Lucas & Steve Dive Into "Anywhere With You" and Future Plans

Dutch duo Lucas & Steve swung by after the release of their latest single to chat about working with Afrojack and DubVision, and more.

Since first coming together over a decade ago, Lucas & Steve have become one of the most beloved duos in the dance music scene. During this time they’ve graced some of the largest stages at festivals like Tomorrowland and Mysteryland while also dropping hits like “Summer On You” with Sam Feldt and Wulf, as well as “Up Til Dawn (On The Move).” In fact, if there’s one word that defines the soundscapes they’ve brought to the scene it would be uplifting.

The past few years have seen Lucas & Steve continue their ascension through the ranks of the scene, and even the pandemic couldn’t slow down their pace. While their live shows were sidelined, the duo remained hard at work in the studio with resulting releases including their album Letters To Remember in 2020, along with a fresh cut of Blackstreet’s “No Diggity” that surfaced in 2021.

But there was one more surprise Lucas & Steve had in store for their fans as the duo collaborated with Afrojack and DubVision to craft up “Anywhere With You.” This festival-ready tune will immediately transport you to the nearest festival mainstage as you lift your hands in the air and dance away to its groove. It’s a sign of good things to come as dance music lovers return to their favorite festivals around the world.

After the release of the track, we caught up with Lucas & Steve to chat about its creation, their recent set at Hope Festival, and plenty more. So check out the music video for the track on YouTube, download or stream “Anywhere With You” on your preferred platform, and read on for the full conversation!

Watch the music video for “Anywhere With You” on YouTube:

Hey Lucas & Steve, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us today, and congrats on the release of “Anywhere With You.” Over the years, you guys have teamed up with several iconic artists, but never Afrojack in DubVision until now. So how did this tune come about? What was the collaboration process like?

Lucas: It must have been at least a half year ago that Afrojack messaged us, and at the same time, DubVision said, “Hey guys, I’ve got this track, and I feel that this combination of artists could really work.” He made this demo recording, we heard it, and we were all over it from the start. Later, we heard that DubVision had the same feeling that we all needed to finish this as fast as possible.

So we got to the studio, we got the demo, and it was already a huge song. It was super EDM, and we tried to add that acoustic guitar and piano vibe. It was all during the COVID period, so we worked a lot at a distance in the beginning just sending parts over back and forth to DubVision and Afrojack. Slowly but surely, a really solid tune came about. Fortunately, we progressed a little bit throughout the year to get together to finish it and get into the details.

That’s awesome. Did working virtually through just emailing back and forth versus being in the studio together change the collaboration process at all?

Steve: I don’t think it changed the collaboration process, but it was just way more efficient working in that way. Sometimes you work on a track, and then you send over the version that you worked on, and then you receive an answer maybe two hours later or maybe a day later. Sometimes it’s just nice to hear immediately, “this is the right way or this is not the right way.” And that can be a more efficient way to work, but we still learned a lot during that virtual collaboration.

As Lucas already mentioned, Afrojack and DubVision are super talented in the studio. It was super great to work with them, and they know how to produce songs. If you work with five guys who know how to produce a song or want to make music in this direction, then it’s cool that you can learn from each other also virtually.

That’s awesome. Yeah, I think the coolest part about collaborations is the shared knowledge between the artists involved. “Anywhere With You” also has similar feel-good, celebration vibes to the other tracks you guys released the summer, “Paper Planes” and “Get Together.” When you were looking to produce those tunes, what kind of drew you back to that progressive sound compared to other genres?

Lucas: We felt after a year and a half of the world being in a global lockdown, it’s time for music to celebrate and let everything go. To get taken away by melodies that hit you in the heart – that’s what we tried to do.

That’s kind of what was already happening in the big EDM boom earlier. We didn’t have our breakthrough back then, so we saw this as an opportunity to dive into that sound a little bit with a lot of fresh production and 2021 sounds. But we got inspired by that period. We love making melodies and making sounds. So that’s what we’re putting together with all the tracks we’ve released and are releasing right now.

That’s great to hear. And then sort of carrying on with the whole year and a half that we just experienced, a number of different places in the world are reopening. One of the biggest weeks in dance music, ADE, is moving forward, and you guys have two showcases this year! So are you excited to get back to the stage and fan sort of expected at these two showcases?

Steve: We’re super excited to do the Lucas & Steve and Friends show again, finally. We had a show on Friday planned, but it sold out very fast. So we decided to do an extra show on Wednesday, and that’s sold out already.

