I'm Ginny Koppenhol, a portrait photographer and DJ from the Lancaster and Morecambe area.  I'm currently doing a personal project, talking to people involved in the electronic music scene locally, to discover how we can help scenes the size of ours to thrive. What are some of the opportunities and the challenges that we face.

 

I've spoken to some really interesting people and this episode is no exception. Steven Dobson has grown up round here, but went further afield to explore the scene, then after getting the bug for promoting, went to Manchester and put on some fantastic charity nights. The thing that's pulled him back to the Lancaster area is the opening of Kanteena, an independent venue that many people have talked about in these interviews.
 

So it was great to talk to Stephen about his personal journey and his approach to growing the dance music scene locally, as well as some of his personal highlights.

 

I hope you enjoy.

Hi Steven, I've got Steven Dobson here (DJ name ‘Dobson’).

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Hi, how are you doing?

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We've been talking about this for a while, haven't we, but it's taken ages for me to get round to it. These interviews are slow progress because I'm doing them around lots of other things, but I absolutely love them when I get a chance to sit down with someone. And you've been really important in my DJing journey, and so I really wanted to get you involved. This was when I, after lockdown, was thinking about getting back behind the decks, but I hadn't taken that step yet. It all felt a bit scary and Kanteena held an open decks event that I plucked up the courage to go along to. I think we met briefly there, but then I started going to Kanteena a bit more and seeing you, and you kindly offered to show me the way around the latest tech, which I really am grateful for. It gave me the boost I needed to feel confident playing music again. I've always really appreciated that.

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It was a lovely thing to be able to do for you. It wasn’t that you didn't have the know-how, it was just that the last time you'd done it, you played CDs or vinyl.

 

That's it.

 

Things change. It didn't take much to give you the confidence to get back into it. It was a nice thing to do. I like doing things like that. It's always very rewarding.

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I felt very supported. We've spent a lot of time at Kanteena since, and we'll come on to all that. But I always ask people about your own journey with music, into music, into DJing. Where did you start? What are your earliest memories of music? Shall we start there?

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Yeah, if you want to go back that far…. I've always been a bit of a techy geek and into mending things, fixing things, working out how they work, and I've always been into music. And I suppose if you want to look at where it started, it was probably when I was about 7 and I got an orange record player. It was a fusion between my love of music and my love of electronics and ripping things to pieces and trying to improve them and mend them. I worked out that this thing had a single speaker on it - an old Valve 1970s Fidelity thing. I wanted to record because it had this little feature on the spindle where you could build a playlist, because you could put five records on. You could choose the record that was playing and they just popped down one after each other. I wanted to start making mixtapes. So I managed to work out how to tap onto the back of the speaker terminals on this Fidelity record player and then somehow solder them into the condenser mic input on this Hitachi tape recorder that we had.

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And how old were you?

About 7.

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Wow. I thought you'd said that.

 

I was about 7 and you used the volume control as a gain control and you messed around with it. Eventually you got something that didn't sound terrible. I don't know if you remember the old ZX Spectrum and you used to load your games off a tape recorder? It was absolutely vital that you had the volume level set just at the right level to get it to load your Jet Set Willy or your programme that you wanted to play on it. I was an absolute ninja at that. I’s already sussed out with this Fidelity record player that the volume control controlled the gain of the record. So I guess that's kind of where it started, if anywhere.

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Great. So you said you'd started to want to make playlists and what were some of those tracks, can you remember?

 

Basically my mum and dad's records. So like your Elvis and your Beatles, ABBA, 70s disco, Queen, stuff like that. The classics really. Then you go into taping the charts off the radio and you got some more music. Then I got another record player and I'd heard this DJ do a spin back and I wanted my record player do that, but it was a belt-driven thing and it wouldn't do it. So I took the thing to pieces, took the belt off it, to actually do a spin back. I recorded this spin back. On all my early tapes, I used this sample of a spin back that I'd made from pulling this record player to pieces and pulling the belt off it to make the sound.

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And as you got a bit older, how did that passion develop?

 

It was something that I didn't really develop at first. It didn't really take off again until I had enough money in my life to buy my first set of 1210s.

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Yeah? When was that?

