BURNT OUT

Ex Heavy Pettin’ drummer Gary Moat now fronts classic hard rock band Burnt Out Wreck, his own creation where he made the transition from the back of the stage to the front, focussing on lead vocals, songwriting and developing his own style of unpretentious, no nonsense, full on rock and roll with typical Scottish flair. Now, with three albums under their belts and festival appearances booking up for the summer, Gary took some time to chat to Victoria Llewelyn about the band, his history in music and why he loves playing at HRH events!

Gary, you’ve spent over 30 years in the music industry – Heavy Pettin’, Mother’s Ruin and now Burnt Out Wreck. Over that time what are the biggest changes you’ve made and has it always gone to plan?

Burnt Out Wreck, the name, is reflective of how I was feeling back in 2016 when I had the idea for the band! Just myself though, not the rest of the band. It’s a long time to be in any industry. We recorded our first album in 2016 and haven’t stopped since apart from the lockdown period, gigging and recording pretty continuously.

I’ve been a drummer all my life but if you were to ask my mother were she still alive, she would tell you that as a young child in the late 60s I used to sing into a hairbrush in front of Top of The Pops! I moved on to drums at the age of 9, started hitting pots and pans like every other drummer I reckon, and then decided in the late 80s to go into singing. We had just formed a new band after Heavy Pettin’ finished, I was writing the songs and when I was singing them it was sounding good, so I just carried on.

I realised what had been holding me back all along was that I didn’t want people looking at me. You have to be seen as the singer; people want something to relate to, so I had to quickly get over that, and now I’m hanging off the front of the stage and almost falling into the pit, and I don’t care any more, it’s great!

None of it was especially planned, I haven’t really changed, I stuck to doing what I loved, and this is how it’s turned out.

How would you describe Burnt Out Wreck and where do the band’s influences come from?

I always liked a particular style of music and never deviated from that, really, I appreciate the musicianship within everything but I like the very basic style, with the AC/DC slant. If you go back to my first song on my first Heavy Pettin’ album, a song called Love Times Love, and you compare that with anything I’m writing now you won’t find much difference. It’s straightforward, good time rock and roll, nothing too fancy in there. I can do other things, write other things, but this is the way I like it so why bother?

The albums have done well, people seem to like them, there are trolls of course that say – oh it’s just AC/DC, but I don’t worry about them. Growing up I loved bands like Queen, Status Quo and Bad