Musical journey across the world on bicycles: An encounter with Vietnam

Words by Nguyen Duc Tung, photos by Mitchell Aaron Gross for Hanoi Grapevine
Do not copy or repost without permission from the writer and Hanoi Grapevine

With a huge love for music and the thrill to travel the world, two English musicians Tim Stephens (30) and Adam Faulkner (32 years old) have been to 26 countries on their journey from London to Tokyo, writing many songs with local artists along the way. This February, the duo Total Bike Forever pedaled their bikes to Vietnam in search of local signature sounds.

Knowing they would come to Đáo Xuân Chín Festival, Hanoi Grapevine had a talk with them on how they feel about making music while cycling across the world.

How did the idea come to you and how did you prepare for it?

Tim: So, we really wanted to go to Japan. It’s the number one destination we wanted to go to. But we both agreed that we would not go to Japan on a plane. Then I found out about 2 English people who cycled to Japan. We have bicycles but we had never thought of such big adventure. And because we play music together, we don’t want to stop it when we travel. So we decided to write an album during our journey. Till now, we have been going for nearly a year.

Adam: We couldn’t bring the enough amount of stuff for different things. Most of the stuff we have now were bought along the way with the money we had saved for about a year.

Did you follow the path that 2 English men took?

Tim: No, we didn’t. Before people leave, usually they think they know where they are going then start. But we realized it doesn’t matter. It would be much more fun not knowing we where are going next. We always know that we need to get to Japan so we just keep going east. We know there will be a big festival here in Vietnam named Đáo Xuân and we really wanted to perform there, but we have already booked our flight to South Korea by the time of the event. It shows the great thing about cycling is that the schedule is up to you. You can do what you want.

What else do you want to achieve after this journey?

Adam: Beside writing a music album, we are also making a documentary. We upload some of the footage on our youtube channel.

What are your memorable moments?

Tim: I remember my most memorable moment here in Vietnam. It was really surreal. When we went to Gầm Trời Valley to visit the place and see the making process of Đáo Xuân festival, we climbed to the top of a 36 meters tall statue. Seeing people building stages in the middle of nature made me question myself: “Where are we?”. Suddenly I realized we had cycled all the way from London to this place. It’s crazy!

Adam: I like moments when I can forget where I am. It happens quite a lot, but not easy to say when it’s going to happen. People usually think a memorable moment should be a specific number of kilometers that you have cycled, or a special place you travel to. I think we will feel like that when we are in Japan. However, I believe whatever moments can give you a really strong feeling are all memorable, and they can happen anytime. I remember visiting Turkey. It is one of our favourite countries of the journey. We met a Turkish drummer when he was playing drums on a mountain himself. We made music with him. A few weeks later we arrange our meeting with him again. We went to some great locations around the mountain to jam and shoot some footage. It was really amazing that we had to pinch ourselves to make sure that moment was really happening. We will upload that jam session video soon.

Is that how you write music along the journey?

Adam: At the start, it was just about cycling, but now it has become a good mix with making music. We have come to big cities like Hanoi, Bangkok and had connections with local artists. We often spent one to two weeks making music with or for them and then move on.

Tim: I think it’s because we have been cycling for a year. The time we cycled in Laos was very tough. The road was sloppy and full of ups and downs, making us really tired. If we had got into that situation earlier we couldn’t have anything else. But we got used to it and actually wrote a lot while still cycle a lot. It takes a long time to find your groove. The funny thing is everywhere you go, you take into your body some kind of signature experience. And when you write music they just come out. It’s nice to have signature sounds from places or people in each country we travel to.

What is the difficulty you had to face when approached to music from the Eastern culture?

Tim: The thing we find difficult in Asian music is the tone of language. The melody sounds very unusual to Westerners like us. It goes up and down a lot. But we took away the vocal and we could hear the instruments more clearly, making it easier to approach to the music. When you listen to music around the world, you can realize the time signatures here are always different. But in Western music it just remains the same. You don’t notice it because it’s familiar to you. It was really hard for us to count the time signatures. We recorded a lady singing in Thailand, she wrote a song. I sang to it over and over, it still sounded so weird. The verse was in 6/4 time signature, and the chorus was in 4/4. In India, they have a pattern that shifts in the weirdest place. Its system was made especially for teaching Indian people about rhythm. I bought an electronic tabla and tried to study further on that.

Is this your first time to Vietnam?

Adam: Me, yes. But Tim has been here before.

Which do you think is the most signature sound of Vietnam?

Tim: I think it’s the sound when people smoke thuốc lào. The other day when i tried to record that sound from a guy, he took my recorder not knowing what it was. While the device was still recording, the guy started to speak in Vietnamese: “Alo alo, karaoke? karaoke?” We used that sample in one of our songs and it was crazily amazing.

How does the journey influence your way of making music?

Adam: We were in a band before. I played bass guitar and Tim played keyboard. The way we sing or write music was different from now. It must follow a structure: intro, verse, chorus, bridge then outro. The last time we had a gig as a band, we just play four songs but had to practice so hard to as correctly as we could. But when playing electronic music, we can improvise and a song is played differently every time. I have always told Tim that this kind of music is like math. It’s all about adding or cutting out sounds in your own way. And if you do it well it will sound good. Since we started getting gigs about 6 months ago, we realized that electronic music is a really fun thing to play and connect with the audience.

What are you going to do after this journey?

Tim: If nothing changes, we will go back to London and spend a week off with our family. We have been away for quite a long time. After that, we will publish our music album and documentary. If we ever have this kind of journey again, we welcome everyone who has a bicycle and loves music to join us.

Thank you for your stories and hope you will be safe on the way!

A song that Tim and Adam wrote at a patrol station:

The duo spontaneously making music while waiting for the boat:

Some photos of them riding bicycles in Vietnam: