Egg Timer Hour Episode 06 | Let's Play All | Matt Webster

Episode 6 of Mine Like Me's The Egg Timer Hour brings in Matt Webster from the Let's Play All YouTube channel. With over 105,000 subscribers, Matt breaks down his journey from playing in a Pearl Jam tribute band to becoming a go-to name for gear demos, lessons, and deep dives into alternative and grunge tones.

We get into the story behind his collaboration with Andy Ilgunas of Funny Little Boxes—the brains behind pedals like the 1991 (Pearl Jam in a box), the Skeleton Key (Queens of the Stone Age in a box), and the DIRT pedal, built to capture that Alice in Chains grit.

Alongside Sugar Dave and Sandman, we talk gear obsession, the hustle of building a YouTube channel while juggling real life, and those surreal moments—like getting feedback from Dave Navarro himself. If you’re into chasing tone, diving into the creative process, or just hearing real stories from the music trenches, this episode’s got you covered.

#minelikeme #eggtimerhour #mattwebster #letsplayall #funnylittleboxes #guitar #gear #grunge #alternativerock #pearljam #aliceinchains #queensofthestoneage #1991pedal #skeletonkeypedal #dirtpedal 

https://www.youtube.com/@LetsPlayAll

https://www.patreon.com/letsplayall

https://www.youtube.com/@MineLikeMeMusic

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mine-like-mes-egg-timer-hour/id1693624885

https://open.spotify.com/show/4iReMpNllvCsuRIIoF26eF?si=3f1821b4c9ed41e4

https://music.apple.com/us/artist/mine-like-me/1171308516

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4ArkYtmrjfrXYQuiJyBR6S?si=R4oQgAYLRNaIw7aFCuLhUA

https://linktr.ee/_bondo

https://www.instagram.com/j_brandon_v/

https://www.tiktok.com/@j_brandon_v?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc

Transcript

Bondo (00:01)
Welcome back. We're back with another episode of Mind Like Me's Egg Timer Hour episode number six. Say hello, Sugar Dave, my cohort Sugar Dave and Gary Sandman. We are joined today. I'm gonna start the clock with our most excellent guest of the Let's Play All YouTube channel, Matt Webster, a YouTube channel with a...

Sugar Dave (00:07)
you

Hello?

Sandman (00:17)
How's it going, everybody?

Bondo (00:29)
105,000 subscribers. You kind of specialize in gear demos, guitar things, lessons, most, well, not all, but kind of in the alt grunge music genre, among other things. And we are so glad to have you here. Thanks for being here. You're very welcome. Yeah. And I should also mention, you had a lot to do with the funny little boxes, the development, the making of.

Matt (00:47)
Thank you. What an intro. Thank you very much.

Bondo (00:58)
care talk about that a little bit because we're I've done a lot of videos about the pedal I didn't expect to but I was like holy shit these guys made a pedal that sound like ten

Matt (01:08)
Yeah. So,

so funny little boxes is the company name. so this is Andy's, Andy's brands that he used to have. You know, this was speaking to Andy anyway, but he used to sell online pedals. And then, I actually bought one off him. It was a fuzz pedal, is a Tate FX raise the dead fuzz pedal. It's really cool. Pedals got great graphics on it. And, his thing was he doesn't sell anything above 99.

Bondo (01:20)
Right.

Matt (01:38)
pounds or 99 quid, as we'd say. So I thought that's great. That's a really cool little, you know, business model. And I noticed that he was based in Norfolk, which is where I'm based. We, we just moved here, you know, not long before that. And so, uh, I messaged him and said, ah, I'm interested in that. And, uh, you're only down the road. And he was like, really? Whereabouts you. And it turns out that he used to work near here. So he said, I'll drop it around. So I was like,

Bondo (01:39)
Right.

Matt (02:08)
Amazing. Okay, great. So he turned up on my doorstep with this pedal and we just got sort of chatting and then we just became friends from that interaction basically like carried on chatting. And at the time I was playing in a Pearl Jam tribute band and I was doing, I still had the YouTube stuff that was

few years ago though, that was probably about four, three, four years ago now. And so I was really keen on getting like, you know, the, the Pearl Jam sound. I was really obsessive about that. And yeah, well, I mean, long story short, was chatting to Andy about it because he knew loads of lots of people in the DIY sort of enthusiast slash, you know, not quite pro builders, but you know, very technical people who are very well respected by

other brands, right? And, so I thought he'll know loads of people. So was like, do you know what, as a sort of little personal project, can you just, I just want to have one, right. And can you help me like, you know, put this thing together, right. Through your contacts or whatever. And, here's what I want it to be like, you know, blah, blah, blah. And we started chatting away and then he started to say, well, you know what I've been thinking about doing some pedals, like creating my own pedals. And so we talked on that. So long and the short of it is.

I said, fair enough. Then let's do a, if you can do me like a 91, not 91, it's called the 91. If you can do me a pill jam in a box pedal that meets this criteria. So here's how I get it. want it to sound like this. Uh, then that'd be cool. That'd be fun. And so that's, that's where it went from. mean, I've got my, I'll show you actually. I've got my, um, we recently did a reunion gig, right? And this is the, this is the pedal boards.

Bondo (03:41)
Right, right, right.

Matt (04:01)
that I used. So I've actually got two of the suckers on there now. So I used one for like light gain and one for like main gain. And we did them in a couple of color ways. So yeah, it just went, and it went crazy to be honest. We've, I mean, the response was madness to be honest. So it went from him going, do you reckon we could sell like 10?

Bondo (04:04)
290 ones

Yeah.

I'm

Matt (04:27)
I was

like, yeah, that'd be great, right? 10, the album 10, let's just do a release of 10. And then I've got like a Patreon community. I think they all got like friends and those people just gobbled them all up. So we were like, maybe we could do more then than that. So Andy went off and started to, it created a small business from it really, one man band business where he was just snowed just trying to.

Bondo (04:54)
Right.

Matt (04:56)
trying to keep up with demand is it was crazy. People were like selling them online for like 350 quid and stuff and trying to flip them. And it was mad. Yeah.

Bondo (04:58)
I don't know how it, when they first came out, supply and demand, right? There you go. I kind of, snatched up a few

of them hoping that, know, well, but I mean like the specifically choosing 10 club, not 10 club, 10 Pearl Jam 10, the album 10, those tones. That's just something I've always been after forever. mean, there's, there's probably a couple other ones that I'd like to try and emulate, but

Matt (05:08)
Yeah, exactly. Retirement plan. Don't blame me.

Bondo (05:27)
to go after that and then you nail it. Like, did you, were you really like, holy crap, this really does sound like it? Cause that's kind of my reaction when I got it. I was like, I don't know how. And then the more I messed with it, I'm like, well, this pedal is a bit more of an overdrive pedal. It's not really a distortion pedal. And to be honest, I run the thing with both the gains almost all the way down just, and it's on all the time.

Matt (05:44)
Yeah, it is.

Yeah, I

mean, this is why I had two on my board, right? Cause I've got the gain set on the first one quite low, which is a lovely bit of breakup. And the other one is not full. It's kind of both gains on, I don't know about three o'clock, something like that. But yeah, we go through like iterations. so he comes over with this crazy looking breadboard. Don't know if you're familiar with how like pedals get made. And that for me was fascinating. So I just had no idea how like a pedal comes to life, right? You know, how it starts from.

