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THE BEGINNING

History 2007 – 2012


Colonel Mustard started as a three piece which only played one gig (Nuriootpa Football Club) in 2008, before a major shift in direction. The founding members were Rick Lane (vocals), Steve Meyer (lead guitar) and David ‘Shiggers’ Shigrov (percussion). The early part of 2008 was all about selecting great songs and making sure they complimented each other.


Those practice sessions in the Trinity College music suite were challenging but vital, because it had been 4 years since I (Rick) played in a Whyalla based band called ‘The Love Sharks’ (with Craig Stringer) in 2005. Steve had been in the musical wilderness since 1997 when I played with him in an originals band called ‘Bureau Darb’.  David also hadn’t been active for a few years with his band ‘Horizon Find’. Unfortunately family circumstances forced David to quit the band, but we left on good terms.


The next phase for ‘Colonel Mustard’ was the most important. Steve and I were concerned that the band wasn’t going to get off the ground, simply because we thought that we were not going to find good personnel from the local area. We wanted to remain a local product and play the local wineries and hotels.
I had played some great Adelaide venues with ‘Cleanskin’ in 2002 and 2004, such as the Ramsgate and the Alma and Steve had a very successful run with a Barossa based outfit called ‘Freaky Nature’ that had a strong following in the mid-nineties.  We wanted to avoid failure at all costs, so careful selection of our other members was going to be pivotal. By chance I was talking to my old guitarist (Cleanskin, The Love Sharks) who still lived in Whyalla about my new venture. Assuming he wouldn’t be interested I simply discussed our current woes and he surprised me by saying “I’m keen”. For a second, streamers and balloons came down from the ceiling and the cash jackpot was lowered. To get a committed Craig Stringer was one of the best things that happened to our new band. Steve, Craig and I got together and jammed a couple of times and it didn’t take long to establish a bit of chemistry. The percussionist was still the issue. 


Enter Trent Heneker. I had heard from a good mate Simon Marschall, that Trent was an awesome drummer from Tanunda. Luckily he was just finishing up with a band called ‘Lung-fish’, so he was potentially available. We organised our first jam at my Williamstown home with all four and we played only 4 songs. These four songs were so tight, that we were all majorly excited by the prospect of playing shows together. From there, the shows have kept coming and the enjoyment still continues.....


History 2012 – present


Things were motoring along for the band when in earlier 2012, Craig Stringer decided that the negative blend of long travel times, increased work commitments and less quality family time, meant that he wanted to pull back from his commitments. As a band, we were understanding of his decision and he played out the booked shows we still had that year. Craig was moving between acoustic and bass during this period and we were lucky enough to get Tristan Rodda my old bass player from the 2002 ‘Cleanskin’ days. TR is a quality bass player with awesome backup vocals, so we considered ourselves pretty lucky.
The year 2017 was a milestone year for the band marking 10 years together. Steve Meyer, Trent Heneker, Tristan Rodda and I create the Colonel Mustard combination at the moment with Russell James helping out with some of our bigger 5 piece gigs (Bald Eagles).

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