It’s easy to start a music band but to sustain it is the biggest challenge. When musically talented Dan Steer, Joe Sansome, Jonny Finnis, started their musical journey together they decided to call themselves as “These Reigning Days”. The English alternate rock band members, who hate to pigeonhole themselves in a “genre”, candidly mention that someday they would want to be treated as the “royalty” in music and hence they zeroed in on this name.
Their single Opera of Love was featured on the Winter Olympics soundtrack and they played at Glastonbury as supporting act for Bon Jovi. The trio also performed at Europe’s biggest open-air festival, the Woodstock Festival in Poland. The band was recently on a three-city tour in India as part of the Emerge festival and performed in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi.
During their first tour in India, the band members loved the vibe of the country and played at the Summer House Café in Delhi. “From an artiste’s point of view, we are quite loud and in India, we are playing at smaller venues, so it’s controlling that way. But again, since we are playing for limited number of people, it’s same as you see in a bigger stadium — as long as the audience is enjoying, whether they are 10 or 10,000 in capacity, we get the same buzz. It doesn’t matter what country you are in, music brings everyone together,” they said.
Speaking about their unique band name, Jonny Finnis, who plays bass and is also a vocalist, explains, “It is hard to get a good band name these days and there are so many bands out there. We thought, if this is going to be our last shot and if we have to make it work, then we want to reign over everyone else, musically. So, ‘these reigning days’ came up as a name that we all decided to go with.”
Dan Steer, who trebles up as the song writer, lead vocalist and keyboard player at the band, describes how creating new music for them is always a new experience. He says, “For us, making music is like transforming something basic into amazing. It’s easy to be a band and do what you are told, and then you tend to fit into certain genres and do what’s expected out of you. But we are always open to experimenting with ideas.”
On their inspirations, the band’s drummer Joe Sansome says, “Our music is inspired by life and travelling. Because when you travel, you see things in a different perspective and think about it in a different way — the process thus opens up your mind. For example, if you observe a place like India, where some people are struggling to live and some are well-off — all these disparities stimulate us as musicians.”