Bondo (06:03)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Matt (06:20)
someone saying some words to someone else and then it becomes this schematic and then it becomes this thing with diodes and don't know whatever else transistors and all sorts of weird stuff. And so yeah we'd go through a few little tweaks like no that's not right, no troubles wrong there or whatever. So that whole process has been you know just brilliant fun for me and then and I absolutely love the pedal you know I mean I've got two of them on a live pedal board you know in the

Sugar Dave (06:27)
yeah.

Matt (06:49)
And we played a show a few weeks ago. think it was probably about 500, 600 capacity venue, but I think we sold about 500 tickets, 500 something tickets. So, yeah, it was great to be able to use those pedals because when I was playing in the band before, it didn't have those pedals to use. So it was, it was lovely using them in a live situations. Cool too, because it's, it's a very mids forward pedal.

Bondo (07:00)
crap that's awesome

You

Matt (07:16)
So, and funny enough, the guy who plays Mike's parts, because I play Stone's parts, and that is really Stone's tone on the 10 album, really. But Mike's isn't far off. They were both kind of using Tube Screamers into sort of Crank Marshalls, right? So their bass tone is kind of similar. But yeah, my friend Tim, plays Mike's parts, he also had a 91 on his board as well. I was like, wicked, you know what mean? So.

Bondo (07:28)
Right.

You

Matt (07:45)
It was really cool to see them in a live situation like that from, I mean, yeah, just some, random scribblings, you know, that we had in a notebook, you know, sort of three, four years ago. was great.

Bondo (07:57)
Yeah.

So you're basically just kind of like a sounding board, just kind of throw it like, there's what we want. And then he's like, okay. And then you come in and sit down and just play and like, no, no, no, it's all, I'm exaggerating, but essentially.

Matt (08:09)
Yeah, I mean,

it's really collaborative actually. that's the lovely part of it. we've got, because we've got several ideas for ped, I mean, I sent him so many ideas for pedals. So we've got a backlog of stuff and he's also then got his ideas as well. And he's got some other happy accidents that he'll be noodling around with and just go, actually, you know, what about this one? So like the second pedal was,

Bondo (08:33)
Right?

Matt (08:36)
supposed to be the dirt because I was like, right, the second one should be an Alice in Chains pedal. And Andy was like, I love Alice in Chains. And in fact, I love that more than Pearl Jam, right? So I was like, perfect. We'll call it dirt and it'll be after the dirt album, a dirt distortion pedal. Do you know what mean? It's just, even if you just think of like the SEO on that, you know what mean? It's a dirt pedal. You know what mean? So it's just like a, this is a lovely, so we love all that stuff. We think about all that stuff. mean, like the hue of the original 91 pedal.

Sandman (08:56)
kind of wrote itself.

Sugar Dave (08:56)
Yeah.

Bondo (08:59)
erode itself.

Matt (09:06)
is as close as we could get it to the 1991 color. Do you know what mean? We'd think about lots of that stuff through it, which is great. So it should have been this one. This one should have been the second pedal. Hence why it's got a very similar sort of style graphic as well, right? Because the idea was that they would be like a sort of pair. And then we're starting to think about a range, you know what I mean? Like sort of grownups. But Andy was mucking about and he was like, and the 91...

Bondo (09:10)
Right.

Sugar Dave (09:11)
Yeah.

Matt (09:36)
They do actually took a lot of effort and he had some health issues in between. And, you know, it's very difficult, right? You've just had a really like tremendously successful first pedal. And then the second one is proving really difficult, really complex because we were trying to sort of emulate what essentially is Dave Jordan's, you know, mixing desk, right? Exactly. You know, and so.

Bondo (10:00)
3 amps

Matt (10:04)
Yeah, Andy was thinking about going, maybe we could do this blending thing. And he was chatting to, you know, a few of his other colleagues about it as well. And they were like, yeah, we've got this great idea. and then, that kind of got torn up a little bit and put to one side. And then Andy, while he was, like recuperating, he'd, he came up with some, some cool stuff that eventually became the skeleton key. Right. So he basically just was mucking about on a breadboard. And I think the beauty of

both of our approach to it really is that Andy hasn't been building effects pedals for 10 years, right? He doesn't, he hasn't got that sort of background. He comes into it and he says this himself as an enthusiastic amateur to these things. when people are always asking us, what amp have you based that on? What topology is it based on? We're like, it isn't based on one. It's like.

We just, we just keep going after it until we go, no, that's not right. That's not right. is so it isn't based on anything.

Sandman (11:04)
I kind of

Andy talked about his methodology of kind of getting schooled on that. And said his tuition, he went and hooked up with somebody that knew the electronics level of it. And they set out as a prototype, like a, like a really complex first pedal. So he would get more of a broadband education on how to do it. Is that, is that how you understood it too? Okay. Yeah.

Matt (11:16)
Yeah, Mark from Soundland, Liverpool.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. That's Mark from San Diego, Liverpool. So I do demos for Mark as well. We chat a lot about stuff. So it's cool here. He's a proper boffin. He like works in, I don't know if I can say where it works, but he's very, he's very, very, very scientific in what he does. And he's got a lot of knowledge of, of this stuff.

Bondo (11:49)
Ha

Sandman (11:52)
Do the protos always start

on a breadboard and then go to the PCV? I mean, is that just because of ergonomics and being a proto? Okay. I was just curious.

Matt (11:57)
Yeah, always. Yeah.

Yeah, and because it's expensive to create

the, yeah, once you get the boards, they are expensive, especially if you're on your order, like, you know, we want four or five of them, you know, they can be quite, they can be 10, 15 quid each or something. you know, that's start, I guess expensive if you go, nope, that's wrong. We have to buy five of them. You know, it just starts to get, get quite pricey rather than, you know, get it right on a, on a breadboard.

Sandman (12:21)
yeah, sure, yeah.

Bondo (12:22)
Hahaha

Sugar Dave (12:23)
Yeah.

Sandman (12:27)
Yeah, because you have to hard solder

on on the PCB, right, versus a breadboard. OK.

Matt (12:32)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, the, the components generally are, you know, I don't know what the terminology is, but they're, you know, they're, they're, forget what they're called. So, you know, you have like through hole, which is like, you know, people soldering or SM, SMD is it, or something like that SM something.

Sandman (12:53)
it's, it's not country. no, right?

Bondo (12:54)
What is your territory saying,

Matt (12:57)
So they're all basically like, it's all printed on at the factory, very little sort of to do in terms of, you know, putting them together, but you've got to then solder together like, you know, the foot switch and, you know, a few other bits and pieces. So the idea is always to never use like unicorn parts, make sure that it's always stuff that's readily available, you know, all that sort of stuff. But yes, it's a

lovely, lovely process to just go through that. And as I say, this one that that came out of nowhere that just came out of Andy's mucking about, right? He's like, I think I've got something here that that reminds me of the Queens of the Stone Age stuff, this one particular, you know, album. And it developed into why don't we make it like their their sort of core tone-ish without going after anything in particular. And that was really good fun. But that was I mean, Andy brought me a block of

breadboard with a bunch of wires everywhere, loads of like, you know, knobs on it. and so that w that was cool because there were certain values, you know, that you have to sort of figure out. And then it's just my ears going, that's about right. All of these values here, then Andy converts those values into fixed components sometimes, or, you know, you might find like, we'll put in something else, right? This needs to be, there's too much gain, too much gain.

which it was, it always had too much gain. Ironically, when it came out, I think a lot of people were like, I would have thought it would have had more gain in it, but it's, you know, their tone doesn't really have loads of gain. And if you put it into an ultra clean amp, then yeah, it probably needs, you know, a bit of grunt, but into like a tube amp, for me, I was just like, that's just it. That's their tone.

