A Visit With Daniel Williams

Last Friday, December 18 to be exact, I left the office early to hook up with one of our US cymbal artists, Daniel Williams of the band The Devil Wears Prada. The band was playing a show that night at one of the few decent venues in Nashville for heavy music, Rocketown. Daniel and TDWP have been on a steady upward trajectory for quite some time now, and it's been a very cool thing to witness. So I was looking forward to some hang time with Daniel and to also see their show that night, as it was sold out. 

Pre-show, I was fed some obligatory beers by Daniel and his ever-hospitable band-mates while hanging on their tour bus outside the venue. Daniel and the guys talked about how fortunate they feel to be doing such good business touring during what is an extremely trying time for bands on the road. People only have a limited amount of money to spend on concerts and bands' merchandise, so TDWP feel grateful that they are selling out venues and that people are choosing to spend their money on them.

Along with biz talk, we also rapped about life stuff in general. My job is called artist RELATIONS, and it is always nice when it is indeed a RELATION, when the artist is genuinely interested in an exchange of ideas and conversation. In Daniel's case, it's definitely a relation. He's a super-great guy who cares about everyone around him and it certainly shows.

So showtime came along and I was glad to get some good video footage of Daniel at work.

Here are some links to that footage - 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gg5mZztzc4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDSKmJX1uLw

Daniel's cymbal setup is very musical. If you were to sit behind his kit, you would see the following left to right - 

 - Byzance 14" Medium Hihats in Traditional Finish

 - Mb20 20" Medium Heavy Crash

 - Classics 22" Medium Ride (his artist page says Mb20 22" Heavy Bell Ride, but he just changed it and we need to build that particular Classics ride into our setup program...)

 - Classics 8" Medium Bell

 - Byzance 22" Medium Crash

 - Mb20 18" Rock China

The Classics 22" Medium Ride that he just switched to is an interesting thing. So many artists these days are into a steady washing white noise sound. I've suggested this B8 alloy cymbal to a few artists and it's gone over very well. The alloy is durable and the sound is bright enough to cut through the dense wall of guitar and bass amplification. This cymbal is like a motor. Get it going with just enough wrist action and the cymbal will do the rest of the job for you. I suggested this cymbal to Daniel a month or so ago and he is super stoked to have it in his setup. If you have a hankering for a white noise wall of wash cymbal sound, check this one out.

Enjoy the footage of Daniel and Happy Holidays to all of you out there.

 - Chris