Just listened to it on band amp, and I must say that the album is outstanding! Will buy tomorrow during Bandcamp Friday.

Rev

Canadian Surf

http://www.urbansurfkings.com/

This is another fantastic album from F&TPB! Each song is well crafted, each with it's own vibe, mood, and killer melodies! Outstanding songwriting and playing! I love, love it!

It reminds me of in 2008, Ivan and I were driving to Toronto to catch a Great Lakes Surf Battle, and Ivan had a preview copy of the first F&TPB album. We listened to that thing the almost the whole way (well Ivan had to listen to Motorhead too!), each song came on and we were like "WOW this is so GOOD" with big dumb smiles on our faces. GET IT!

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"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

Ferenc did you set out to have the big revolving cast of drummers from the beginning or did it just start happening?

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"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

Brian wrote:

Ferenc did you set out to have the big revolving cast of drummers from the beginning or did it just start happening?

Yes, THEE question...
What happened is that in late 2023, I realized I had 7 demos for songs that were never recorded. But, they were all over the map stylistically, and directionless. So I had a good friend come over to help me arrange them and record them. He's also an awesome drummer Once we made the plan, I thought that 7 songs wasn't enough so I banged out 3 more songs in the weeks before he arrived. So we had a great weekend, and recorded 10 songs, though one still needed a lot of work and was never finished.
I now had 9 drum tracks in the can, ready to be finished. And then, more thinking... 9 songs is not enough for an album, what else do I have?
A song with Naotaka Seki from when he visited in 2022, an outtake from the Pollo Del Mar sessions, an unreleased song with Pool Boy Jonathan Rodriguez, a bizarre demo synced to a loop from a Sting song, and a demo of a song I wrote with Max from the Bradipos 4. Also, a vocal song from a fuzz band that I was in.
Would it be weird to have the 9 new tracks along with 3 songs from other drummers? Yes, it would sound weird. But, if every song had a different drummer, then it would make sense that every song sounded different.
It just so happened that Lorenzo and Pieter from Surfer Joe were coming through town the following weekend, so I asked them to each play on a track, and that's how it started. During 2024, 8 different drummers stopped by my house to record a track. One drummer recorded in Italy, and one in Los Angeles. So, no, it wasn't planned, but it was a fun adventure. I love the art of collaboration, and each drummer made the song what it is.

Buy Endless Drummer @ Bandcamp
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About the album cover...
"Endless Drummer" is a phrase I've used before, most memorably for a drum battle at the Hotel Utah in 2006 or so, but that's another story.

Once it was decided that there would be an array of drummers on this album I came back to "Endless Drummer" because it has a great association with surf music and is a pretty good (but not great) pun.
After all of the music was recorded and mixed. I turned my attention to the album cover and I knew I wanted to go in a completely different direction; The Pool Boys have had a long association with great illustrators like Fred Lammers, John Dietrich, and Julian Weber, but I really wanted to blow our whole image up.

There was a great exhibition of Blue Note album covers at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art last August. As a graphic designer I'm a huge fan of Blue Note, but then, who isn't??? I knew I wanted something classy and cool like a 60s jazz cover, but I also wanted it to rock out. This made me think about the album covers of Sandy Nelson and his solo records.

How to find an artist who could paint abstract, but with a specific goal in mind, in this case to feature and express the energy of a drum kit? I absolutely did not want to use any kind of AI so I used a website called fiverr.com. This isn't supposed to be an ad for fiverr, but I've used them before for very specific purposes, like finding a tabla drummer to play on The Golden State by Pollo Del Mar, and a Flamenco guitarist.
I typed in "abstract, expressionist, commercial" into fiverr and quickly found German Bernales, a Argentinian artist. I know absolutely nothing about Sr. Bernales, except that he worked hard over the Christmas holidays and was a great communicator. First he delivered sketches and then he delivered a second generation comp, what you now see as the album cover. However, he did send me a final version that he was happy with, but, as often does, I had fallen in love with the comp and decided to use that.

I should note that the record manufacturer perfectly matched the purple and black for the vinyl.

Buy Endless Summer vinyl or CD at Bandcamp

Buy Endless Drummer @ Bandcamp
Frankie and the Pool Boys website
Buy Speed of Dark @ Bandcamp
Pollo Del Mar website
My Blog- Euro Tour Blog
Pool Boys on Spotify
INSTAGRAM
Frankie & The Pool Boys on Facebook
Pollo Del Mar on Facebook
DJ Frankie Pool Boy on North Sea Surf Radio

Late to the party but I just purchased a copy. Very impressive album.

