Right now it's time for...The Wandering Step

“Rock and Roll is not going and smashing up venues, Rock and Roll is playing your gig, going home and reading a book. It’s about doing something different.”

Choice words from Dan Step, front man of Preston’s most unlucky band ‘The Wandering Step’, who are only too aware of the highs and lows of the business, yet have spent their whole existence doing things differently.

Singles club

In the summer of 2002, The Step were approached by Deltasonic, responsible for modern Liverpudlian names such as The Coral, The Bandits and The Zutons, to record a single to be released nationwide. Dan elaborates:

“Alan Willis of Deltasonic wanted to get a singles club together and wanted a North-West band to start it. The single was released as a limited edition with only 500 copies pressed.”

Underground

The Wandering Step shot into the limelight and, having a single ‘Right now it’s time for…The Wandering Step’ and a television appearance under their belt before even playing live, proceeded to tour the country’s most famous underground venues without having really played in their hometown.

“We played 50 gigs in two years, and our first ever performance was at the Barfly in Sheffield. We headlined at the Manchester Roadhouse and played with The Bandits in Camden.

“We came back and played at The Adelphi last year and
it was packed, they just kept letting more people in, it was obscene, there must have been about 200 people in there.”

Rubbed-off

The band have rarely played in Preston except for two nights at The Mill when it reopened last year, and their rapid rise to the big time has clearly rubbed off as, although far from arrogant, they have little time for playing the small venues around the locality. Dan explains:

“There’s just not really any decent venues around, obviously there’s The Mill, but that’s huge and the sound is never that good. It’s not really appealing to play Strettles every week, and The Adelphi is getting more and more reluctant to put on live acts.”

Unforeseen circumstances

After locking themselves in rehearsals for months at the back of last year, the band looked to have their big break at Christmas when they were approached by Idle Records to produce an album. However, due to unforeseen circumstances and a freak football injury, the band now find themselves back at square one.

“Our drummer, Dave [Chambers] broke his wrist playing football and obviously it has put us out of action for a while. The record company have since backed out of the album deal due to financial reasons “

Plans to expand

To add to this knock-back, the band went from four to three in March this year as they lost a guitarist and have not played together since, but this does not seem to have dampened spirits as Dan even tells Listen Up of possible plans to expand:

“Our other guitarist was having personal problems and it got to the stage where we just had to let him go, but you never want to sack anyone. It’s proving quite hard to find a replacement. We couldn’t carry it off as a three though, I’m a bit of a club-handed guitarist. I’m actually quite interested in expanding the sound and bringing in brass.”

Frustrating

For a band who have gone from the proverbial hero to zero in a matter of months, due to one heavy swipe of bad luck, the band are extremely optimistic for their future in the industry:

“We’ve known each other for years so that gives us the whole positive vibe, we’ve got loads of demos and stuff, hopefully someone will be interested in backing the album.

“It is frustrating because people say nice things about the band and then never come forward and do anything about it. We wouldn’t give up on it though because it’s a hobby more than anything else, we love playing music. The aim of the game is basically just to be successful enough to keep playing and releasing music.”

Written by Dan Jeoffroy

Photography: Dan Jeoffroy