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Probably only about 15 or 16 years ago, I would have said. Then I started building a record collection. This was a time where a lot of people were dumping record collections because CDs or MP3s had just started to come in. I've bought whole record collections off people for £300 and it's like 700 absolutely cool records from ex-DJs, and they're probably worth quite a bit more than that now. Well, they're definitely worth quite a bit more than that now. In addition to all the stuff that I was buying myself off Discogs and stuff like that, and it went from there really.

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What about your involvement with going to clubs and experiencing the music?

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My love of the music started off with my sister. I was just a little bit too young, but she was lucky enough to be of an age where she was going to the Blackburn Raves and the Blackburn Warehouse parties. She was buying tapes and bringing them home with her, and I was nicking the tapes. I'm foaming at the mouth to get hold of the tapes and you know, first heard tunes on there like Together – ‘Hardcore Uproar’ and stuff like that. Years later, I go on to meet Suddi (Raval) and became a good enough friend that he invites me to his wedding. You know what I mean? It's weird where music has taken my life. I sometimes think, if music wasn't a part of my life, would I know anybody? Would I have any friends? It's a wonderful thing.

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So you saw her go off to these raves. Did you follow in her footsteps when you were old enough?

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I started going to the local stuff, where you're not old enough to get in, but you can, like Warton Grange, things like that. Then there was the Empire in the early 90s and we went there religiously. After the Empire finished, before the all-nighters and stuff, I think we used to finish about 2 in the morning, I got friendly with one of the lads on the door there. He was an electrician called Tomo, Dave Tomlinson or something like that. We used to give him a lift down to Monroe's at Great Harwood, because I used to drive.

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Tell us where Empire was for those who aren't familiar…

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It was on the promenade in Morecambe, near the ranch house next to the Fairground – long gone now.

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Sorry, you were saying you used to go to Monroe's...

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Yeah, we used to take this doorman to Monroe's and he'd go in there when it was dark and then all of a sudden it finished at something like 7 in the morning. The doors had opened and the sunlight had flooded and you were surrounded by zombies. But it started from there really, because I loved the music and the scene. I'd missed the boat a bit with the Blackburn raves and all this newer music was all right, but I preferred my sister's Blackburn tapes to be honest. So as somebody who's interested in the music and DJing, you start to hunt for the gold, I guess. I then met a friend of mine called Adam and I'd heard on the grapevine about this place called Legends at Warrington, which was held in an old dilapidated rugby club. It was only there for three years, 1990 to 1993 I think, but the place was very, very different to everywhere else. They opened the doors at 9pm and started playing downtempo Balearic stuff, and there was a structure to the night and they ‘built’ the night. The music that they played there, the tapes that I heard from there, to me was the cream of the crop. It was the best.

When the internet came along, they started this message board about the people who used to go there, and they were on about organising a reunion. So I got involved at that stage. I met the DJs, got to know them and one reunion turned into about 7! Over the years and I ended up dipping my feet into promoting and doing the online promotion, the Facebook, the tickets and ended up doing the lighting there one night. It was at one of these nights where I had a bit of an epiphany. I just stood there gawping at the DJ all night and I was like ‘I want to be up there doing what he's doing’ you know. I just watched the crowd foaming at the mouth and I did. I just made it happen.

 

And what year was this?

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I think probably one of the earliest Legends reunions. Probably sometime around 2006?

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It's interesting. It took a while for you to have that moment where you were like, ‘actually I'd quite like to do that’, even though you've been around the scene for a while.

What do you think changed in that moment?

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Just the magic. I could see that he was having the time of his life. He was properly tuned, in his zone. Nothing else mattered apart from the next record he was going to play. The crowd was, like I say, hanging on to every single (tune). It was my first experience of somewhere really good. Somewhere really, really good. And before that, I would have never really considered it because I wasn't the most confident of people really, to put myself up there in front of all those people. But I guess this epiphany was the realisation that they're not looking at him, he's not the star, it's the music that's the star. Why should I shy away from doing something I love, chucking the music out, making people dance?

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Yeah, I love that. And maybe it took to that point… you'd been around the scene, you've been helping out with some of the nights and getting to know people, appreciating the music and  everything came together maybe in that moment?

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I would say so, yeah.

