Getting To Know… Tenacious

Getting To Know… Tenacious

feeder: Hi Guys, it’s a pleasure to chat with you today. How are you all? 

Tenacious: We are all good thanks, thank you for inviting us in for chat. We are fresh back from playing Housework in Corfu and are now ready and poised for your questions. 

f: Please tell me where you’re from and how you all got into making music. Did production or DJing come first for you? 

Dave: DJing came first for me, I started doing mobile disco’s from a very early age, in fact when I started I was still as school and was too young to drive my Dad and I used to do them together until I was old enough to driver and I carried on doing them on my own until I started to get into the club scene a few years later.

Steve: Following in the footsteps of Dave and our Dad DJing came first, starting at the age of 14 playing D&B at under 18 events. Then after studying 2 music courses, producing music gradually became my main passion. 

Lewis:  DJ’ing came second for me, which I managed to pick up reasonably quickly, especially with two amazing DJs to learn from, wink wink, nod, nod! For me, I was always interested in electronic music from quite an early age, and on the back of that, I had lessons to play the organ. It was not quite the cool thing to play until I realised you could attach a synth to it and have several sounds at once at your disposal. From there on, I taught myself to program synthesizers and eventually got into producing with Steve and Dave. I was introduced to the club scene a bit later on, which, as you can imagine, then opened up a whole new world of sound. Amazing!

f: How and when did Tenacious form, and why the name Tenacious?

Tenacious: We decided in 2013 to take a different direction musically from our Aptness Trance days that we had previously been producing, so that’s when we started producing House Music as a new name, and that’s when the name Tenacious was formed. We wanted a name that meant something, and as we never give up and we will never stop trying, the Tenacious name just summed us all up. 

f: Who did you listen to growing up, and do they influence your music career at all today? 

Dave: Being a 70’s and 80’s boy, from an early age, I had found that I had a massive love for the disco soul sound, listening to bands like Earth, Wind and Fire, Chic, SOS Band and Luther Vandross etc; I then soon discovered the Street Sounds compilations. I started to collect these along with their Electro albums. Having all these great tracks on one album was a bonus, and I absolutely loved them. The funk-soul sound most definitely had a massive influence on our musical taste today. 

Steve: Going to lots of mobile disco’s with Dave and Dad I listened to lots of deferent music growing up but for me it was when we got in to Trance that it has the biggest influence on the music I like as it’s about the emotion and the energy. 

Lewis: Growing up, I listened to a lot of music across many genres, but Jean Michel Jarre probably stands out the most. I think it had to do with the amount of layers and textures he could put together.

f: What was your first release? 

Tenacious: Our first ever release was long before our Tenacious days. We started off producing trance at the height of the trance scene. First track we did together was under our Aptness guise called The Answer which we signed to Graham Gold’s label Good As. This became a firm favourite for Graham and Also Judge Jules in his Radio 1 days, making it his 2nd favourite track of 99.

f: Which of your own tracks or remixes was the biggest labour of love to create? 

Dave: For me was working on our re-edit of the Blondie track ‘Call Me’ . We made this during the lockdown period and once we had finished it and started to play it on our shows, it started to create a bit of a buzz. This then led to a call from our good friend and station manager at the time, Huck Finn to say that Ultra Music was interested in signing it. It then took them nearly a year to get Blondie and Georgio Moroder to agree to release it as a cover version. We got there eventually and it’s out now on Ultra Music.

Steve: For me it’s our re-work of Alcatraz – This has always been a favourite and to be able to create our own mix to play out. This has been the backbone and the starting point for many tracks after as it always delivers when played in our sets.

Lewis: As we started out producing Trance, I’ve always had a soft spot for this, so probably reworking the classic Sasha/Emerson track, ‘Scorchio’. After breaking down the parts and replayed them, sent them over to the studio, we then recreated it from the ground up.

f: And what has been your biggest release so far?

Tenacious: For us, most recently has to be the track we had out this year on Centreforce Records 883 Casa called ‘The Mystery’. This went to No1 on the Jackin House Traxsource chart and stayed there for nearly 3 weeks.  

f: You’ve just released remixes of your single ‘So Good’ on Fool’s Paradise, how is it all sounding?

Tenacious: We have recently taken a slightly more funkier approach to our productions, and this new track we’re glad to say caught the ears of Mark Knight and the guys at Fool’s Paradise. We have been getting such great feedback from everyone about the track, so yeah, it’s all sounding great.

f: Having been producing together since 2013, how has your sound grown and changed over the years?

