Ten Tonnes: Living the dream

Interrupting a quiet afternoon at his sister’s house in their home village of Hertford, Ethan Barnett - aka Ten Tonnes - has just had his hair cut and is relaxing with a cup of green tea. “I’m trying to pre-emptively sort myself out for the sunny weather because I’m not used to it,” he jokes, just a week away from flying to Austin, Texas to play a succession of shows at one of the biggest taste-making events in the world. “I’m buzzing for it,” the 20-year-old says.

Having started playing the drums aged nine to keep up with his now-hugely-famous brother George Ezra (music runs in the family) who was learning bass, Ethan enjoyed it for a while, but says “playing drums by yourself gets boring after a while.” Then, four years later, he discovered The Beatles and quickly picked up the guitar before starting to write his own “shockingly bad” songs while at school.

When he turned 16, Ethan started gigging around the local area but “dropped it completely” for half a year when he started university. “I didn’t know what I was doing, then I dropped out of uni and thought I should give music a proper stab... I didn’t go in much, and I ended up getting a lot of zero marks because I didn’t hand in much work,” he laughs. Looking back, Ethan’s glad he left uni behind - it just wasn’t for him. “I wasn’t the best student at all; I think I would have had to re-do my first year anyway and I was just not enjoying the course at all. It threw up the idea of making me realise that I wanted to do my music properly.”

The second track, ‘Love Me To Death’, is in a completely different vein – more of “a bittersweet love song”, Ethan says, having worked with some massive names in the indie and alternative rock world. “Hugo White from The Maccabees produced most of the new EP, and when I found out I was going to go and write with Dan Auerbach, I rang my friend because we both love The Black Keys; we spent five minutes on the phone just screaming at each other because we were so excited. Stuff like that is mind-blowing. I fucking love it. It’s great.”