were more stairs up to the Almost Acoustic stage. So many stairs. For this "acoustic" stage, the only hard and fast rule is "no bass drums". I'm sure I've posted on here about this before but my work around is to put a mic in a tupperware tub and hit it with a standard kick pedal. It's so weird that they prefer to plug in this contraption than mic up an acoustic bass drum, but it is what it is, and we've done it loads of times before, so we cracked on. This room is a nightmare for sound. A very distinct slap back echo on everything. It's OK when I'm in charge of the groove but when the guitarist is on his own it can put him off. Anyway, once again, we seemed to go down really well

Lots of new fans, sold loads of merch, and had a good laugh. 

So many stairs on the way out. Then the lift was broken at the carpark. I was on the top floor. My legs would like a rest now

Ace to see @Leonard Smalls sounding tight AF, trousers in full effect!

We've not been as busy recently, feels like ages since I've posted! We were supposed to have a big slot at Northern Kin festival on Sunday but that festival, along with a load of others, went bust. We managed to put together a show a Billy Bootleggers in Nottingham instead. One support act, then our 30 minute "acoustic" set for Rebellion Festival next weekend, then our latest album in full, then another 10 songs.

We arrived at 1:30. The sound engineer was outside, "no staff here until 2pm". Apparently this was known to our front man so god knows why he wanted to get there so early. He was desperately hungry and went to order some over priced pizzas while we waited. Then it turned out the staff had locked themselves out of the venue so we had to wait another half an hour for someone else.

Finally load in at 2:30 in the world's smallest lift. I was soaked with sweat by the time I'd set my drums up. Boiling in there! 

Sound was fine and the venue was rammed by the time we went on. The acoustic set was fun, but I really was soaked by the end of that. Everyone else got a nice 5 minute break while I re-jigged the drums for the "proper" set. Our latest album has some very intense and difficult drumming on it, for which I can only blame myself, but after playing it all the way through, and then another 8 songs from our back catalogue, I was absolutely done. I could literally wring out my t-shirt. 

Anyway, absolutely wonderful gig in every way but I really, really wish I'd booked today off to sleep and hydrate.

22 hours ago, AlexDelores said:

Last night was a frustrating one. All day wedding so we did the ceremony and then I hit my cajon for an hour during the drinks. 
 

The evening was okay. Very receptive audience! But, possibly the highest ceiling we’ve ever encountered made the low end so boomy. First set sounded terrible in my ears but apparently wasn’t that bad out front. Spent the break tweaking the eq on my B6 and our Bass drum pedals’ module. And, the second set was a lot better.

 

The frustration with of weddings of course is the quick evening turnaround not allowing a fantastic soundcheck & the fact that it’s just the two of us. It’s hard to tweak on the fly when we have issues. 
 

That paired with the fact that I’m still recovering from a pretty bad fall a few weeks ago which blew my knee up like a balloon, thus making it hard to kick my bass drum pedals for 1.5 hours made it one of those gigs where I was in my head a lot and not really as present as I would of liked… Oh well, still a great night enjoyed by all it seems. 
 

4 weddings coming up this week starting tomorrow so on to the next 🙏

What's the bass drum setup if you don't mind? It sounds like something I could use