Everybody knows ADE. They know the atmosphere in the city, which is super nice, and I think we will have a very decent ADE. We just cannot wait to do our own shows. As for what you can expect, we just want to throw a lot of new music, and we’ve been sitting in a studio for a very long time already so all those tracks can come alive. That’s something that we really cannot wait to show everybody – what we’ve been making in the studio. That’s something that we’re excited about

Yeah, I wish I could make it to Amsterdam this year. I’ve started getting all the emails, and I’m like, ah shoot, I’m thousands of miles away. But you guys also just played at Hope Festival as well. How did that show go? What was it sort of like getting back on the stage there?

Lucas: You know, we have a really solid fan base in France as well, and we’ve been building and building in France. There have been quite a couple of really solid radio hits there. We hoped that our fans would still be there after us not playing there for about two years, and it was the first show we did abroad after the world opened a little bit again.

So we were a little nervous about it. You don’t want to get back into a country, and people don’t know your music anymore, but it was just one big explosion of energy in there. Fortunately, our fans were still there. We loved it. We loved every second and of course, we played a lot of new music, like our collab with Afrojack and DubVision.

A lot of stuff that you see right now around the world is that festivals can go on; they can happen, but then with a little bit of reduced capacity. I think for Hope Festival, their capacity was downsized a little bit, but due to the crowd’s energy, it wasn’t like you missed anything on stage. It was just all energy, so that was awesome.

Yeah, there have been many festivals here in the US already as well. And like you kind of said, the energy is through the roof. Do you guys have any other festivals planned on the horizon?

Steve: Well, we’re doing a big show on Fun Radio Show in Paris on October 21. And then in November, we’re heading over to you guys to the US for a nice tour. We’re playing in New York, Boston, and Dallas.

Lucas: And a couple of others. We’re going to tour there for about two weeks, but these are the three that came to mind first. And after that to Asia.

Steve: To Japan and maybe some other places else in Asia, but yeah, it’s so it just we cannot wait to tour again and to play all those new songs. Especially in the US, we always love to be in the US. The vibe is so good over there. The parties are sick, and the people are nice. So yeah, we cannot wait to go back to the US.

Hopefully I’ll be able to catch one of your sets when you come over here. You guys have played and produced music together for over a decade, and the scene has changed quite a bit. How do you feel you’ve grown as artists and is there anything you miss from the early days of you guys producing and playing music together?

Lucas: Production-wise, we’ve been kind of all over the place. A decade ago, when we started making music together, we made tech house in a period that tech house wasn’t hot or anything. Today, tech house and the classic kind of house music are hotter than when we used to produce it.

But it’s not like we’re going back to doing tech house or whatever. We always make the music that we love. And yeah, if in that certain period that’s not like the best music to make, we don’t really care. We just create what we like to make.

On the other hand, we’ve evolved, especially during the past one and a half years. We evolved in our productions, making quite a lot of hip hop, pop music for other artists, rappers, and singers, where you can only find us in the credits. The house, the poppy EDM stuff that we do as Lucas & Steve isn’t the only music that we’re making anymore. We love doing that, and we will always keep on doing that, but it’s always been a huge dream to make anything – and we’ve worked really hard on that.

So I think when we’re talking about growth as an artist, we’ve made some serious steps over the past years. We keep learning every day about mixing, sound design, playing guitar, pianos, recording it, songwriting, everything. It’s one big happy vibe.

That’s good to hear. I think that a lot of artists don’t want to be confined to one genre. So it’s cool that you guys can kind of cross those boundaries and work with everybody else as well.

Steve: We love to create all kinds of music, but maybe it doesn’t fit the Lucas & Steve style. You learn a lot from making different genres, and learning a lot means that you evolve in your style of making music. So yeah, that’s cool.

We can take all those great elements that we try to create in a hip hop track, not for Lucas & Steve, but we can get all those elements in a Lucas & Steve record. You can make it very interesting, so there are no boundaries in making music.

Definitely, and then my final question for you guys is if you could offer a piece of advice to artists who are looking to make their mark on the scene, what would it be?

Steve: Yeah, I think it sounds cliche, but work very hard to create your own identity, your own style. Don’t copy-paste anything. Try to evolve in yourself as a musician, or whatever you want to do in creating music, but it’s important to have your own thing, that spark that can give you that rocket boost. It’s also cool to find something new. It’s hard, but it’s cool to do. Besides that, work very hard and love what you do, because music is very nice to make.

Passion drives everything forward. Well, I think that’s all the time I have, so thank you guys so much for chatting.

Lucas: Thank you so much.

Steve: Thanks.