OUR STORY

Red Rock Drums Australia has experienced intentional, organic growth over many years. The dedicated (obsessive) care Mat and Roger have committed to design, unique product development, considerations of our footprint with local production versus importing, pricing, content creation, and an incredible amount of other tasks, total more hours than anyone could possibly imagine.

Take 5 minutes to read some of our story…

Pre-Birth 2001-2008…

Back on the 6th June 2008, all the paperwork needed to officiate Red Rock Drums Australia had cleared, including our first business name and logo registration filed on the 2nd April 2008. But leading up to this was years of Mat coaxing Roger into building stave drums, Roger modifying machines in his tiny shed (right) and climbing through his back fence to the boat builder next door to use his bigger deeper lathe, as well as Mat galavanting around the world touring, hand-sanding internal surfaces and saving up money...

Rewind though, back to 2001... Mat was coming out of his teen years buying/restoring/selling vintage kits as a music high schooler, moving into a music university degree when he was asked to teach a group of mixed-age mixed-ability drummers a 20 minute show from memory in his home-town Frankston. Roger was one of the local drummers who had volunteered to be in this group for which he provided a set of his handmade African 'Ashiko' hand drums for the group's use. Astonished by their sub frequencies and resonance, Mat asked Roger if he had ever considered making kit drums in the same 'stave' method, Roger said whilst he had been asked to in the past, that he would not. That seemed pretty finite didn't it?

Mat was booking all sorts of gigs at the time, as was Roger - though not just for the African drumming trio which they began with a mate, these also included domestic and residential building jobs. The two formed a bond over hard work and fun. Roger must have buckled at some point in 2001, producing a thick Tassie Oak snare shell to which Mat crudely drilled-in old Mapex lugs, a dodgy strainer, and some awful hand-rasped snare beds. However crude, it was successful, and Roger gave another shell a go, it was marginally prettier and Mat didn't make so much of a mess out of it. The first shell disappeared into time, whilst Mat used the second regularly for a year or so with the six-odd bands he was working heavily with. It was in one of these bands, that the sound engineer alluded to the name 'Red Rock' when spitballing brand name ideas mid-rehearsal out of mutual-passion for the snare. The decision of that name ignited conversations that flowed between Mat and Roger; wild ideas about drum designs, names, and events, were dreamed up through hours of conversation as a result.

'Red Rock' was immediately suggestive of regional expression, Australiana, conjuring visuals of the sacred iconic sandstone monolith Uluru in the middle of Australia, a solid unwavering integrity, and connotations with rock music, to name a few.

Whilst on another work-site with his uncle as a builder's labourer between uni classes in late 2001, Mat was to demolish a large built-in (painted) wall unit. Slogging the first door off its hinges with a heavy mallet its dense swirling pink woodgrain, date-stamped 1943, revealed itself. Mat took every door, shelf and stick of it home in his already lowered '78 Celica; the tread of the rear tyres literally rubbed the wheel arches the whole way back down Mount Dandenong. Roger agreed to the idea of producing their first kit upon identifying the timber as beautiful Tasmanian Myrtle; it was a baptism by fire; the shell sizes were 8x8, 10x8, 12x8, 14x14, 16x16, 20x16, 22x16, 14x4 and 14x6. Some left-over timber was found in later years which produced one more snare.

Those Myrtle shells sat idle for years, but in the meantime, a marching percussion performance project Mat started with two mates in 2003 commissioned Roger to make two sets of Fijian Mahogany shells (marching 'quads' and a trio of multi-basses). These would be our first finished drums but not quite under the guise yet of Red Rock. They did however very much prove how good a range of Red Rock drum toms and basses could sound. And that second snare drum we mentioned before? Yeah, that was pulled apart intentionally for use of its hardware in these drums. But, the shell was safely put aside, where it still sits to this day.

A classic moment happened that year, Mat attended Drumtek's 2003 Ultimate Drummers Weekend, where he caught up with the great Don Sleishman who was exhibiting with his company. This was years after the two had previously met and discussed designing Australian-made free-floating high-tension marching percussion equipment - which didn't take off. Mat mentioned to Don that he had moved ahead with making drums, recalling his exact words "but don't worry, they are quite unlike the way you make your shells", after Mat explained himself Don pointed to an Ironbark stave snare drum on his display. At this point, Mat's young bubble burst as he became increasingly aware that stave drum kit drums were already an established construction method, and for example that Brady Drums did not just make the ply shells that his friend owned. This of course was before the internet worked properly, and well before you could easily plagiarise ideas from social media.

Onwards and upwards, on the 23rd May 2004, Red Rock took its first official drum kit order. Our first customer, Rob Gennari, was important to us for several reasons, his order forced us to ready our product, decide on our first list of components, and also ideate our early branding to which he also had some wonderful suggestions. Rob was also at the time an employee of iconic Melbourne drum shop Billy Hydes Flemington, which was also a constant source of comical entertainment and industry friendships some of which we have held dear since. It was around this time that our most significant logo design changes were made, in close consultation with Mat's band-mate's graphic-designer girlfriend... take a look at our early logos...

On the 8th December 2004, the Red Rock website was purchased, and we started to get a little more pep in our step. At this point Red Rock Drums Australia was decided as the full name to distinguish between another Red Rock Drums that barely existed in the USA at the time (gone now), and a cheap beginner brand also Red Rock Drums. Hilariously, we continued to be tagged as both on social media to this day.

In 2005, Roger made a tree-change from Frankston to Rokeby, in Victoria's Gippsland region, where he had significantly more space to set up the ever-expanding manufacturing facility he has today. Around the same time, one of Mat's bands decided to get more serious and take their caper overseas on an export marketing development grant. He and his band mates chased summers for a couple of years up and down the UK and Europe, and upon returning home, taking a more serious school instrumental and classroom Music teaching role, Mat was able to save the money to buy the hardware for all those Myrtle kit shells that had been sitting around. He used a US online parts supplier to do so and the kit was completed in December 2007.

Only a handful of drums were produced in 2008, but important (and standing) early relationships with parts suppliers were fostered, and Red Rock began to create a couple of Fijian Mahogany and Jarrah drum kits which could be photographed for the beginnings of our social media and web presence. Funny story, one of those Jarrah snares ended up signed by all members of Metallica then sold in Cash Converters Frankston. This was an exciting time; Red Rock's following experienced a big organic boost, all thankfully without having to negotiate the unpredictable algorithms of social media like nowadays...

Early Evolution 2008-2012…

To be continued...

Getting Sorted 2012-2016…

To be continued…

Kicking Goals 2016-Current…

To be continued