Whilst amidst a UK tour, Ten Steps, the collaborative effort between Grammy-nominated dulcimer player Max ZT and Wolverhampton spoken word artist Dan Whitehouse, caught up with Erazer to chat about what to expect at their remaining UK concerts.
Ten Steps are on tour until Sunday, June 29, after kicking off the run of dates with a gig in Dartington last week. You can find any remaining tickets here: https://www.dan-whitehouse.com/live/.
“We’ve done a lot of miles in the first three days of the tour,” Dan told us, as the pair called from their Premier Inn room in between performances.
“It’s nice when you get in momentum and play consecutive nights. It’s hard to do a gig from a standing start. If you’re doing a one-off concert, it feels like that.”
For Max, who earned a nomination at this year’s Grammys with his band House of Waters, travel was a lot more intense. After arriving in the UK from New York on Thursday afternoon, he got to the evening’s venue at 5 pm, ahead of a gig at 8 pm.
“Everything has been beautiful,” he said about touring the UK’s towns and cities.
“Going into a new city and exposing them to these instruments and this style of music has been wonderful. That’s something I definitely appreciate about touring, each city has its own personality.”
Dan and Max were paired up through the English Folk Expo’s Global Music Match scheme, linking the two musicians from either side of the Atlantic. With three tours of the UK under their belt, a US tour is in the works – the duo are just working out the logistics!
Ten Steps’ live concerts combine Max’s playing of the hammered dulcimer with Dan’s songcraft and spoken word. Max has even been described as the ‘Jimi Hendrix of the hammered dulcimer’, and at every concert, Dan improvises a piece of music.
“The goal is not to make it the same,” Max said about the improvisational element of their live performances. “It’s very easy for me to fall back into comfortable places.”
Max added that his ‘true goal’ is to ‘remove the ego’ and stop himself from repeating particular musical patterns: “I want to make sure it wasn’t like I did yesterday or anytime on the tour.”
Dan noted the duo always like to relate to the audience, for the gig to be a ‘shared experience.’ “We don’t have our music super loud,” he said. “We want to be on a level with all the other people in the room. I try to listen to my spirit and what I’m feeling and thinking about.”
With geography limiting any rehearsal time, Dan and Max depend on each other during the performance: “The more we develop fluency over the years, it becomes easier and easier to create in the moment,” Max said. “It moves all over, but the constant is an attempt to stay in the present.”
Ten Steps will be touring this week, stopping off in Stroud, London, Cranbrook and South Petherton. The shows will end with a performance at the Royal Conservatoire in Birmingham, a homecoming gig of sorts for Dan. After the tour, they will be back in the studio working on their next single.
“There are two sides to our writing,” Dan said. “There’s the dreamlike state we enjoy entering, and there’s also the storytelling and narrative. We’re going back to our favourite studio. I should imagine we’ll record a piece there.”