Tenacious: The great thing about the music and scene and being a producer is that it’s always evolving, new sounds come in, new genres appear and from a producing point of view, there is always someone new you can learn, this keeps is really interesting. And yes, it does help grow and change your sound as you learn more and experiment with new bits of kit and new styles. We love making music that we can play out and on the radio, and our uplifting, energetic style of house music has most definitely grown over the years. 

f: Who does what in the studio?

Tenacious: Steve is the main studio engineer, the whizz kid around all the studio equipment, which is perfect as we have access to our own studio. Lewis is a classically trained organist, so they can play and work pretty much any needed parts and also will know if it’s in key or not. Dave has the DJ experience side of things and knows what is current and working on the dancefloor. Dave also prepares the radio shows and all of our live sets when we are out and about, so we all bring something to the table which works for us.

f: What’s your favourite piece of studio kit?

Dave: For me and being a DJ, the Pioneer XDJ ZX, this is a great bit of kit and great to play back what we have just finished and mix another track into to see how it flows in the mix.

Steve: Slate Digital Raven, love the way the touch screen brings the feel back like the days of analogue gear.

Lewis: Probably my Workstation, Roland X7. This was bought to play Live at Housework on Embankment just after Lockdown. The live sounds are pretty decent, but it has a sampler on board as well.

f: What’s been your favourite gig so far this year, and where are you most looking forward to playing next?

Tenacious: A definite highlight for us this year, and a tick in the box, was playing on the Void system at Eden in Ibiza. We were booked to join Slipback in Tie in May and were added to the Peach lineup and played the closing set at 5 am on Monday morning. We got to play a lot of our own music, and hearing them on that system was a dream come true. We have another trip to go where we are heading off to Javea in Spain for Hothouse Events alongside K Klass, Slipmatt, Ratpack, Dolly Rockers, and loads more, so I’m really looking forward to that.

f: As a trio, what’s been your biggest achievement in the music industry so far? 

Tenacious: To be honest, as a producer you always want to get the ears of the big guns, so when we were contacted by Mark Knight who owns Fool’s Paradise to say that he likes our music, this was amazing, so definitely a big achievement for us this year. We also had our track “The Answer’ feature on a Playstation footy game too, which was also a great achievement for us.  

f: Do you have any pearls of wisdom to offer producers who are just starting out?

Tenacious: To anyone starting out, all we would say is enjoy what you do, learn and practise lots, and get ideas from other producers, but make them your own. Watch tutorial videos and videos of other producers in their studios; there are so many on YouTube, etc, to watch, and then put into practice what you have seen. It took us a while to find our own sound, but once you find that sound that you think is you, work with it and experiment.

f: You also host a radio show on Centreforce Radio, how long have you been doing that and how’s it going?

Tenacious: Yes, we will host a show on Centreforce on Saturday nights from 6 pm. We find this is an important show for us. It’s prime time and at a time when people are starting to get ready for their night out, so our show is really about getting people ready for that. We have been doing this for nearly five years now, and we absolutely love Kicking off Saturday Night for everyone. In the first half of the show, we try to keep it a bit more housey, and then in the 2nd hour, we like to take everyone into the main with some more techier bits.  

f: Which dance track holds the most precious memories for you? 

Dave: Mine was probably hearing Josh Wink ‘Higher State’ for the very first time at Ministry and thinking what is this. No one had ever used a 303 like that before, and when it kicked in, the place went absolutely mental. 

Steve: It has to be Original Unknown  ‘Valley Of Shadows’,  this was in all my early D&B DJ sets and still stands up just as well today. 

Lewis: DJ Misjah & DJ Tim Access

f: Who are your top 3 current producers?

Dave: Marco Lys always delivers, a firm favourite on our radio show and in our sets.

Steve: Cassimm – Every tracks that he puts out at the moment the level on the production is amazing.

Lewis: Jay Lumen, attention to detail is at the next level.

f: What else is in the pipeline for Tenacious?

Tenacious: We have lots in the pipeline, plenty of events still to play at this year and with bookings coming in for 2025 already which is great. Production-wise, we have just finished a couple of new tracks ready for release; we can’t say too much about those just yet, and also some new projects ongoing in the studio as we speak, so plenty more from us to come. Watch this space!

Tenacious ‘So Good’ is out now on Fool’s Paradise.