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And it's great to hear a story that is set in 2007 and not the early 90s, when a lot of people had that first moment of inspiration. It's really nice that those moments happen later as well. It just takes the right combination of things and the right set of people, the right crowd, maybe the right venue, the right music. That can happen any time, can't it and hopefully still today.

Oh, it does the magic still there. Not every night out that you go to.

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But it makes it even more special when it does.

It does. Yeah, absolutely.

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Those golden moments that you'll remember. What was the next step then once you'd had that moment?

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I'd already dipped my toe into the promoting side of things. Darren and Mike, who were the original DJs doing the reunions had decided that, as much as they love this music and making everyone happy, they wanted to do other things and play other music. So the reunions ended. It was the last ever reunion and everyone came. And it went on over about four reunions and eventually it stopped!

But I was just getting into it. It's just like, ‘no, how can this stop? I'm just getting going there!’ So I decided I was going to put my first night on. I hired the room above the Park Hotel in Lancaster. A guy called Richard used to run it, who’s sadly no longer with us. He helped me along the way, held my hand, encouraged me. It all went from there really. I DJ'd at it as well. It was one of my first DJ gigs, although I've been making tapes and recording mixing and stuff like that. It was one of the first times I ever played out.

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And how was it?

It was good yeah, it was all right. It wasn't particularly well attended. There was about 20 people there, but all 20 of them had a great time.

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That's what matters.

You can't ask for anymore, can't you?

 

Absolutely. Yeah, so did you get a taste for it then?

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Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it all went from there. Also I came to the realisation that you can make things happen. If you want something to happen, you can make it happen, which is what I started doing. I did more events and then other promoters were asking me to DJ at their nights. People are actually asking me to play at their nights rather than me just putting on my own nights with people that I want to DJ with. Because that's how it started. I wasn't going to put myself out there as a DJ and then wait for people to get in touch with me and say, ‘oh, do you want to come and play at my night?’ I was like, ‘well, no, I'm going to put my own nights on and I'll get who I want to play with.’ I'll sort it out myself. But yeah, that's how it started and it quite quickly changed and went from there.

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What was the scene like in this area at that time?

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Not great, if I'm honest with you. That's probably why only about 20 people came. I'd say 10 of them came up from Warrington, people that I'd got to know from do the Legends reunions. It wasn't great really.

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Are we talking about 2010?

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Probably around that time. You went out into Lancaster and it wasn't like having a night out in Manchester or Liverpool. It was the same old faces, in the same old pubs, doing the same old thing - getting a kebab on the way home, having a scrap, 10 pints of Stella. There wasn't really a credible scene that I could see, to be honest. There was certainly nowhere, particularly in Lancaster, that lit me up and that I wanted to put events on at, until Kanteena came along. The night that opened, me and my sister walked in and I was like, ‘wow!’

 

Tell us more about that.

 

Up until that point, probably the seven or eight years before Kanteena, I'd been DJing and promoting events around Manchester. Literally up to Kanteena opening, we were going to Manchester at least once a month, either DJing or promoting my own events, or having a night out. Since Kanteena opened, over the past six years, I've played in Manchester but I've not been back there to put any events on. Why would I do that when I’ve got somewhere a mile down the road from me, right on my own doorstep, that's probably (well, I'm a bit biased) but in my opinion, one of the coolest venues in the country?

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And what makes it one of the coolest venues?

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The people involved? I don't know. That's a hard one to put your finger on. What's the magic formula? The people that come to Kanteena are not necessarily your crowd that I spoke about (10 pints of Stella, kebab and scrap on the way home) because if you go into Lancaster, those people are still there and they're still in the same pubs, doing the same things. Kanteena is very, very lucky that we don't really get that sort of crowd going there. But yeah, it's a difficult one. I don't think there's a formula for it really. There’s a bit of magic involved.

We need a formula ideally for this interview series so that I can come out at the end and go, ‘right, this is what places need to do’ haha.

But if we told you the formula, everybody would be going out and doing it and there’d be no customers would there haha.

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That's very true. Just to go back slightly, you mentioned Manchester and something I always ask people about, is their connections with Manchester? Whilst I'm focusing on the scene in cities and towns of this size across the country, we're in a fairly unique position to be so close to Manchester but also Liverpool. So how did you make those connections with Manchester and what influence did it have on you, or you on it?

