HEAVY GOODS VEHICLE
It’s do or die. The world as you know it has gone into ‘sleep’ mode. Your planned year of touring has gone up in smoke. On top of all that you have family to support. What do you do?
If you’re Massive Wagons, you press on with your album release as planned and throw everything you’ve got at it. If you’re that band’s Adam Thistlethwaite, you chuck in your day job while you’re at it.
“Yeah, don’t ask me to come and rewire your house or anything,” the guitarist and former electrician says with a chuckle. “It’s kind of been heading that way for a few years. My passion wasn’t in it. This is my passion. I believe in what we do and I believe we can be successful.”
With an unexpected abundance of at-home time on their hands, Massive Wagons have thrown themselves into things they’ve been “threatening to do for years”, like firing up a Patreon page, editing YouTube videos and generally upping the ante of their online operation. So far, they tell us, it seems to be paying off.
“For a jobless man I’ve never been so busy,” says singer Baz Mills, talking to us with Thistlethwaite from their new, dedicated band HQ. The genial, generously moustached frontman has been juggling Wagons duties with “full-time daddy day care” for Lyla, his three-year-old daughter with partner/manager Terri. Accordingly, the business of running a band under lockdown has been mixed with picture painting and Disney films. All the while, the world has been drip-fed tastes of. First single was a huge bear hug of Wildhearts-meets-The Darkness gusto that felt like an anthem for the times – even though it was actually written about Mills meeting his hero Ginger Wildheart backstage, when the Wagons supported him on tour.
