PlanetMosh Keeping it Metal
I caught up with Adam Thistlethwaite, guitar player in Massive Wagons to ask how the band had found 2013, including Hard Rock Hell, and to find out what’s in store for fans in 2014
I’ve seen you guys many times but I don’t actually know when you formed so I just wondered when you actually formed?
We say officially 2009. We’d been messing around as a band with a few other members but with the current line-up around winter 2009 is when we got together and that’s when we started writing our own music.
Did you actually start as a covers band?
Yes, we still are, we still do that separately to make money.
Do you find you make more money as a covers band?
Yes, but you have to work, I’m not saying we don’t work hard when we’re doing our own stuff but we generally have to provide our own PA. we play for up to three hours and it’s basically a Jukebox set, people shout stuff and we have to play it.
I’ve noticed people will pay like £15 to see a tribute band yet won’t pay £5 to see a local band which is a shame.
It is a shame but it’s the way it goes really, you know what you’re getting with a tribute band, you know what to expect. I wouldn’t feel comfortable charging money at the stage we are, we’re relatively unknown and you want people to come in and take a shot on you and it’s easier to get to do that if they don’t pay.
You guys seem to tour quite a lot. How many gigs have you done this year?
I don’t know, coming up to one hundred. We don’t really tour, we do three or four gigs each week. Maybe one midweek and a couple at the weekend. We haven’t actually done a solid block of dates yet. There have been weekends where we have done three or four gigs in a row but we’ve never actually toured. That’s something on the agenda for next year.
You’ve just played Hard Rock Hell and you played it in 2012, which was good, so how was that?
We were honored to be asked back for the second year running, same band. The difference this year was that we weren’t quite as unknown so we had quite a strong following which was good because we played first on the Thursday night. We had no idea what to expect, but the place was rammed. We got a great response, the reaction was good, great feedback. The acoustic show that we did was good. We’ve never done anything like before and we really enjoyed it.
Brilliant. Your new album ‘Fight the System’ has it been released or is it about to be released?
We’re looking round about February/March next year. We’re getting stuff together we don’t want to go off at half cock, we want to make sure everything is in place. We’ve got a plan!
You’re first album was Fire It Up and the title track Fight the System was actually on that album so have you reworked it for this one?
Yes, we never felt that we really did it justice on the first album, recording wise, it sort of evolved over the years that we played it live so we thought we’d try and record the version that we play live now. It’s also a song which we didn’t want to drop from the set and we had all the gear there in the studio so we thought we might as well.
It’s a really good song. I look forward to hearing it tonight. What can we expect from Massive Wagons in 2014?
Obviously the new album, as you said. Who knows really, it’s a bit of a blank canvas. We’ve got some things lined up, the usual biker rallies and a couple of festivals, Les Fest, Rockmantic, TBFM 5th Birthday Bash, Aces High Festival. We’ll see. I’m sure it will all become clear in the first few months of the year.
I shall look out for you in 2014. Thankyou very much for speaking to PlanetMosh.
Thankyou.
Read our review of Massive Wagons forthcoming album Fight the System here: http://planetmosh.com/reviews/massive-wagons-fight-the-system/
Our review of the gig on 12th December 2013 here: http://planetmosh.com/massive-wagons-grand-central-manchester-12122013/
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