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I wanted somewhere cool to put nights on and DJ at. For me, that wasn't Lancaster. Manchester's got its roots firmly set in the scene, coming from the early days - the Hacienda, acid house, you know, and that's what you did coming from Lancaster if you wanted a decent night out. You went to Manchester or you went to Liverpool or sometimes even Preston, just because the local scene just wasn't there.

 

Do you want to tell us a bit about your time going out and putting nights on in Manchester. Any highlights?

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I don't know where to start with that…

I was putting on some events called Connie's Acid House Parties in Manchester and that developed from the loss of the Legends reunions really. All the Legends reunions were non-profit. We did them for a charity that was close to one of the DJ's hearts, St Rocco's Hospice. Because they were all sell-out dos, we used to raise some tasty figures, and we’d be handing the big cheque over at the end – 3 grand, 4 grand... When the DJs decided they didn't want to do it anymore, I liked this model. It's not about money. Money clouds the issue. It's about music.
My best mate Adam, who I spoke to you about before (who told me about Legends in Warrington), his niece, a girl called Connie, was born with some additional needs. Her mum and dad, Martin and Laura, set up a charity because where they are, there was nothing for children like Connie to go to socialise, to get together, you know. If they wanted to go for like a soft play area, sensory light rooms, things like that, they had to go to Liverpool or Manchester, which when you've got a child with additional needs, as well as other children, that's not that easy logistically. They started a charity to basically fund somewhere on the doorstep for kids in similar positions, called Tiny Steps. It was like… well, I want to put events on, we'd been successful in putting fundraising events on doing the Legend reunions, so it just came together.  

I started putting events on in Manchester. They were fundraisers for this new charity, Tiny Steps. Nobody made any money. Nobody got paid. I'm very, very lucky that some really big cool names wanted to get involved. The original person involved was DJ Pierre from America, who is the guy that they say invented the acid house sound on the Roland 303 with his mate Spanky in the basement of a church. At the time his agent (who I didn't realise was also his partner, Andrea), got in touch with me like some kind of miracle out of the blue. She dropped me a message, as she saw that I'd been sharing promo for parties. She says, ‘oh I'm DJ Pierre's agent and he's coming to the UK. I'm looking to put a tour together’. So I went back to her and I said, ‘well, I'm not really putting any parties on that could pay him 5 grand and a flight share and five-star hotel. However, I'm putting this children's charity fundraiser together. Would you be interested in being involved?’ Didn't hear anything more about it. Thought, ‘well, that was a bit cheeky but was worth an ask’. They could only say no. Then I got this message out of the blue. ‘We'd love to be involved. What's the logistics? These are the dates he's in the UK’ and it started from there.

Once DJ Pierre was involved, it gave me a massive boost of confidence to approach other DJs of similar stature, well-known DJs. We got people like Chad Jackson involved, Jon Da Silva, Justin Robertson, obviously Suddi Raval. Who else have we had? Rex the Dog. They turned into really good events and we raised quite a lot of money over the years. They were good.

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What a legacy…

Yeah, absolutely.

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And then your attention turned back to Lancaster…

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Yeah, Kanteena came along, burst onto the scene, and I've been hanging around down there, pestering them and annoying them ever since, really. I carried on putting events on. One of the first events I put on at Kanteena was Disco Frenzy in early December 2019 and it did really well. This is all pre-COVID. The venue was starting to pick up, starting to build a bit of a scene in Lancaster again before COVID came along and trampled all over the hospitality industry.

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But it made it through, thankfully.

It did.

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Thanks in large part to its yard…

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Yeah, absolutely. At one time it was the only place that was allowed to open because you had to have an outdoor seating area where you could sit 6 round a table, and you had to do food. It was one of the only places that fit that bill.

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I remember when Kanteena opened and seeing everyone again. I'd been DJing around 2010 for a few years, quite intensively, and then since having children, had a big break. But I saw everyone at one point or another again, through Kanteena. It provided that space to get together again and it was amazing. It was just what we needed, and we need those physical spaces. Which moves me on to the challenges and opportunities of a city this size.

Let's start on the positive. What do you think are the opportunities of somewhere, a scene of this size?

