On Booking A World Tour Before Finding A Replacement Drummer

"It was awesome. We premiered Burn on Triple R yesterday and it was funny — I was on top of the scaffold just working and then they're talking about the upcoming clip and Nicole [Tadpole]'s got someone in there doing the gig guide and he goes, 'Oh, have they got a new drummer yet?' 'cause she mentioned King Of The North," Andrew Higgs laughs. "And she goes, 'Yeah, I don't know much about that — Higgsy, if you're listening, give us a buzz.' And then I'm literally, like, standing on this scaffold and I put down my trowel and I'm like, 'Hello?' And I could hear myself coming through the radio and she's playing the tune… I guess there's the element of trust there, which is pretty cool; she just put it on without having listened to it before. And at the end of [the track], it just went silent and she goes, 'HOLY SHIT!' [laughs]. So that was the best. I rang her back and said, 'Can I use that as a quote?'"

 "She goes, 'HOLY SHIT!' [laughs]. So that was the best. I rang her back and said, 'Can I use that as a quote?'"

Before King Of The North recorded their new album Get Out Of Your World, drummer Danny Leo advised Higgs he could no longer commit to the band. But still, Leo ended up laying down drums for all of the album tracks bar one, which called upon the skills of Cog's Lucius Borich (Higgs: "I chose only one of songs [Burn] that Lucius did to put on the album").

He's doing "some tradie work" for a mate at the moment and Higgs says they were discussing how well his search for a new drummer would have translated into a reality TV show. "He's like, 'Mate, you should have made a show out of this — it's riveting!'" Higgs chuckles. Although he confesses "documenting it was the last thing on [his] mind", Higgs acknowledges, "I definitely could've, 'cause there were so many people and so many contestants, and so many funny videos that I got sent in as well."  Drummers from all over the world applied (Higgs: "There was a couple of inquiries from the States"). "I had 43 people apply for it and I was like, 'What!?'" Higgs recalls. He "physically jammed" with "about 20-odd" contenders, but replacing Leo meant Higgs was after a drummer who could also sing, which immediately "culled a lot of dudes". "There's not a lotta drummers that can sing," Higgs confirms.

On the new King Of The North recruit, Higgs enquires, "Have I told you about Steve [Tyssen]? He's awesome." It wasn't just Tyssen's "drum skills" and vocal ability that made him stand out to Higgs, either. "It was sort of hard in a way, because I was like, 'Ok, this has to happen,' but I didn't really put any pressure on myself, 'cause I just knew in the back of my mind that it would work out and I knew that everything would be fine," Higgs shares. "And that's why I went ahead and booked a 23-date Australian tour and a 30-date European tour [laughs] without even having a drummer. People thought I was nuts, but I was just, like — they obviously haven't seen Field Of Dreams: 'If you build it, he will come' [laughs]."