She pauses, head tilted in thought. “I think that’s a twofold question”, she says at length. “For me, I grew up listening to a lot of singer-songwriters like Cat Powers and Amy MacDonald. Also country music, like Josh Ritter. And of course,” she smiles, somewhat slyly, and already I can read a depth of emotion in her connection to the artists: “my favourites- Taylor Swift and the Grateful Dead”. What a mix! “I wouldn’t be a songwriter if it wasn’t for the fact that I wanted to be like Taylor Swift when I was twelve! And I only play bass because of Phil Lesh and the Grateful Dead. But in terms of inspiration for the band…” again she pauses before continuing, “Alfie and I (he and I do most of the writing) both love Big Thief. They’re definitely an inspiration. Also Better Oblivion Community Center, the project between Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst. They sound similar to our sound. But really… we all have such an eclectic and eccentric mix of music that it’s all kind of there”.
 

The diverse taste of the band is already emergent. I ask her, “Is it difficult to reconcile the variety of individual tastes within a band? Is it a difficult balance to find?”

“We’re kind of exploring that right now”. She recounts how the band began as a writing partnership, just her and Alfie. This meant there wasn’t much space for problems around disparities in, and reconciliation of, taste. Their main differences were their American and British backgrounds respectively. “He’s a little more indie rock leaning than I am,” she says, reflecting on the influence of British music, “and he’s grown up listening to Madness, The Jam, and all kinds of ska, while I grew up listening to–” she breaks off, and laughs. “Well… my first band was an ‘80s tribute band where we played Guns N’ Roses and AC/DC. That’s how I learned to play in a band. And of course, the influence of Taylor Swift. Alfie once said that sometimes I’ll write a song and he’ll de-Taylor Swift-ify it and–” she spreads her palms a little, “we have one of our songs!”

Now that the band is bigger, Chloe says, “we’re having a little more of a challenge in balancing taste: Gabriel is very inspired by punk, and Will loves LCD Soundsystem”. But then she shakes her head. “Actually, no, I wouldn’t call it a challenge. I’d say it’s just exciting”. And again she laughs a little, and she smiles like she knows something I don’t. “Everyone always asks you Who do you sound like? What’s your genre?” she shakes her head. Balance is not a challenge, it’s an exciting exploration: “genres and sounds are created by the bands themselves,” she tells me, “we are going to create our unique sound based on the fusion of all our interests”.

“You’ve got a couple of members in the band – including yourself – who spent time abroad last year”, I venture. “How has that experience influenced your music, especially now that you’re all back in Durham?”

“I don’t know that France had a big influence directly on my music”, Chloe says, but “I lived alone for the first time, so one of the benefits [of Paris] was that I actually had time to just sit and write in a way that I haven’t since going to uni… so I was a little more prolific”. But Gabriel, in Cairo, bought an oud – a form of “Egyptian lute”. And Chloe tells me she was “obsessed with it” when she went to visit him. “It’s very much about melodic lines, as opposed to chords, and I feel like that’s influenced my bass playing”.

Chloe pauses to take a drink, and then, thinking, continues. “I think my American side is maybe a bigger influence [than time in France and Britain]”, reiterating the importance of her American heritage as an influence on her art. Again, she points to the difference in the music that she and Alfie grew up listening to. “Rock is much more popular in America, like guitar music (America) versus synthesiser (Britain). There’s so many classic rock stations in America that don’t exist here”. A pause, and Chloe looks briefly about her. “I don't know, I think that definitely has an influence”.

Intrigued by her perspective on the nuances and differences of American and British music, I ask her a question directed more specifically to her as an artist, than her as a member of the band. “So as you’ve previously told me you were born in America, and even though you grew up in London you still retain quite an American accent. How does this affect your singing?”

Chloe looks delighted with the question. She smiles broadly, and tells me, “it makes my life so much easier when I sing! It’s one of the only times in my life [in Britain] that I get to be the neutral, default person”. In musicological theory, she says – suddenly technical – there’s an argument that because rock and pop was “created” in the States, “we hear a lot of British rock bands as specifically British, not as neutral”. 

This is a nice foil in Chloe’s world, where she has grown up under the banner of “The American Girl”. “When I sing”, she says, “I just get to sing and be judged on my words and… well, on everything besides my nationality. So it’s a kind of liberty”. She contemplates briefly the necessity felt by a lot of British pop singers to sing in American accents. In affirmation of her own creative liberty, she tells me – in a bittersweet tone – “I’m happy that I don’t need to compromise any authenticity”. And this, she says, lends itself to Doorstep’s self-identification “more as musicians than as performers”. Chloe’s ability to sing with linguistic and tonal “neutrality” aids in the disintegration of the barriers between what it means to make and play music (be musicians), and what it means to simply perform music.

“One of the very interesting features of Doorsteps is that you switch instruments and vocals when performing. Can you tell me a bit about why this is, and how you make this possible when you’re performing?”