Bondo (14:30)
Right.

It

reminds me a lot of the live concert over the years and through the woods. Because to me, could never pinpoint what that tone was. But to my ears, a lot of it was like a really distorted guitar with the volume kind of rolled off. But it's not quiet. And it's not like, I was like, these guys aren't just screeching with gain. That's not where their tone comes from.

Matt (15:05)
Yeah.

Bondo (15:14)
Sound it's the sound on the album sounds huge because they're probably just layering upon layers and layers and layers But yeah, I was I was kind of like that too when I first got it was like they could have more game but the more you kind of mess with it's like but that's not you can You can you know, you can massage it with some other things to get more towards the gainier stuff that they do Which they don't have one pedal. Anyway, that's their core sound and it's

Matt (15:38)
Yeah,

no, exactly.

Bondo (15:39)
It's

a really cool pedal, man. There's nothing else that sounds like it. Like it just has that kind of nasally, I don't know. It's just really cool. Let me ask you about...

Matt (15:48)
It's kind of does a vintage thing nicely as well. use it for

a lot of stuff like Jack White stuff, things that you'd expect to be like a cranked small watt amp, things like that. covers quite a bit of ground in that. But yeah, it's great fun. And then we had the artwork tie in with Boneface and all that sort of stuff. So that was...

Bondo (15:59)
Mm-hmm.

How did that

come about? How were you? did you get, you got to, you know, a guy who knows a guy.

Matt (16:15)
So I suggest, I suggested that to Andy. Now I said,

why don't we just reach out to Boneface? I mean, and he can only say no, right? Let's just see if he's interested in doing a graphic for a pedal. And he was like, sounds like a cool idea. And it turned out he's based in the UK, right? We thought he was American, but he's not. Yeah, yeah, he's based in the UK. So that was cool. And he sent us a couple of...

Bondo (16:24)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Right. really?

Matt (16:43)
couple of ideas and they were all just rough, really rough sketches and they were just all amazing. But this one in particular is, I think it's on the CD. There's a CD of like, you know, some, you know, his character being impaled and put in the skeleton key in it with skeleton key and locks, you know, the tone, you know what mean? So we had like, we thought that would just be like a, quite a cool name.

Bondo (16:59)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right.

Did you tell him the title first, what the pedal is going to be called, or did the art inspire the title?

Matt (17:13)
Yeah, yeah, we had that

and we gave him a rough brief, know, pretty rough brief, but it came back and we were just like, my God, this looks incredible. You know, and it's, yeah, I was so, we're so pleased that he agreed to do actually. was, yeah, it was amazing. And the, like the knob labels, I don't if you can see them. They're basically,

Bondo (17:36)
Yeah.

Matt (17:38)
it's just focusing on my face, isn't it? Yeah. So they're the knob labels are actually just his handwriting, but he uses that font. It's not fun, right? It's his own handwriting, for the liner notes and the lyrics. So if you look, if you get, know, the, some of the Queens of the stone age stuff, the gatefield gatefold stuff where he does all the lyrics and that it's the same font because it's his handwriting. Right? So those are the knob labels. So it's just, it's just already came together really.

Bondo (17:40)
his hand running.

Yeah.

Right.

Sugar Dave (17:49)
you

Bondo (17:55)
Well, I didn't, that I didn't know.

Matt (18:06)
really nicely. yeah, we were just chuffed with it. And then when we release it, we're like, it doesn't sell any, then we'd love it. So it doesn't matter, but it's popular too. it's Yes. I it's like having, you know, I don't know who the guy who did like Eddie, you know what mean? For iron maiden, you know, it's like having an iron maiden pedal with Eddie on it, right? By the guy designed Eddie is, uh, so we were, we were super chuffed with that. And

Bondo (18:14)
Right. Got Boneface to do some artwork. So yeah, of course.

Sugar Dave (18:15)
Yeah.

Bondo (18:25)
Right.

Sugar Dave (18:26)
Yeah. Yeah.

Matt (18:35)
Troy, like we handed one over to a couple of guitar mags and music radar. I've got a good relationship with them. I've done some writing for them and they happened to have the pedal for review while Queens of the Stone Age were touring in the UK. So they did a couple of chats, I think with Troy and because they had the pedal there, think they were just like, by the way, Troy, did you know about this, this pedal that's come out? And he was like, yeah, I haven't heard of it actually. So again, we were just like, what?

Bondo (18:42)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Matt (19:04)
Like, how

was he able to do So that just blew us away. And he said, yeah, I'd like to try one. So we did send him a couple. I don't know if they got to him. And I think we sent one to Echo Park Guitars as well. And I think that's.

Sandman (19:17)
So were you doing this

in the background when that conversation happened? I'm just like, yeah.

Matt (19:22)
It's crazy, isn't it? Right? And that is,

Sugar Dave (19:22)
Yeah.

Matt (19:27)
that's like the payoff really, you know what mean? As if, you you create a pedal and you think, imagine, imagine, right, if one of them heard of it, right? I mean, how could you get, you know, we don't know anyone really like that. So how would we get them the pedal? And we couldn't really ask, you know, Boneface, because, you know, they're not going to go, by the way, send them a pedal. So.

to have them independently say, yeah, I have heard of it and it sounds cool. I mean, he was jokingly like saying, keep as one pedal, it's gonna like, encompass all that we are totally. And that's not what we're about, right? But just the fact that he'd heard of it in the first place was wild. And I think, we don't know, but we think that he's actually plugged in and played one, so.

Bondo (20:00)
Yeah.

Sugar Dave (20:03)
Yeah.

Bondo (20:15)
Just remember that

when someone comes up to you and says, have Matt Webster in a box.

Sandman (20:20)
That it seemed like I

Matt (20:21)
Yeah, it would sound

Sandman (20:22)
remember

Matt (20:22)
awful.

Sandman (20:23)
Andy saying that somebody had saw that in their tech loadout with them on, and not part of their setup, but somebody was traveling that box with them.

Bondo (20:29)
he said...

You talking about

Eddie when Eddie Vedder was on? I think he had said that he knew that Eddie Vedder had known about it and that it was on a stage, maybe at a solo show or something. Andy was talking about that or I think, I think that's what it was.

Sandman (20:36)
Maybe I'm probably running the two sideways. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Yeah,

I think you are correct on that.

Matt (20:49)
I don't know. Yeah.

Bondo (20:51)
Yeah, so he was saying that he knows that at least Eddie is aware of it. It's like, that's cool, but does do Micrstone.

Sugar Dave (21:00)
Yeah.

Matt (21:00)
Yeah.

So cool. So yeah, I mean, they're all are, you know, idols and it's all a bit of a love letter to their, their tones. I far too much of my life trying to work out various tones for the lessons for like gear demos. You know, that's what I'm about really. love, I know it's a big, it's a bit of a weird thing to say really as a guitarist because the popular thing to say is, you know, sound like yourself or, know,

Bondo (21:15)
friend I can

you

Matt (21:28)
Why

are using all this stuff? You want to have your own voice on the instrument and stuff. I'm personally not that interested in that at all. I love sounding like everyone else. So I'm not too fussed about sounding like me.

Bondo (21:37)
Well.

Sugar Dave (21:39)
Yeah.

Bondo (21:40)
It's

also no matter how hard you try, you're not going to sound like that. It's like you're going to get close, but you're not going to sound jet. You know what I mean? So it's like. It's let's talk about your YouTube channel since you're talking about gear and, uh, know, lessons and stuff like that. You've got 105,000 subscribers. That's pretty impressive over since why I believe you started the channel in 2017. Is that correct? So that is amazing. Uh,

Matt (21:54)
Yeah.

crazy.