Brian wrote:

Wow, the cool anecdotes just keep coming! I totally get that Sandy Nelson cover vibe too! He did a great job.

I hope I don't bore everybody... but the whole process was a lot of fun!

wfoguy wrote:

Late to the party but I just purchased a copy. Very impressive album.

Thanks Guy!

Buy Endless Drummer @ Bandcamp
Frankie and the Pool Boys website
Buy Speed of Dark @ Bandcamp
Pollo Del Mar website
My Blog- Euro Tour Blog
Pool Boys on Spotify
INSTAGRAM
Frankie & The Pool Boys on Facebook
Pollo Del Mar on Facebook
DJ Frankie Pool Boy on North Sea Surf Radio

Last edited: May 07, 2025 20:30:47

PolloGuitar wrote:

The Endless Drummer story, Part 3
Track 1- “Grind My Beans”
It’s appropriate to start with “Grind My Beans” because it features Dusty Watson on drums. As I mentioned in part 1, this whole project began with Dusty coming to my house to work through a pile of demos and give them shape. In between the time that we agreed on a recording date and when he arrived, I wrote three more songs, and Grind My Beans was one of those, so it was probably written in early October, 2023. I have been trying to write simpler, more focused songs, and trying to spike into that primal rock’n’roll vein, and I hope I succeeded with GMB. Not quite Link Wray, though, but definitely a touch of Led Zeppelin.
Working with Dusty is very easy. He listened to all the demos before he arrived so he was already familiar with the songs. Then we talked about the arrangement and what needed to get tossed out or feels awkward. Then we write up a chord chart and bang it out. We usually do two or three takes and listen for the best one, and maybe do another if needed. The process of recording takes about an hour for each song, and we took a break between each song to clear our heads and stay fresh. According to session data, GMB was one of the first songs of the Dusty session, recorded on Friday evening, 10/13/2023.
In the middle of the song, you can hear my Krups coffee bean grinder going into a long cross fade with a backwards piano chord.
As you can see in the photo, Dusty is playing my Rogers kit that my brother bought new in 1967. He brought his own cymbals and snare, and that was the blueprint that most of the drummers used for recording on this album.

Thanks for sharing! That’s actually one of my favorites on an album!

Waikiki Makaki surf-rock band from Ukraine

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Lost Diver

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Plug: Please by the CD from Double Crown Records, a tireless supporter of instrumental surf music for 25 years, and a precious resource.

The Endless Drummer story, Part 4
Track 2- “Wiggle Room”
Wiggle Room started out as a melody I sang into my iPhone in February of 2022 while walking on Avila Beach. I have hundreds of these melodies sung into my phone and I go through them looking for inspiration, and this one sounded kinda funky. I have wanted to do a song like Soulful Strut, an instrumental hit that was the backing track for a largely unknown vocal song, Am I The Same Girl. A couple other songs that lent inspiration were Dance Pt. 1 by the Rolling Stones and Temptation Eyes.
Wiggle Room was funky from the get go, and every drummer loves to play in the Clyde Stubblefield style, so who would get the call for this track?
Tony Bald started playing with The TomorrowMen when he was 20 years old, and is a truly fun and optimistic guy to be around, and that positive energy comes out in his playing. Tony now plays with the alt-country band The Whateverglades, the cumbia group Combo Tezeta, and, returning to ska, his first love, a Prince Buster tribute band called Balzac. Tony’s has toured a few times with the Pool Boys and last summer played with Pollo Del Mar in Italy.
We started rehearsing Wiggle Room with Tony in the spring of 2024 while we were getting ready to go to Europe, but didn’t have a chance to record until 11/16/24. This was the last recording session for the Endless Drummer project.
Wiggle Room is a very simple song, the same two chords for the verse and chorus, and a third chord for the bridge. It has a nice long breakdown for the drums to show off and so you can hear compressor pumping the room mics. This track was recorded live with Tony, Jono, Jeff and I in the same room. Karen recorded the keyboards as an overdub. There really aren’t any sonic tricks in this songs, except Jeff’s wha-wha on the bass. Looking at the pictures, I only used 4 mics on the drums, and Tony put his wallet on the snare to tighten it up.

Buy Endless Drummer @ Bandcamp
Frankie and the Pool Boys website
Buy Speed of Dark @ Bandcamp
Pollo Del Mar website
My Blog- Euro Tour Blog
Pool Boys on Spotify
INSTAGRAM
Frankie & The Pool Boys on Facebook
Pollo Del Mar on Facebook
DJ Frankie Pool Boy on North Sea Surf Radio

Keep the stories coming!

Rev

Canadian Surf

http://www.urbansurfkings.com/