Skeletonwitch Guitarist Enjoys Role of Connecting Band to Fans
At a Skeletonwitch show -- it now being the band's seventh year bringing their blackened thrash attack across America and beyond -- don't be surprised to see guitarist Scott Hedrick hanging out in front of the club with fans and friends alike before thrashing whatever audience that is in whatever city it is on whatever night tonight shortly thereafter. Here, there, overseas ... he's still just one of us fans.
Hedrick, after all, is used to being the one to come up for a picture and a handshake with a band that's in town, and it seems no different, at least to him, with the six stringer on the other side of the fence. "That's why it's fun," Hedrick tells Noisecreep after being asked why he's the ever present connection between the band and fans before shows.
"I was in high school," Hedrick recalls to Noisecreep, "a huge High on Fire fan, and they played Athens [Ohio, the band's current home base], and it was like three and a half hours away from my house. I went up to [High On Fire frontman] Matt Pike, just this scrawny 16-year-old, and then four or five years later, we opened up for them. I mean I'm sure he doesn't remember that, but to look up to them so much [then], and to be a friend now? Awesome. I was that person then, and I think I still am."
Even when being hand-selected as one of car manufacturer Scion's 2010 picks for back-to-back Atlanta and Los Angeles set of gigs to packed clubs, free to fans?
"We've run into some of Danzig's crew, tons of friends and acquaintenances," Hedrick tells Noisecreep of the band's February appearance as headliners amidst an ever-streaming flow of bro-hugs, handshakes, shared cigarettes and interrupted impromptu sidewalk conversations at a Scion sponsored event at The Roxy in Hollywood, Calif. with support from Doomriders. "It's awesome."
The band was recently back in Hollywood, though, selected for a Cannibal Corpse tour along 1349, this time as a support act crossing the country on the pavement rather than the sky. Still, it's probably a safe bet that the most recent trip to Southern California leaves Hedrick and his four bandmates as pretty happy campers. Sure, the proverbial grass is always supposed to be greener over on the otherside, but for some reason, Noisecreep thinks Hedrick might be OK with either side.
Skeletonwitch are currently out on the road with Cannibal Corpse, 1349 and Lecherous Nocturne in support of the band's latest album, Breathing The Fire, which saw a release in October of last year through Prosthetic Records. The tour wraps up May 16 in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.