Dante Kierstead drums up a storm

For almost 10 years, Dante Kierstead has set his sights on a career in drumming. 

Kierstead was exposed to music as a child — and he credits his parents for his passion. 

“I started listening to the Beatles at a young age, and then I just started taking any objects in my house and started hitting them,” he says.

Now a fourth-year music student at Dalhousie University, Kierstead goes between class and gigs where he works in bands and as a solo artist. 

He currently features in Hobo Aquarium, Noel Morgan & the Salty Groove, and the Josef Hassler Band. He also plays with several singer-songwriters. On Tuesdays, he can be found in the Economy Shoe Shop with the jazz trio LC3. 

In early September, Kierstead’s instrument took him across the ocean to the United Kingdom with Newfoundland-based singer-songwriter, Madeline. A few weeks into this school year, on Sept. 23, 24, and 26, he plays with emo musician idialedyournumber in shows in Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal. 

Kierstead says it’s tough to balance earning a degree and being a working musician, but his music professors understand that his schedule can take him on the road.

“A lot of my professors — at least in the music program — are very understanding that this is my job,” he says. “It always feels rude to be like, ‘Yeah this is my job,’ but it is.”

After two years in Nova Scotia Community College’s music arts program Kierstead transferred into Dalhousie’s music program. He says the NSCC program was key to his current success and diverse gigging in the music scene. 

“Every gig opportunity I’ve gotten is from somebody at NSCC messaging me and now I’m in bands because of that,” he says. “The program really pushed me to get better. I cannot express how valuable that program is for anybody that wants to take music.”

At Dalhousie, Kierstead plays in the school’s jazz and percussion ensembles. He’s also played at both the East Coast Music Awards and the TD Halifax Jazz Festival for the last two years.

“Getting a chance to play on the main stage is so surreal. I don’t think I had ever played on a stage that big,” he says. 

For Kierstead, being a young artist meant touring and playing on East Coast mainstages before the age of 21. He says trying to play in live venues was not always smooth, especially before he was old enough to legally drink. 

“For the first year or so I was playing, every single show I did I had to fill out one of these forms that gets sent to the bar,” Kierstead says. “They sign off on it, and then they send that to the liquor commission.”

As a minor, Kierstead had to have an assigned guardian watching him from the time he entered a bar until his departure at the end of a set.

Even when the forms were signed, venues sometimes lost or misplaced them, and even denied him entry. 

Max Cole, who plays with Kierstead in the bands Hobo Aquarium and Noel Morgan & the Salty Groove, says all the hassle and chance it took to get Kierstead on stage is a testament to how much his peers wanted him up there with them.

“He’s at a pretty elite level of musicality and awareness when he’s on stage,” says Cole. “He gets along with everyone. No one has a bad thing to say about him.”

Kierstead and Cole met while playing in ensembles together at NSCC. 

“He’s really good at lifting everyone else up,” Cole says. “He’ll find a way to make what you play sound even better. Even if it’s something you didn’t need to play, and it didn’t sound that great, he’ll fix it.”

Halifax producer Mike Cowie agrees with Cole. 

“Dante’s absolutely, stunningly good,” says Cowie, who hired him to work with the G Street Band at Pacifico, a bar in Halifax. 

Cowie says Kierstead is part of the next generation of Halifax’s star players. 

“[The next generation has] just come out of the woodwork, and they’re absolutely brilliant. They’re blowing all of us older guys away. We just can’t wait to work with them.”

Kierstead reciprocates Cowie and Cole’s enthusiasm for their collaborations.

“Everybody’s always super receptive and so kind,” Kierstead says. “It’s not a competition. I feel like everybody just wants everyone to succeed because we are all passionate about music and we want to make music our thing.”

Despite being old enough to play in any venue, Kierstead says he remembers the challenges of being a teenage performer in Halifax.

“I just want a music scene that’s accessible to everybody. I want everybody who’s into music to feel like, ‘I have an artist, or a person that plays music that I can resonate with,’” he says. “It was always cool seeing people my age playing music.”

Kierstead says young people need more opportunities to perform, especially after Nova Scotia’s premier, Tim Houston cut funding for arts.

“You are taking away the opportunities for the younger generation to even get into the arts to begin with,” he says. “If you’re cutting that off, then I don’t know. We’ll have a world of engineers.”

“That doesn’t sound very fun, if I’m being honest.”