“Well at the risk of sounding a bit pretentious, it’s largely because we like to think of ourselves in terms of the fact that we all write, as a collective. We’re a collective in terms of a shared music-making experience”. It appears that for Doorsteps, everyone contributes, and switching instruments cements its art as a shared experience.

Yet it also has a logistical basis, she says frankly. “Switching the instruments for me is often because playing bass and singing [together] is very hard”. This is opposite to “the art of singing and playing guitar, which complement each other so that they’re almost like one expression”. So it is easier to take over the guitar whilst singing, and have someone else take over bass. Also, Chloe adds, “we have five people in the band and not necessarily a dedicated keyboard player”. And as everybody in the band is multi-instrumentalist, they are able to switch keys, vocals, and strings to keep things varied.

These concepts of collectivity and variety probe an interest in Chloe and Doorsteps’ musical processes. I recall ‘Your Man’ – a song written by Chloe prior to the formation of the band, available on Spotify under her solo artist name Kalenco. “Can you tell us a bit about the creative process behind ‘Your Man’?”

“‘Your Man’ is ‘my’ song”, Chloe says, putting the “my” in air quotes. “I actually had that one professionally produced [when] I wrote it in my first year of uni. I wanted to learn to produce in a studio, instead of at home” as with her previous song. She cites Patti Smith’s Just Kids and Smith’s relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe as the main inspiration, especially for the first verse. “I’ll pin up my sketches on the walls of our hotel room”, she quotes: “that’s literally about the Chelsea Hotel. So that’s kind of how the first verse came around”. But for the chorus and the second verse, her inspiration is more conceptual: “Imagine you’re seeing someone”, she says, “and you really want to get to know them better. You want to be something”: it’s inspiration that arises from asking yourself questions. This process of asking what if? is similar to the inspiration behind one of Chloe’s more recent, independently written songs, ‘Paris’. Again, using questions as a springboard for her music, Chloe says that – following a scene she witnessed of a couple arguing in a French cafe – she asked herself: “What if you moved here for somebody? And then they just disappeared?” Thus, in ‘Your Man’ as in ‘Paris’, the creative process seems to emerge largely from the questioning of one-self.

This confluence of inspiration – between Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe on the one hand, and relationship issues on the other – she says, is a good example of how songs come together: “they can sound like this cohesive thing, but really, they’re so many different ideas mashed together”. Even after the production and recording of ‘Your Man’, the song continued to evolve. “When I brought [‘Your Man’] to Alfie, he just made up a great solo before the last verse”, she explains. “So there’s like this extension which isn’t in the recording track, but it’s in our live version and just changes the song so much”. And again, this collaboration occurred with ‘Paris’: “Alfie wrote this amazing guitar solo at the end”, she says, “and the whole point is that the things that the narrator can’t say are said by the guitar”. In reference to this collective creative process, Chloe smiles, and adds that “obviously we do writing sessions sometimes. But sometimes it’s just as simple as having someone you trust listen to it, and add something great”.

Thus the creative process behind ‘Your Man’ and ‘Paris’ was a unique one, featuring the evolution of and building upon one, or several, ideas. This, she says, is different to the process behind the band’s next single, ‘Pragmatist’. “Alfie and I wrote it together. We kind of wrote the verses as we went, like, Oh, what about this? What about this? What about that?” she tells me. “Alfie’s the one who came with the real musical element and the main line of the song”, she says, but “we wrote the chorus and verses together”. Unlike ‘Your Man’ or ‘Paris’, ‘Pragmatist’ was a project that came about as a contribution from the very beginning. Yet the creative process behind ‘Your Man’, ‘Paris’, and ‘Pragmatist’ – though different – all reveal a core tenet of Doorsteps: that writing , playing, and performing are a remarkably collaborative endeavour.

The next question is my aim to draw the interview a little out of our more conceptual discussion so far, and ground it in the musical experience of Doorsteps in Durham. “We are a Durham magazine”, I say, “set up by students, and aimed predominantly at young people in Durham interested in the musical scene. So how would you say that Durham has influenced Doorsteps’ music and musical journey?”

“The multitude of performance opportunities definitely helped us”, Chloe says firmly, citing Open Mic Society as a fantastic enabler of performance opportunity. But there are also collegiate opportunities: “the studio in Collingwood really brought us together, and Alfie’s actually in Collingwood and on the studio committee, so that definitely helped bring us together in a Durham way!” Now, she says, most of the band lives together in Durham, except for Will, who lives in Newcastle, and David who lives with other musicians. “So we can all kind of jam when we want to jam”, Chloe says. “That’s definitely the Durham vibe”.

So, “What is your favourite venue to perform in in Durham?”.

Referring again to Collingwood, Chloe tells me that playing at Collingwood on Collingwood Day was, as a gig and as a venue, her favourite. “It was such a good experience”, she says, “they had a full, full tech team. It felt like I was at a real festival”. Then she smiles. “I think that was my proudest musical moment at Durham. I’m very excited to apply to do that again this year – with David, who we didn’t have last time!”