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Well, obviously the opportunities are endless really. Anything you can think of. Do you want to put Elvis on? Do you want to put a bingo night on? Car boot sale? With a multi-purpose event space, the world's your oyster, whatever you can think of you could do there. Do you want to put a train-spotting conference on, a Star Wars comic con or something like that? You can do it. So the opportunities are only really defined by what you can think of.

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And where does the dance scene fit into that?

It's a bit of a difficult one really. It's getting the people through the door, that’s the problem. A place like Kanteena now, there's no problem putting shows on or anything like that. It’s well-versed in it, got all the gear. Acts can't even surprise us with, ‘oh, we need this weird lead’. We've got one! Hundreds and hundreds of shows over the past six years, all bases covered, never a problem. It's getting the people through the door and if you're talking about the music scene, the dance scene, the house scene, whatever, there's a certain age catchment that like the stuff that we play. Commercially it's not great because that age catchment doesn't go out every weekend. If they did go out every weekend, went out on a Thursday and rung in sick on a Monday, like maybe we did when we were kids, then it'd be great. The place would be full all the time. It’s why you've got to have the diversity of events. I mean, if I wasn't a promoter and I wasn't a DJ, me and the wife maybe go out three or four times a year. That's it. You need the different types of music that's going to draw a different type of crowd. But my nephew Finn has been putting nights on a Kanteena called The Project. It's quite interesting to listen to the music that they play because it's very similar to ours. It's almost as if it's gone full circle. They play some really cool stuff.

Yeah, so one of the challenges, is the number of people, isn't it? For a scene you need a following. Like you say, the age bracket plays a part. But optimistically, there are young people coming through, putting on events that reflect a lot of the same values and even the same music in some cases.

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And how do those nights go down?

Really well.

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Great. They do some creative promotions…

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Yeah, I'm obviously a very proud uncle. I've got a picture of Finn at my house when he was about 9, I think. I was teaching him how to mix some vinyl on my dining room table, and now he's just turned 21. He's basically selling out his own gigs. They always sell out. Red Bull noticed them, and wanted to get involved with them. Yeah, you just touched on it there. They've got some quite wacky, innovative ideas on promotion, which quite click-baity. They seem to know what's going to get the clicks and the promotion is almost viral, what they're doing. People are wanting to share it. To give an example, they went into a university library in the middle of the day. Everyone's very ‘shh, shh, shh’. He pulls out this big JBL speaker and gets his controller and starts playing high volume house music! The camera pans to everybody else in there. All the students are laughing their heads off and ‘oh how dare they do that in here’. Then there's this very cross teacher comes along wagging a finger at them, and they’re like ‘oh oh yes, oh sorry I didn't realise I thought it was coming through my headphones’. Yeah, it was a stunt. They've done other stunts. It works very well for them.

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Attracts attention.

It does. They've done really well. Through the summer, they've done yard parties that have been full. They've done Attika, which is full. The last one they did was the main room, which was full. It's nice to see them doing so well with it, you know?

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And the importance of a versatile space to do this, because they've been able to build through the different rooms and the different spaces. But also, the support they’ve had…

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Kanteena’s giving lads like this a chance. With other venues or other periods in time, there would be a traditional path to these type of things, whereas somewhere like Kanteena will give these lads a chance. They’ll say ‘yeah, go on, come to us with an idea. If we like your idea, give it a go. If you need any help, we'll give you it. Need any advice, ask, we'll give you it. Back you 100% and if it flies, it flies’. It's pretty important to nurture the next generation that's coming through as much as possible; encourage them, facilitate them, help them, share your knowledge. And that's a rewarding thing.

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And what else does Lancaster need as a whole, wider than Kanteena? Do you think there's anything we need to continue to nurture the scene? What could we do better, do you think? 

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We could possibly have later trains. I think the last train's always about 11 o'clock. So when Kanteena does a band gig for instance, if there's any delays to the show, or the support band’s stuck on the M6, or the show starts late... There is a big travelling community of people coming to Kanteena from places like Ulverston and Barrow, and they even come up from Liverpool and Manchester for a night in Lancaster, which is a bit of a reversal of the trends.