Yeah, about seven years, yeah, yeah.

Sugar Dave (22:06)
Wow.

Matt (22:09)
Yeah, it's crazy.

Bondo (22:10)
What?

Matt (22:10)
It's all my mum. I think it's my mum. Just, and she's got about 999,000 fake accounts that she uses.

Sandman (22:12)
You

Bondo (22:15)
Hahaha

Sandman (22:15)
just.

Bondo (22:19)
What were you doing at the time? Like, kind of like, what did you have a day job and say, Hey, I'm going to start a YouTube channel and

Matt (22:25)
I still have a day job. Yeah. This is all in my spare time. All this, all this stuff, like all this stuff, all the videos, all the lessons and stuff. It's all.

Sugar Dave (22:29)
my god. How?

Sandman (22:32)
you

Bondo (22:35)
So

can you tell us what your day job is? I understand if you don't want to.

Matt (22:38)
I work,

yeah, I work in IT. I mean, that's about as, you know, as much as I go into it, or you'll be very bored. But I mean, I do enjoy it. It's problem solving and techie stuff, which is cool.

Sugar Dave (22:41)
Man.

Bondo (22:42)
Compute. Yeah. So your Nick burns move.

Sugar Dave (22:51)
I've got to ask, when do you sleep? I mean, you've mentioned that you write, you help Andy, you and Andy develop these awesome pedals together. You're in bands, you make these videos. Woo!

Matt (23:01)
I don't do a lot in

Bondo (23:02)
and

Matt (23:03)
bands now. I've had to sort of give that up, but yeah, mean, yeah, I've got a young family, got a day job and all my spare time is spent doing the YouTube stuff. So that's like, you know, learning stuff, working things out. I get patron requests, so those need to be kept on top of. So yeah, it's a lot, but you just find stuff that you just think, I just won't do that anymore. Then like football, I used to watch lots of football and I just...

Sugar Dave (23:09)
Wow.

Wow.

Matt (23:29)
start like, you in lockdown, I just stopped watching football because that was like hours a week spent, you know, and my kids aren't really into football either, right? So it wasn't something we did together. So, um, yeah, you just find it and then you start to find, um, like ways to streamline it and, you know, a way to make sure that your time's just always like doing something useful. So I never have like much downtime. I never have stuff where I'm not doing anything.

And when I do, get kind of a bit, you know, itchy fingered and a bit like I should be doing some other stuff, you know, I got, so it sort of keeps you, yeah, it keeps you busy, but yeah, I mean, at the time, so going back to then when the initially, you know, when I first started the channel, I was just doing, I just got back into guitar. I'd had years not playing, like 10 years or whatever, you know, not playing and wasn't interested. And then I thought, you know what, I'll try and get into a Pearl Jam tribute band.

Sugar Dave (24:06)
Yeah.

Matt (24:29)
No. And funny enough, there was one kicking off. So I auditioned and then that went on and we started doing shows and we did probably something like 20, 25 shows a year, which is great. So we're traveling all over the UK, which isn't huge by your standards in the U S right. But you know, it's five, six hours in a car, two, two dates, you know, and then you're back home on the Sunday sort of thing, you know? Um, but because it was, um, I was so obsessively like wanted to get stones.

tones right and all of the like nuances of his playing and all that sort of stuff. I thought, well, maybe I'll just focus on, just teaching Pearl Jam. So I'll just, I'll just do that. That's it. So that was the initial, and that's why it's called let's play all because at the time they had a video called let's play two, right? So it's a play on, on that, which is, well, let's play two, let's play all, let's play all of their songs. And the idea was we're going to do every single Pearl Jam.

Bondo (25:15)
Right.

Matt (25:25)
tune live versions, any weird B-sides, any of that sort of stuff, right? And just dedicate the channel to that. And then as it grew and it grew quite quickly, cause like I did an even flow cover and that really took off. So it got monetized quite quickly within like a few sort of months of the first few videos, which was great. So, I then thought I'm going to run out of pill chat. mean, this is, I'm going to run out of road here. Cause

Bondo (25:48)
Hahaha

Matt (25:50)
You know, I can't just only do Pearl Jam. So then I started to branch out into other grunge bands and other 90s alt rock stuff. you know, eventually start to slip in Slipknot and Metallica and old thrash bands I used to like as well. And then, yeah, so, so it's just gone from there really. And then the, uh, the tribute band sort of went away and I just didn't have the time we moved. I didn't have time to sort of rehearse or, um, do commit to like driving away all weekend. And I really loved.

the YouTube stuff, just thought it was, it was, it was just really a really cool way of, you know, creating this little online community. And through that, then just some amazing things just happened, you know, just by virtue of having the channel, right? Like Dave Navarro is the classic example, because he, when he was playing in,

NHC, I forgot the name, NHC right with you know Taylor Hawkins and and Chris Chaney right on bass and I loved that stuff I thought it was amazing and so I did a I did like a a lesson for one of their tunes and I got a like I you know when you tag people on Instagram

Bondo (26:51)
Yeah, Chad Smith and Ert, yeah yeah.

Matt (27:14)
Like if they can read it, if they want, right. You know what mean? If they can, they can actually go, yeah, they've tagged us in a video. And I think someone like put a heart in it and just went, oh, awesome. You know, nice one. It was from like the NHAC account. And I was like, awesome. How cool is that? You know, whatever like 20 year old is running their, you know, in their social account or whatever. But I was like, oh cool. And so they were like, I'm going to show you something like, um, soon, something really cool. Right. And I was like, okay.

Bondo (27:28)
Yeah.

Sugar Dave (27:29)
Yeah.

Bondo (27:35)
You

Matt (27:42)
So, you know, was chatting, you know what It was just a normal chat and didn't know I was talking to you at all. And then I get a video on that account from Dave Navarro. It's him playing guitar going, dude, there's like one bit that you didn't get quite right and you probably can't quite hear it, but it's kind of buried in the mixer bit. here it's this, right? And anyway, you know, great job, awesome, you know, and I was just like, what, what the what's like? That's, that's actually from Dave Navarro.

Sandman (27:58)
wow.

Wow.

Bondo (28:06)
Yeah.

Sugar Dave (28:08)
Yeah!

Matt (28:10)
And then I realized it's him running the account is he's, he's doing the account. Right. So, yeah, he shared like a, he shared then, a play through that I tried to do of his solo, right. He was, it was, you know, he was generous about it and, it was, you know, pretty fluffed, but he, he put it on the NHC channel and then that got liked by a bunch of people like Cameron liked it because they're all obviously mates. So I was just like, this is amazing. So this, so those sorts of things.

I just, I know it takes a lot of time and you do, you earn money from it, right? But you know, you'd be better off doing guitar lessons for like 30 quid an hour for the amount of time that you put into it, right? You'd be way better off, you know, but you would never get any of this sort of cool stuff happening where you're like, idle reaches out to you and like, you know, and then he sent me another video saying, by the way, I looked at your Binkort stealing video and Binkort stealing is one of my

ultimate favourite songs. It's probably my top three solos ever, Saying, great job, by the way, the main riff, I'm actually doing this, not that, he sent me another like little note, right?

Sugar Dave (29:21)
my gosh.

Bondo (29:22)
the best constructive criticism

Sandman (29:24)
Little heads up. Nice.

Bondo (29:24)
you've ever received

Sugar Dave (29:24)
Yep.

