Donny Storm

Before the music there was a Minecraft YouTube channel. He wanted to be a YouTuber — an early dream, as he calls it on the episode, and he is relaxed enough about it now to say so out loud.

He met his mates at sixteen, and one of them — ALIENVERT — got him into making music. They are still close, and still make things together.

Not having an identity yet

He is honest about the start: he did not have one. “I didn’t really have my identity when I first started making music,” he says. He did not have much confidence either, and the early worry was what people would say.

What changed was not a breakthrough. It was getting better slowly, until it became easier to put his thoughts into music than to carry them around.

Nerves, through the roof

The first gig terrified him. “Through the roof,” he says — and then, “but eventually just kept on doing them.” That is the whole method.

He and Steve agree on something most people get backwards: playing to a room of strangers is easier than playing to people who know you. Steve admits he still gets nervous before the talks he gives.

How the songs get made

He is good on the process, which is less mystical than people expect. Producers send beats; he listens until one is right; the words come from there. And the rest is just living enough to have something to put in.

The long way round

There is a well-worn idea that getting good at anything takes ten thousand hours of doing it. Argue with the number if you like — plenty of people do — but the principle underneath is hard to dodge. Nobody gets there by thinking about it.

He started at sixteen. The first show was at AATMA on 25 July 2021 with 5th Wall; he was eighteen. Manchester Academy 3 followed on 17 June 2022, at nineteen.

And he still had not found his sound.

That did not arrive until the middle of 2024 — years in, after the gigs, after the Academy. Not a moment of inspiration so much as the far end of a long stretch of experimenting, getting it wrong, and carrying on anyway because he trusted it would come.

Of the five hundred-odd tracks he has made, roughly three hundred and fifty have come since. In February 2026 he sold out a solo show at 33 Oldham Street.

That is the honest shape of it. The good stuff arrived last, and the room filled up after that — both of which happened only because he was still there.

Chaddy Park

He and Aeron played for Chadderton Park together for over ten years. Donny’s dad Lenny coached alongside Terry. Steve was one of the dads on the touchline — not a coach, but there every week, supporting the team.

Steve’s line about it is the one that holds this whole series together: it wasn’t just a football team, it was a community.

Three episodes, three completely different lives, and all three land on the same thing without being asked.

“The more life experience that you get, the more you can put it into art.”Donny Storm