Drymru Am Byth!
Drum For The Song podcast review
Rating – 
If ever there was a podcast made for me, surely this would be it. Welsh? check. Metal Bands? check. About Drums? check. Despite being a Welsh metal drummer myself, I will do my best to cast an objective eye, and be as neutral as possible.
I only heard about this podcast in the last week or so (depending on when this gets published). The newest episode cropped up on my YouTube playlist for some reason. Thankfully it’s also available in audio only, so I downloaded a few episodes and pressed play. Of course, as is usually the case, this jumped immediately to the top of my “to review” list leaving other, more established podcasts wondering what it was that just flew past leaving a big cloud of dust.
So what’s it about?
I think I may have pretty much covered the content of the podcast in the paragraphs above, but that would be a bit of a cop out to end there wouldn’t it? So let me elaborate.
Dane Campbell is a Welsh drummer, and son of Mötörhead’s guitarist Phil Campbell. He is also the drummer Straight Lines, and in his dad’s band Phil Campbell And The Bastard Sons. Each episode Dane interviews a different rock drummer, ranging from Slim Jim Phantom of The Stray Cats, to Charlie Benante of thrash legends Anthrax and Chris Fehn who was in Slipknot.
This series started during lockdown, and therefore a lot of the conversations discuss the difficulty of playing live, and what the future will hold for musicians. Having come out the other side of the pandemic now, it’s strange to listen back to hear people discuss what we were all thinking at the time. I think it’s also why there were loads of episodes early on. That output has slowed somewhat now that gigs and festivals are back on and as a consequence, Dane’s band is now playing again.
Is it any good?
The way I’ve described this podcast so far might well have you already deciding not to give this a go. I mean, why would someone who isn’t a rock drummer want to listen to a show consisting exclusively of interviews with drummers? The show is more than that though. While there is obviously some gear nerd type stuff (any musician loves talking about their gear), there are also some really interesting stories.
For the most part, the sound quality is really good. There was only one interview that I had to turn off because it was so bad (it was Dirk Verbeuren from Megadeth if you’re interested). It sounded like he was on speakerphone from across the other side of a bathroom. It may well have been easier to understand if I was watching on YouTube, but the audio only version was unfortunately unlistenable.
Dane comes across as a really humble guy, and he has a really laid back interview style. Even though I could listen to drum talk all day, I really like the fact that he’s trying to appeal to a wider market. While cymbal and stick manufacturers are only of interest to drummers, the opinions on how to deal with auditions, or working with professional musicians and producers will surely be of value to anyone trying to start in the industry.
As I write this, he’s 50 episodes down, and while I haven’t listened to every episode yet, I have listened to a lot of them. My only real complaint so far was that the Chris Fehn interview was only 40 mins long. Seeing as it was his first interview since he left Slipknot, it would have been good to have had a regular length episode. Maybe that’s just me being greedy though.
Final thoughts
I’m really growing to like this show, and it’ll be interesting to see who’s upcoming on the podcast. I have a list of people I’d like to hear, but I won’t bore you with those, it would probably fill his schedule for the next three years!
If you’re a drummer, then this is a must listen. If you’re a musician of any type, you may well like it too. Particularly Russell Gilbrook’s interview. There’s some invaluable info for anyone wanting to get session work.
And for those of you who think I typed the title of this post by rolling a tennis ball across my keyboard, I suggest you look up the phrase “Cymru Am Byth”, and then you’ll get the rather tenuous pun.
You can get Drum For The Song here: