A weekend festival of drumming in Liverpool

I am just back from the UK Drum Show in Liverpool. This is the biggest drumming event in the UK where a couple of thousand people get together to celebrate this art.

This is my first time at this event, but I had heard people from the Drumeo online school talk about it. I did consider going last year, but did not get around to it. I now know what I was missing.

I got the train there and had booked a room in a flat near the city centre. The flat was basic and not decorated to my tastes, but it was cheaper that the central hotels and all I really need is a decent bed. Having a kitchen too was handy. The venue was the ACC exhibition space near the River Mersey and the show was spread over the three floors. The entrance area had some small stalls plus the kit above and some food outlets. Downstairs was the exhibition space with stalls from the big drum, cymbal, drumsticks and accessories companies as well as lots of smaller ones. Upstairs were the rooms for classes and demonstrations as well as the main auditorium. This is a fairly hands-on event, so you can imagine the noise was pretty intense. Fortunately people were only allowed to play the drums for 15 minutes of every hour. Electronic drums could be played any time. You could still hit some cymbals to check the sound, within reasonable limits. There was plenty of stuff you could buy, but I had been expecting more 'toys' and gadgets that you might not see elsewhere. I did buy a few things that I will show later.

I had to include British company Hive Drums. There are a lot of Hive brands out there. I am not really looking to buy more drums right now, but there are a few options for British made ones.

The drums above are a novelty from Welsh company Tarian. I did not actually take that many pictures, but if you look on other platforms I am sure you can find plenty from other people.

Ludwig have a long history and they had a room just full of snare drums to try. There really are differences depending on the type of wood or metal used as well as the size. These were mostly around £1000 with some costing much more.

Before I went to the show I had booked my ticket and I went for the VIP option that gave you priority access to the live shows. I am not sure that was essential as there was enough room for everyone, but it meant less queuing. The main auditorium holds 1500 people and was very nice. You get some drumsticks with the VIP ticket too. I had an email asking if I wanted to have a personal experience in the Sabian cymbals room and I was lucky to get one of the few slots. I had their guy give me a rundown of their range with details of what goes into the design. I had told them that I was new to drums and still getting to know what was available, but they still treated me very well. There were hundreds of cymbals in the room with some costing about as much as my full kit. I was able to try some of them on their kit.

I went to a few of the big performances that all followed a similar format. Each player would have their own kit and play to some backing tracks. Some did an unaccompanied solo too. Some talked more than others. First up was Austrian Thomas Lang who had the most amazing technique. He can play things I cannot imagine where to start with, but then he has also played on lots of pop recordings. The next I saw was Gavin Harrison who I have seen play with heavy prog band Porcupine Tree. He has also played with King Crimson. He did some Porcupine Tree songs, so I was very happy.

Others I saw were Christoph Schneider (Rammstein), Greg Bissonette (David Lee Roth and the Ringo Starr band), Todd Sucherman (Styx) and Eloy Casagrande (Slipknot). I have to say that the metal stuff is not all to my tastes, but these guys can play and it is amazing that they can keep it up for a couple of hours in their shows. Greg is a really funny guy with lots of stories. I had a masterclass with Todd a couple of years ago and he is a great educator.

Eloy was obviously a big attraction. I saw plenty of people in Slipknot shirts and even a small child in a mask. People were queuing for his performance well in advance to get down the front. He played some of his solo tunes which I found more interesting. This is not my video as I just took some short clips of some performances. Some of the players asked the audience to put their phones away and I respected that.

There was so much going on over the two days and I could only sample a fraction of it. There were lots of educational presentations. I went to two by Mike Johnson who was over from California. I have actually not watched many of his videos, but I listen to his podcast with Eddie Thrower who plays with Busted. Mike is an amazing player and an inspirational teacher. I went to another session on electronic drums and a couple more about drumming technique. There was something for every level of player.

All these performances and workshops would be expensive if you attended them all as standalone events, so the the show is actually good value. Another part of why I wanted to attend was to meet some of the Drumeo team. I met the founder Jared and some of the guys whose lessons I have been watching. They had eight electronic kits from Alesis set up in front of a stage and they did some live lessons. I attended one of those. They also had some the the UK moderators helping out. They are students who volunteer to do that work online to help the community. I had not met them before. I also met some other fellow students who were just attending the show and I went for dinner with one of them last night. Whilst we were in Pizza Express Todd Sucherman wandered in to pick up his dinner and I had a little chat with him. Everyone was so friendly. I had several chats with random people I sat next to. One turned out to be the father of a young drummer who had been on the main stage that morning.

You would meet various famous players just wandering around. I met Greg Bissonette and that is one of the drumeo mods with us. I also met comedian (and drummer) Al Murray and Stu Marshall from one of my favourite bands The Fierce and the Dead.

I think you will gather that I really enjoyed this event. These things can get expensive when you factor in travel and accommodation, but the experience is worth it. I did treat myself to a couple of items.

I wanted a small 'splash' cymbal for my kit. I tried a few and the one from Dream had the right combination of sound and price. The Ramrods are for quiet drumming. These have different materials at each end. The other sticks were included with my ticket that also got me the VIP pass with earplugs. I needed the latter at times. You have to look after your hearing. If you ears are ringing then there may be damage and that can be permanent. Not pictured are the Drumeo bag and the drum key it contained. I could see that other people spent a lot more. I think there were some good prices on certain items and I think mine were cheaper than usual. I try to just buy what I can actually use and do not always go for the cheapest option. Quality generally has a price.

Rock on!