Matt (29:26)
So

it's so cool of him, right? Cause he, you know, like he has, like he needs to do that. And so we, we built up a little sort of, you know, little friendship, you know, from, uh, from that. we, you know, we don't talk loads, but every now and again we do. And he, he sent me some vids. Um, and he was, he was quite ill at the time, I think with COVID. He didn't really know, but he was, he still, you know, made time because I said, I'm going to do like a Dave Navarro month. So I'm going to do like, you know,

Bondo (29:49)
You're right.

Matt (29:55)
four lessons of your stuff. And, you know, I tagged him and he messaged back saying, yeah, man, this sounds cool. I'll give you a hand with those. know, maybe we could do a call or something. But then he sent me four videos of him. Like as he's sort of like, you know, stream of consciousness, he's playing, he's like, what was I doing there? Oh yeah, it's this, it's this bitch. So I got these like little...

private videos that he sent me of how you play these, you know, breakdowns by like, you know, one of your idols. I mean, I had a magazine on my desk that had him in. was just, it was so wild.

Bondo (30:29)
it's yeah I couldn't imagine where you're like dude I got the guitar world

Sandman (30:31)
Yeah.

Bondo (30:36)
here that's not what you did it's right here on the guitar world

Matt (30:38)
Yeah, you're right. missed a bit. Yeah, you missed

a bit there. So, Jess, what a legend. know what mean? Just so, so generous with his time. He sent me a bunch of pics and, you know, all sorts of stuff. It's great.

Bondo (30:49)
That is amazing. So your next pedal is the Dave Navarro pedal then, huh?

Matt (30:52)
Yeah. Dave. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Has to be done.

I'm friends with this guitar tech actually. I mean, it's guitar tech. Uh, I've been seeing him at a couple of gigs actually, which has been really nice.

Bondo (31:00)
Is it Danny Clear?

Is that his name? Dan Clear, yeah. I follow him on Instagram as well. You were talking about Stone's Tone, anything you could do to get Stone's Tone. Did an SD-1, I'm sorry, an SD-9, an Ibanez SD-9 ever make its way onto your pedal board?

Matt (31:05)
Dan Cleary, here's the name is, yeah, yeah. He's a great, great guy.

I have never played one so I couldn't tell you. I know that he's supposed to have used them on at some point but yeah I couldn't tell you what they sound like.

Bondo (31:29)
I picked one up way back when like I think I probably read it in the year 2000 that he had used one so this was when eBay was first taken off so I went on eBay and I think I picked one up for a hundred bucks and to me that's that sound is very much like the kind of like what you hear him playing on SNL like when they're playing daughter or something like at the end I don't know there's just something about that

Matt (31:44)
Wow.

okay.

Bondo (31:57)
But it's kind of SD. Yes, I still have it. I have it right. Let me

Matt (31:57)
Have you still got it? wow.

Bondo (32:00)
go grab it. Hang on.

Sugar Dave (32:01)
What'd say

Matt (32:02)
Nice.

Sugar Dave (32:02)
it was?

Matt (32:04)
It's an SD9, isn't it? It's an Ibanez pedal.

Sugar Dave (32:09)
yeah.

Matt (32:10)
But yeah, isn't it pink or something?

Sugar Dave (32:17)
Look green.

Sandman (32:17)
That works.

Matt (32:17)
virus.

Bondo (32:18)
Did

somebody sing a song when I was going to sing? Yeah, it's green.

Matt (32:20)
You

it's green, is it? okay. So is it based on a tube scraper? It's not the same at all.

Bondo (32:24)
Yeah, it looks just like a tube screamer, but it's just a few shades lighter.

No, not at all. It's I would say

it's more like a DS1 honestly. It's more of a distortion than an overdrive. But yeah, they don't have a like if you crank the volume, maybe it's just this model or the one I have, but I'll turn the volume all the way up on it and still a little lacking. But when I first got it, I loved it. It was missing the missing the back from the day I got it.

Matt (32:38)
interesting.

Very cool.

Bondo (32:56)
But yeah,

that was the first one I got where I was like, I got stones tone now.

Matt (33:01)
Yeah, I know it's

Sandman (33:02)
Thank

Matt (33:03)
crazy and if you listen to a lot of their, I mean the ten tone is almost the easiest one to go after really but they're later songs.

Bondo (33:10)
And it changes so much too, especially around the year 2000

when they're doing the live stuff. It's just they're both kind of, they both got that tube screamer sound. I wasn't a real big fan of it at first, but it grew on me. then it seems like around 2005, 2006, they picked up with more of kind of like a heavy distorted tone as opposed to just everything being almost like an overdriven sound.

Matt (33:24)
Mm.

they've used some pretty nasty sounding, you know, stuff on a lot of their albums, actually. mean, they've obviously, as the years have gone on, they've gone through multiple different types of amps, different types of guitars, different effects, you know. So they're always switching up. mean, Stone had like a, he had a gold clone on his board for years. You know, I think he's, I know if he still does that.

Bondo (33:38)
Yeah.

And at the time I was...

Yeah.

I honestly can't keep up with it. For a time I was like, okay, whatever they get, I'm going to get. And then it just get to a point where it's like, I just, can't even be in the know with what they have. It's just.

Sugar Dave (34:07)
Yeah

Matt (34:09)
Yeah. And then you got to go, well, I saw ways like one amp for my clean tone and one amp for my distorted tone. And then the pedals are kind of boosting or adding character or, but I've always been a big fan of, getting tone out of pedals, just having a, you know, fairly sort of pedal friendly, you know, pedal board, pedal platform amp, for whatever better word.

You know, so the amp itself doesn't have like tons of character necessarily, but then you just got your palette of whatever, like a rat or, know, you know, you have your Pearl Jam stuff or something heavier than that for like Alice in Chains or whatever. I've always just, just much preferred that. And also it's expensive, right? Who's got money to buy a load of amps when, you know, most pedals are hundreds, 200 quid and you can encapsulate it all in that, right? So yeah, that's always been my go-to.

Bondo (34:46)
Mm-hmm.

Sugar Dave (35:00)
Yeah.

Bondo (35:07)
So

I'm assuming you're a tube amp guy and not a digital platformer kind of player.

Matt (35:13)
I like, I mean, I've got a Boss Katana, which is awesome. I mean, I just can't believe just how good the sounds in these things are. I've got, you know, a bunch of stuff from like Sonicake, you know, these sorts of brands and yeah, digital stuff is amazing, I find. I mean, I've got the Katana headphones as well, which are just amazing. the, you know, so, and some of that is...

Really good for 80s things, you know, the really saturated reverbs and stuff and they're such such fun to play But day to day and for all my videos. I yeah, I'll use I've got a Morgan MVP 66 amp Which is Awesome. It's like a proper grown-up amp. I mean I had a victory v40 Before that and I still have that I used that live recently because it's a lunchbox head 1 by 12, you know

Bondo (35:56)
Nice.

Matt (36:09)
but it's just really easy, really portable. But yeah, the Morgan MVP 66 is my go-to and that Joe Morgan reached out to me actually and said, I've learned loads of Pearl Jam stuff off your channel. Like, you you're interested in an amp. So I was just like, yes. So we worked that out.

Bondo (36:28)
You

Matt (36:32)
Yeah, I was blown away. that's great. So, you know, I chat to joke a fair bit as well now, you know, so far when the new album comes out, when you can see him, you're going to see him this year, you know, he comes to the UK, you know. Um, so yeah, that's, that's awesome. So, um, you know, I'd thoroughly recommend them. It's, um, I was found with the love victory in the UK brand and I'd used them for a while, but the, uh, amp.

always, it always needed something. It always needed like a little bit of a boost or something just to sort of get it into the broken up territory that I like it as my sort of clean tone, if you like. whereas the Morgan doesn't need that. That is just, like I say, it just feels like a sort of grown up amp really. But yes, excellent.

