Bucket Blast: Play-Along Activities for Bucket Drums and Classroom Percussion

by Tom Anderson

(General Music). Get funky as you jam along on buckets and optional percussion to these sweet songs! Everything is provided from helpful warm-ups to authentic rhythm sections, grooves and specific playing suggestions. Styles like Southern rock, R&B as well as old time rock and roll are explored with this inexpensive, yet surprisingly musical found instrument. Full scores are provided for the teacher, along with digital access to play-along audio recordings and separate PDFs of bucket drum and optional percussion instrument parts. Right off the records play-along tracks are included for even more rhythm-making fun. So grab your sticks, buckets and friends and have a blast. Come on and take a Free Ride ! Songs Free Ride, I Got You (I Feel Good), Rock Around the Clock, Shake It Off, Sweet Home Alabama, Uptown Funk. Suggested for grades 4-8.

40 pages, Paperback

Expected publication July 19, 2026

About the author

Tom was born in Watford, London on the 15th May 1980. He lived with his parents in London until he saw the error of his ways only a couple of years later whereupon his family moved back to his father’s homeland of South Wales. It was inevitable that he would be drawn to the sea since his grandfather had been a top lifesaver and his father a successful competitive surfer ‘back in the day’.

Tom began surfing at the age of 11 and moved to the seaside town of Porthcawl at the age of 13. He saved up for his first custom surfboard at the age of 14 after doing a milk round for 27 weeks (=270 pounds!) working from midnight until five AM every Friday night, under the watchful eye of long-time Porthcawl Point local Gez McKay (who has since joined the police “’cause it gives you even more water time than a milk round”). By the age of 16 Tom had gained a place on the Welsh Junior Surfing team and British Junior Development Squad.

After finishing school Tom began to travel abroad as much as possible in search of better waves. During a degree in English at the University of Glamorgan, the Student Loans Company funded a large proportion of the travel which went on to form the basis of the Magic Carpet storyline.

He still had to get the odd job though and has done just about everything, including such ‘trades’ as golf caddy, caravan cleaner, bailiff, suit salesman, dishwasher, ice-cream bike operative, barman, line-feeder at a Sony factory, private investigator, canine dental machine repairman and obviously surf shop assistant.

His interests away from surfing include making so-called terminally ill cars last an extra 23,000 miles (and still counting, thank you Nissan!), watching the Welsh Football Team and Arsenal (be it at a dodgy foreign bar, in the stands of the Millennium Stadium or at Highbury/the Emirates Stadium), longboard-skateboarding, poker, basketball, reading and writing and scheming for other ways to fund more surf travel.