So they've got the hotels, they've got Travelodges. You need an infrastructure where you don't rely on the local crowd coming out every week to every gig. You need people coming in from outside, people coming from Ulverston, Barrow, Kendal. Whitehaven, Workington, travelling in. And to facilitate that, like I say, you need the infrastructure; you need the hotels, you need the transport links, stuff like car parking, I guess.

 

A few people have said that, but interestingly, from the other perspective of going to Manchester and wanting to come back to this area. But you're saying it from the other side, which I think is great and important, because it's about the infrastructure, isn't it? What else is around events that supports their growth?

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Let's go back to the opportunities and maybe a highlight. Have you got a highlight of your musical journey so far?

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Well, Highest Point's definitely got to be in there. It's the most attended gig I've ever played. It was the only sold-out day of the festival and was the family day, and I was playing ahead of K-Klass who were headlining. There must have been about 6 or 7000 people in there. So that's worthy of a mention. It was my home town, a home crowd, in the park I grew up playing in. 

Bit of a funny story about it to be honest... they'd originally asked me to do a 90-minute set and I'd prepared for it. Having done two or three 'Big Fish Little Fish' (family rave) gigs before, I had quite a few tracks that were pre-screened to make sure they were clean versions without swearing etc. But then on the day, I was 2 and a half hours in and still playing! I had a big hard drive with me, so I had plenty of tunes. So I put on a David Morales tune, a Redzone remix, and as soon as it started I realised straight away that it was going into - how can I put it - a woman having a 'lovely time'! I went beetroot red and mixed out of it as quickly as I possibly could! I said to the stage manager 'Look, you're going to have to get K-Klass on as soon as you can!' I think this was about 2.45pm and they were due on at 3pm. I think that before me, there was a kids' act who had a car prop or something, and his act was much quicker than they were expecting. I can't said no-one noticed what happened, as I'm sure some did, but I did get booked again. Nothing got said haha. It was a really fun gig to a home crowd. A very proud moment, and thanks to Rich and Jamie from Highest Point for that opportunity. 

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Just going back to what I said earlier, that I realised if you wanted something, you can make it happen. You can manifest it almost. There are probably three things at the top of my wish list that I always wanted to do.

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One of them was I wanted to play at Glastonbury. I managed to get to play at Glastonbury. Another one was I wanted to play in Ibiza, but the ideal ‘gold standard’ would be to play at Pikes in Ibiza. I managed to play at Pikes in Ibiza. And those two are linked as well because the guy who got me on at Pikes, I met at Glastonbury while I was playing my set. He's coming up to me asking me, ‘oh what mix of this is that? Oh that's a great tune mate, thanks very much’. A fellow called Danny Whitehead. He was working with ‘Back to Mine’ Events who had a residency at Pikes. I met him in a field, and out of the blue I get a message, ‘would you like to play at Pikes in Ibiza?’ ‘Yes please. That would be lovely, thank you!’

I suppose when you do it as a hobby like me, you're looking for ‘trophy gigs’, ‘trophy venues’. So I've ticked off Pikes in Ibiza. I've played at other venues in Ibiza as well. Playing next year in April at WOM (Word of Mouth) again, April the 27th. Then I’m back there in October, playing for the Balearic Burger Tour again. Yeah, things like Golden Lion at Todmorden. Tick. Trades Club at Hebden Bridge. Tick.

Iconic venues.

Yeah, when you're not in it for the money and it's a hobby, you're looking for those types of gigs. I've just turned 50 and y the time I'm 50, I'd ticked off all the wish lists. So it's like, ‘well, what do I do now?’

I'm sure you'll find some new goals.

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Well, these opportunities tend to find me, really. I don't really have to look too hard. I do probably encourage them along the way and make them happen, but I’m not necessarily hunting for them that much. They just tend to find me, weirdly.

 

I'm a firm believer that if you're the sort of person to get out there and do things, make things happen yourself, that people notice that. The amount of conversations you have in the meantime help, and obviously your great taste in music and your DJing.

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Thank you very much.

 

But it's a whole mixture of things, isn't it? And you being willing to say yes to things, when those opportunities come along. It's a whole combination of things that I don't think you can take for granted, you know, because not everybody It does get out there. They might just wish things would happen, just fantasise about it. But you get out.