Bondo (37:18)
Is that one a 212 or?

Matt (37:21)
So it's a head. actually don't have, yeah, I don't know if you can see it. It's back there somewhere. Where is it? Where's my finger? It's there. Where's my finger? There's my finger. So it's that one there. It's back there. It's a Morgan MVP 66. Yeah, I got my, that's in the way. So it's that sucker. So it's got like, I don't know if you can see it back there. It's got like a gray sort of.

Bondo (37:22)
Just the head.

hard you're kind of blurry right now with this

Sugar Dave (37:31)
haha

Sandman (37:34)
You

Bondo (37:35)
What was the name of it again? I'm Morgan.

Okay. Okay, I recognize it in the videos now, yeah.

Matt (37:51)
reflect look, which I've always thought just looks just incredible. They're just the best looking heads.

Bondo (37:55)
That does look cool.

Sugar Dave (37:58)
I've seen this.

Matt (38:00)
They're amazing. Yeah. It's actually based on like a, it's got Katie 66 tubes in, which I've never heard of. And it's based on a, like a JTM 50, think something like that. So yeah, it's great for, for that sort of stuff.

Sugar Dave (38:03)
Whoop. Shoot.

Bondo (38:18)
I've only recently become of the like, I've got started playing a band where the other guitarist uses like a lot of he has a Kemper and he works at a studio. So he's also got access to like Fender. Was it master tone masters that was called just all these new compact, great sounding things expensive. And it's just like, I'm trying

Matt (38:40)
Yeah. Is that Tone Master

the digital one? Yeah.

Bondo (38:44)
Yeah, that's the one with

the it's the big like pedal board foot pedal thing and comes with the expression pedal on the cabinet. But sounds great. But I haven't spent much time with it. But listening him play, sounds great. But, you know, I'm, you know, 44 years old. I'm tired of lugging around a 212 combo amp that's, whatever 70, 80 pounds. But I'm trying stuff and it's just not like I got a Fender Blues Junior trying that with my pedals and other things. And it's just like

Matt (38:47)
Yeah

Bondo (39:14)
nothing compares like not in the least the digital stuff i'm using it's just

Matt (39:22)
Yeah, I mean, I do like, I mean, it's a set of whatever you can familiar with really, I think, and for me, I just love that the way that they react. And I didn't, mean, before you, if you don't really play like a lot of tube amps, which I didn't really until quite recently. mean, I hadn't, I only had like one guitar that I used for like 20 years and any, every time I tried to play other people's guitars, I was like, don't like these. Cause I was just.

so used to, you know, the feel of this guitar. And I had no idea why I just, you know, like that one thing. and you don't really, and I remember taking a pedal, I had this pedal, was a Hampstead sound works or something. did, was a really cool boost pedal. And I took it around to a mate's house and he had a ultra clean like fender amp and it just didn't do the thing. And his amp and I was like, why doesn't it sound like my amp? And I just couldn't.

Bondo (40:18)
You

Matt (40:20)
I didn't understand anything. But I think with that pedal show, know, they've, their YouTube channel has been so good for learning about all of this stuff. you know, how amps break off and all this, you know, I just thought, I just want it to sound a bit gritty. Like, why doesn't it sound gritty? Why is it clean? So I didn't understand about headroom or, know, any of this sort of stuff. So yes, every day's a school day.

Bondo (40:37)
Yeah.

Sugar Dave (40:42)
Yeah.

Bondo (40:46)
Yeah.

Sugar Dave (40:46)
I used to be very anti-solid state, like I just never liked digital. I can't remember this guy's name. Me and Brandon actually saw, you remember that 15 year old kid, he wore the Western cowboy shirts and he played like a Squire guitar through a little solid, real small solid state amp. It sounded phenomenal. So I don't think it was. No, no, I wouldn't talk to him afterwards. And I mean, that's...

Bondo (40:59)
yeah, yeah.

Mm It was probably a Princeton or something. It was. don't remember. Uh huh.

Matt (41:06)
Yeah.

Sugar Dave (41:15)
I think the way a person plays has a lot to do with it as well, obviously, but that kid just blew us out of the water and I was like, maybe solid states aren't bad, you know? I've actually had several since then.

Matt (41:24)
Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And it's what, you know, you can get, I mean, we're really fortunate now because you can get a bunch of incredible equipment at very reasonable prices. Now guitars, amps, you know, pedals, all that stuff. It's, there's never been a better time to, you know, be buying gear really, because it's all great. mean, I even, I sometimes get, you know, do demos for like, you know, far Eastern brands or whatever. And

Bondo (41:45)
You

Matt (41:55)
You know, get the stuff, you just think this is really good. If I was like a beginner, like for a kid or whatever, you know, and so any of that stuff that I get through, they tend to get like don't donate donated to like, you know, kids or whatever, or schools or, whatever it is. Right. Because they're just amazing for, for starter starter guitars. Right. I've been, really impressed by all of that stuff. I mean, even like, you know, the having the

the neck, you you feel like there's the fretboard edges of slightly rolled, you know what mean? There's no sharp edges to the frets or whatever, you know, they stay in tune. The action isn't like miles off the fretboard, you know, just basic stuff like that. And it's a couple hundred quid, you know, it's, you know, it's amazing. So yeah, it's great. Great. If you're starting out now, I think.

Bondo (42:49)
Pedals, pedals, pedals. What pedals were you using to get stone's tone like in the beginning? Did you have one?

Matt (42:51)
more pedals.

Right at the beginning, was using

a Wampler Tumnus into, I used a bunch, but I think the OCD I used to use a fair bit because that used to give me a bunch of different flavors. And I think I had the SL drive as well, the exotic SL drive for a little bit. And I had a small, tiny like board. was only about, know, yay big. So it was all mini pedals. So I had a tuner, the Tumnus was small.

Sugar Dave (43:21)
Yeah.

Matt (43:22)
The OCD was a bit bigger. The SL drive was tiny. And then I had a little boost pedal and that was it. That's all I used for, for stones stuff back then. Uh, and I have to cover like Eddie's stuff as well, because our singer, um, can play a Santi his name is he, he was, uh, he's a brilliant guitarist, but he's also an incredible frontman and he likes to just run around and dive into the crowd. So we were like, let's just go out. And so we kind of went after the early pill jam stuff.

Sugar Dave (43:33)
Thank

Bondo (43:46)
You

Sugar Dave (43:46)
haha

Sandman (43:47)
You

Bondo (43:51)
Right.

Matt (43:52)
where he just gets to interact with the crowd and doesn't have to worry about, you know, a guitar. So I used to cover Eddie's parts as well. So that was good because then it needs the flexibility to be, to be stoned or Eddie depending on, you know, what they're doing. So, so yeah, that was, that was kind of my three go-to pedals then.

Bondo (44:10)
very nice so how often are you gear sent to you to review for the YouTube channel or is it that like I imagine whenever you're getting noticed by Dave Navarro that probably helps a good little bit picks up some things like getting the other videos some views and

Matt (44:26)
Yeah, it doesn't hurt, it? I mean, there's a bunch of, you know, little stories like that. I mean, that was a really, really cool one. But, mean, that's it's a separate thing, really. It does help, obviously it helps, right? Because, you know, it's a story that you can tell a brand because I think the important thing for brands is that what are you doing for them? Right? You know, that has to be your...

Bondo (44:35)
Right.

Right. Well,

just the act of you getting seen just because of something like that, because just if Dave Navarro shares a video of you and then people are like, well, this guy, want to know he does this. He's got an even flow video. What other videos has he got? So you're getting exposure from that. So I would assume that, you know, people who make pedals and things like that are like, let's this guy some stuff.

Matt (45:17)
Yeah, I mean,

it kind of, works kind of both ways. get, um, like nothing just like falls in your lap. Do you what mean? Like it's always, um, graphed. Yeah. Yeah. And, and often you'll be, you'll go to the brand. mean, if you've got an idea for a video and then you can go to a brand, say, listen, I've got an idea for some content that I think would be great with my audience and you know,

Bondo (45:23)
Right.

Little bit of go-getter in there too. Little bit of go-getter.

Sugar Dave (45:31)
Yeah.

Matt (45:47)
I think this would be a good, what a good light to show your pedal off. cause they're always demos. don't really do reviews. mean, reviews is like, my opinion of this is, is rubbish or it's brilliant. Right. So I'm always doing demos because I just like to show I'm quite positive person. I like to show off the thing. Right. And I know what's gone into someone putting their heart and soul into a little box, right. That turns up on your desk. And so, you know, I'd never want to sort of rip something apart really.

Bondo (45:56)
Right, right, right.

Matt (46:16)
and do that sort of approach to things. But I've always said that, look, if it's, if I think it's of interest to my audience and I would personally use it myself, then that's my kind of rule. Right. so you got to, you got to like it as well. Right. but yeah, I mean, often I reached out to a load. think I started reaching out to several brands just going,

You know, could I get a discount on a pedal or can I get a free pedal, you know, an exchange for like a demo or whatever. And then, yeah, you build those relationships up and then, know, and then years later, other brands will go, we've seen what you did because they are obviously, you're, they're following that brand and you're associated with it, then they see you through that. And that helps too. And then if you start working with a bunch, like, you know, maybe a guitar brand and amp brand, some pedal brands.

then there's three other sort of avenues that people could find you as well. And I did, you know, done a bunch of stuff for like boss on their newsletter, right? Or of our mates, Matt, who works for boss. asked me to do some content for that, which is awesome. And he's now moved here. He's like lives down the road. So we go out for beers and stuff and there's a little community we have here, which is cool. But anyway, he asked me to do that. And then a person that I work with,

was like, Matt, is that you? Because he played bass, right? And he subscribed to this. He was like, you're in the like boss newsletter this week. Did you know that? I was just like, yeah, they asked me to do some content. So you just find these random, you know, random sort of things that happen. But yeah, so some then do reach out to you and say, we, you know, we're interested in doing stuff. Like I think Guild, Guild reached out to me about the Kim Thale Pallara saying, you know, we want to do, um,

Sandman (47:55)
Hmm.

Matt (48:15)
I would love you to do a demo of that. And I was like, yes. So, uh, yeah, which was amazing, right? Cause they were, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's been out a while. Yeah. But, yeah, probably 18 months, two years ago, which is awesome. And then, you know, I'll keep the guitar and use it, you know, I use it in any sort of sound garden videos. And I love guild, right? Cause I used to have guild guitars myself, the acoustic I used to love. And, um, so I was over the moon.

Sugar Dave (48:18)
yeah.

Bondo (48:20)
Has that happened? Has that happened yet? That one has it? Wow.

Hahaha

Matt (48:45)
But yeah, nothing sort of just comes to you. It's from, you know, hours and hours and hours of grind and hustle really, and spotting opportunities, you know, where you think they'll be useful for people really, you know.

Bondo (49:00)
Right. No

such thing as luck is there.

Matt (49:04)
Now, well, can, you know, there's probably something as luck. You sort of have to help help it along a bit as well though, sometimes.

Sugar Dave (49:08)
Yeah.

Bondo (49:11)
preparation and opportunity.

Matt (49:14)
Yeah. But I mean, don't get me wrong.

It's incredible. It is incredible because you get, I love gear and you know, when you get sent stuff by people, it's just awesome. You know, it really is awesome. But you then have, you then got to come up with, you know, a video idea and then you start to go, you stress thinking, what if it's just awful? What if people don't like it? You know, and then that's it. That'll be the end of it. You know, so you have all those sort of worries.

But I think if you just.

Sandman (49:45)
Do they ever toss

in side streamers like ball caps and hoodies and stuff like that, you know, that comes in with the amp or whatever? Nice.

Matt (49:51)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes. Yeah. I mean, you get

Bondo (49:53)
Get some schwag.

Matt (49:56)
loads of t-shirts, which is great. I bought a t-shirt of Rades. but you got, and I got, I was wearing my hat earlier. Catlin bread sent me a hat one year for like, I think they sent it out with a Christmas card, which is really nice. I love them. yeah. You, US based pedal, pedal brand. And, I wear that all the time, man. It's well warm and comfy. So yeah. Yeah. You do get, you did get the odd bit.

Sandman (49:58)
Very good.

Sugar Dave (49:58)
Hahaha

Bondo (50:17)
Yeah.

Sandman (50:20)
Very good.

Bondo (50:21)
Can you remember your first live gig that you ever had?

Matt (50:28)
First live gig that I played or that I saw.

Bondo (50:29)
Mm-hmm.

Or how about the first time you ever played in front of people, like in a public setting? Maybe not a band, just like one of the first times that you ever.

Matt (50:35)
Okay.

Yeah, so was a band at school, so we were probably 15 maybe, something like that, 14 or 15. And we played in our school hall. we played like, we played Metallica, a couple of Metallica chains. So it was basically a lunchtime show and we were, I think we played...

Bondo (50:59)
They gave you the whole time

too. They didn't just give you one song. It wasn't like a talent show.

Matt (51:02)
Yeah, it was just

us. I mean, it was a very small area. grew up in a small town in Wales, which is, if you watch, you know, the Wrexham football club thing, you'll have heard of Wales. Otherwise you wouldn't. but yeah, so I grew up there at small time and we had a, a little band and we did, yeah, like Metallica one and we did Master of Puppets, Ozzy Osbourne. We did a few like Suicide Solution and I don't know.

Bondo (51:12)
Right.

Sugar Dave (51:25)
Whoa.

Bondo (51:32)
You all were pretty good for 14, 15 year olds.

Matt (51:32)
What else did we do?

Sandman (51:34)
Yeah, I was about

Sugar Dave (51:34)
Yeah.

Sandman (51:35)
to not a cupcake set for the age group.

Matt (51:39)
I

mean, I don't know how good it was because we don't have any recorded. We did have videos of it, but they just got lost, you know, over time. There is a video of us playing when we were like a year older or something like that. And that was another sort of lunchtime gig. And that was great. We played some Slayer and Megadeth.

Sandman (51:42)
You

Bondo (51:53)
Right.

Sandman (51:54)
I'm just saying if somebody came into my

school, some 15 year olds and started cranking out Metallica and stuff, the temptation would be not to pack them out on our shoulders. I'm just saying.

Sugar Dave (52:00)
Yeah. Yeah.

Matt (52:06)
It was great fun. It really was because it gives you that sort of that sense of identity, I guess, when you're, you know, a kid, you know, and I used to play in a fact, I think that was my yeah, that was my first band. But then I got into a band of when I was about 15, they were like 18, 19. So they were all like drinking and smoking and, you know,

They had their own flat, know, so my dad like, you know, drive me down to, go and practice with them. And they did original stuff and they did some covers like Testament and things like that. And so, um, I was like a bit of a novelty cause I was really short and they were all these big men really, you know what mean? I was just like this boy still. Um, but I was, you know, I got really good friends with the guitar player. It's called Chris Goodman and he was amazing. He was like doing sweep picking and do you know what mean? All this sort of like.