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If you want things to happen, you've got to make it happen. You can't expect people to come running to you. And whether that's talking and getting to know the right people or putting your own nights on because I want to play at that venue, well I'll just go and put my own night on. I won't wait till they come asking me.

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You're right and I think it is that mixture of getting stuck in but there is that magic as well when these moments just come along, and you think ‘that's amazing’ like the Pierre moment…

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You don't tend to think that at the time, but when you reflect on it and you think back it hits you that, ‘Did that really happen?’

 

Yeah, 100%, and your willingness to say yes. But I definitely think there is a bit of magic in there. I like that idea that things align. And if you're aligned to what you're doing and you're following your passion and you've got that ability to act on things, then things come up don't they? And it's great.

 

They do. I think you've got to be positive. You've got to always stay positive.

 

I was going to ask you though, have you ever fallen out of love with it? Have you ever had a period where you just felt a bit uninspired or a bit burnt out by it at all?

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No, I don't think I have to be honest with you. Music's the one constant in my life. Whether times are good or times are bad, it's like an emotional crutch I would always lean on. So no, I can't ever envisage that I would fall out of love with music per se. But I'm getting a bit older now and being in the hospitality / events scene, whilst having a full-time day job, you tend to burn the candle at both ends. If you have a weekend that's a bit full on and it catches up with you, you might think, ‘oh, never again’. But it's a passing thought. It passes as quick as the hangover usually haha. But no, I've never thought that music wouldn't be a constant in my life, ever.

I think that's a great place to end actually. Is there anything that we haven't covered that you think is important to mention?

I wanted to mention when you introduced me to Beat-Herder, just as an example of manifesting things. I love festivals but I’d never got to Beat-Herder for whatever reason. We used to go to Moovin Festival, obviously Glastonbury and stuff like that, but I never got to Beat-Herder. But I'd heard so much about it. There's a lot of people I've met at Kanteena who are a bit of a crossover crowd with Beat-Herder - maybe they run stages there, they DJ there on a regular basis. I’d met these people and heard these stories.

Did you ring me up one day and say, ‘oh, me wingman that was coming up to DJ with me, can't make it now, do you fancy coming with me?’ And I was like, ‘yeah, go on then, I'll come with you.’

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We were just going for a few hours, weren’t we? Flying in, flying out again.

 

That's right. But we got there a little bit early before your set and it's literally the kind of festival that you can explore one end of it to the other in 10 or 15 minutes. I just fell in love with the place. Absolutely fell in love with the place. I was probably chatting your head off in the car on the way home. I was like, ‘I want to DJ here. That's what I want to do. I liked the Garage area. I liked everybody dancing on the cars, and I liked the fact that it was vinyl only.’ I actually knew the guy, Richard Fowler, who was running the stage from a previous event that I'd done a few years before with Jay Weardon in Manchester called the Lapsed Clubber Project. So to me, that was my ‘in’. ‘Oh, hello, Richard. I really love your stage, how do you choose your DJs?’ and chuck my name in the hat. I blagged him into letting me have a set at the next one. And from that came two other sets.

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The first time I played at Beat-Herder, I was scheduled to play at three different stages. So I played at the Illustrious Society. That went really well. Then I started my set at the Garage and all the power went down to that area in the forest. So I got half a set at the Garage and the other set I was supposed to play at the Church, but because all the power was off, that didn't happen. But I got to meet the people at the Church. It's like, ‘oh, really sorry that you couldn't do your set. We'll get you on next year.’ I've been lucky enough that they've asked me back every year since. And it's probably one of my favourite places to play is the Church, because you can just play anything you want.

 

One year I just played a load of 70s disco and it went down a storm. It's just absolutely brilliant.

 

It was nice. It felt like I was able to thank you for all your support when I was getting back into DJing, by offering you that chance to come along and see it.

 

Well, things lead to things, don't they? You know, this is common. You meet somebody and you don't think anything of it at the time. But then six months later, it comes to you, why that happened, why you met, why that person came into your life, and it leads to other things.

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And it's exciting, isn't it? Finding out what those are.

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I often describe it like a train. You can't stop it. You know, it doesn't stop at any stations and you just kind of cling it onto this train and it's going to take you wherever it takes you. It’s often weird and wonderful, but mostly very enjoyable.

 

We'll end there, I think.

Thank you. That was brilliant.