Sugar Dave (52:35)
Yeah.

Matt (52:59)
incredible stuff. And so yeah, it was really good fun to be to be in that we did a few gigs. I can't remember how many we did. But it was wild. mean, the first gig we played this singer was like an animal. I mean, he was just so mild mannered, really nice chap, well spoken. As soon as the music came on, he got a pint glass, like a glass pint glass and just smashed it onto his own head.

So we're like showered with glass, like, and there was no stage, but you were all on the same level as the crowd. It's like a parquet flooring, which is like a really hard wood, like flooring, right? And he ran and he jumped up in the air and just slammed his own body just onto this hard floor. And we were playing like a really slow intro. And I was just like, this is incredible. What the fuck's going on? So yeah, it was amazing. One of my mates who'd come to see me.

There's a lot of older kids there, know, young adults, I guess. He came up to me and he was just like, your singer, like he bit me on the head. Like, he ran into the crowd, just bit me on the head. So it was very punky and just quite wild. But yeah, brilliant fun.

Sandman (54:05)
Good

Sugar Dave (54:08)
You

Bondo (54:15)
as it should be. I kind of had a similar experience growing up. Like, I got hooked up with older guys. the guitar player was just amazing, so much better than me. And it was just, I honestly think that's, if I am good at all now, it's because of those formative years I was exposed to, you know, you know, sketchy situations, but you're, you're around some, some, some players, man, but you know, I guess that's, yeah.

Matt (54:37)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's a great life experience, isn't it? And I think

getting to play with other people as well, in that, you know, when you're not necessarily playing covers, that was really, really interesting as well, you know, that was quite eye opening because, you know, I'd just been playing in my room the whole time, you know, practicing to records or whatever. So yeah, you got to get out there and play with people. It's different thing, isn't it?

Bondo (55:05)
Yes, sir. We've got about five minutes left to our egg timer hour. I just want to take a quick second to I know you didn't send me the pedal, but thank you for being a part of some good gear that got sent to me. Andy was nice enough to send me a dirt pedal. And yeah, you guys make some great gear and I hope to see more great gear. Have you have you all thought about doing anything like?

Matt (55:18)
You're welcome.

Bondo (55:28)
I don't know if Andy brings it up or whatever, if you all decided like maybe we should do a wah pedal or a delay pedal or anything, or you just gonna stick to more like a.

Matt (55:36)
No, not at the moment.

We've got so many ideas, and Andy's just got so many for this year alone. And we were like, the dirt took a couple of years to come out. So we don't really release more than one pedal a year. But Andy this year was like, here's the seven that I've got planned. Pretty much done all the seconds. I was like, how are we going to do seven?

Sandman (55:58)
You

Matt (56:02)
Yeah, it's great. And he's just, he's on fire at the moment. He's got, he's got loads of, loads of ideas and we've got, so we've basically got, two, two pedals completely done and a third or fourth on, the sort of way. So we might well get two or three out this year. We'll see.

Sugar Dave (56:22)
wow.

Sandman (56:23)
Yeah, that's kind of what he sounded like on the previous show. was like, could probably get two out, three would probably be really ambitious, but there was a kind of a window to allow for that. You know, it just seemed like two or three a year. Yeah, that's.

Matt (56:36)
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.

He goes to like, um, uh, like guitar shows that we have here, like quite smallish guitar shows. Um, well, there's one in Birmingham coming up. Actually, that's the biggest one. And, uh, so he, his idea as well is he's going to take a, you know, a pedal along for that particular show. Right. And then as he goes to the next show, he'll do another one. So like limited releases, smaller, limited releases, uh, just, just cause he wants to do.

you know, some cool stuff and it's quite nice as well because, you know, when you go from just having, you know, these, what's the next one of these going to be, you know, there's a load of pressure to that and that's not always fun. So he wants to keep the fun and funny little boxes, obviously. So, you know, that's a great way to do it.

Sugar Dave (57:14)
Yeah.

Bondo (57:20)
Is there anything you want to plug coming up for you? Anything? Is it coming out like tomorrow or anything? you know, anything you want to...

Matt (57:27)
No, I got,

you know, more of the same this year. Just got loads of plans for lessons. I'm probably going to do some, some patron specific stuff for, you know, actual lessons like cage system and all that, but with a slant towards, you know, grungy, nice stuff. Cause that's not often the way it does. It's done.

Bondo (57:46)
Are you?

Are you going to have your let's play all guitar guide class that people can, you know, are you going to start selling those?

Matt (57:55)
I'd love to, I'd love to actually. Yeah. I'd love to at some point. it's just time, you know, that's a lot of time to put something like that together. So, yeah, the minute is still like more of the same loads, more like lessons and demos and, yeah, yeah. As much other bits and pieces that I can squeeze in.

Bondo (58:14)
Well, luckily there's lots,

lots more of the same to do. So, I mean.

Matt (58:19)
Yeah. Yeah. Only the other day I found a bit in Go that I had been playing wrong, which is like amazing to still be finding new stuff 30 years later. It's great.

Bondo (58:26)
Gotta love that.

I started doing that. Like I'll, I'll try to do videos and so that my time's right. try to play it along. Like I'll have it in my ears on a headphone or something. And then I'll be playing along with it I'll be like, no, you're not, you need to practice this. You're not doing it right. You can't tell someone how to play the thing. If you're not playing the thing like

Matt (58:45)
Hahaha

you can. Yeah. I do it all the time, mate. I've just been, I've just been trying

Sugar Dave (58:49)
Yeah.

Matt (58:53)
to learn battery, right? I just started, I've worked, I've almost worked it all out. And, man, that is, that is difficult. Hatfield's rhythm playing. mean, you can't, know, and you can't, he's just incredible. Yeah. He's amazing. You know, he's just, he's just an absolute beast and that that's, that's good fun. but you know, like the master of puppets, I did master of puppets and I was like, I can't down, down pick this. I'm going to alternate pick it. So just.

Bondo (59:03)
and he still does it he's like in his 60s now yes

Matt (59:19)
I'm just putting that out there. But you'll still get comments. Has to be downpicked. This has to be downpicked. But you can still teach the lesson. know what mean? Fine. Downpick it then. Do know what mean? Go your bad self.

Bondo (59:24)
can't stand it. Right.

Sugar Dave (59:26)
Yeah.

Sandman (59:28)
You

Bondo (59:29)
That's just some

different strokes for different folks, man. You some people do it all on up strokes. Yeah, you do.

Sandman (59:36)
you

Matt (59:36)
I

I was like, I'm like 50. I haven't got time to be relearning all that. You know what mean? So I just have fun.

Sugar Dave (59:41)
Yeah.

Bondo (59:44)
and that's the most important thing. I'm watching the time, it's getting ready to go off, my gosh. Once again, Matt Webster, YouTube channel is Let's Play All, go check him out, he's got lots of cool things. dude, that's it. Thank you for joining the Eggtimer Hour. Till next time.

Sugar Dave (59:50)
No!

Definitely.

Matt (1:00:03)
Nice.

Thanks

guys, I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Sandman (1:00:07)
Yeah, have

Sugar Dave (1:00:08)
Thanks, Matt.

Sandman (1:00:08)
a good

one, Matt.

Bondo (1:00:10)
Yeah, that was awesome, Yeah.