Ahead of their upcoming Journey of a Lifetime tour, Zeds Dead are entering a new era with both reflection and momentum. Nearly 17 years into their career, the duo have continued pushing creative boundaries, building immersive live experiences while turning Deadbeats into one of bass music’s most recognizable independent brands. As they prepare for their most ambitious chapter yet, Hooks and DC opened up about the emotional weight behind this moment, the legacy of Deadrocks, and what continues to fuel them after all these years.
LIANA: Where are you both emotionally entering this chapter? Anything you are most excited about heading into this tour?
HOOKS: We’re just grinding, trying to make this the best tour ever. We’ve been in the studio every day working on new music. And we’re working with the visuals team trying to make this very immersive.
DC: Excitement. Inspired. Grateful. Stressed. Definitely inspired. I think we’re deep in a really good creative zone right now. And grateful because we’re doing our biggest tour thus far after being in the game for 17 years in June, I think.
LIANA: How are you curating the production and design for this tour?
HOOKS: We’re working on what it’s going to be, But it’s going to be all over the place, a lot of new stuff, a lot of things from different eras, and kind of like the culmination of what we’ve been working on with the audio visual elements and the remixing of a lot of older things that have footage of singers singing and stuff like that.
HOOKS: We had this quote that we’re cutting up from a sample that was like “scientists say the sounds don’t die, they just keep going, even if very low volume,” so it’s like in theory you could pick up all these sounds. So that’s kind of the concept, there’s like a transmitter, a satellite dish, and it’s picking up all of these sounds that were made on this planet from the last 100 years, and it’s getting all jumbled and mixed up and remixed.
DC: Just tapping into some sort of spectrum or stream, if you will.
LIANA: That’s honestly how your sets feel, like a full journey from beginning to end.
HOOKS: From start to finish, a journey is energy and emotions, and sort of like teeing things up to be, and hit the way that we want it to, or try to guide the experience, and that’s how I feel, and we put a lot into it.
DC: Which obviously ties into the name of the tour too — Journey of a Lifetime.
LIANA: Deadbeats is hitting its 10-year milestone this year. Looking back, did you ever imagine it would evolve into the community and platform it’s become today?
HOOKS: We’re really proud of how it’s gone. It’s become its own thing and not just attached to us, people actually want to release on it. I mean, it’s amazing, it’s got qualities that people can understand like the radio show and the releases we do, and the people that we work with on Deadbeats. It’s got a sound which I think is cool. It’s kind of grown organically with some guidance. So yeah, very happy with how it’s gone.
DC: It very much exists outside of us which is awesome. We honestly didn’t have huge expectations when we first started it. We just wanted a place where we could release our own music and maybe some of our friends’ too. Seeing what it’s turned into now has been amazing.
HOOKS: And it’s cool being able to be independent. We throw events, and the events have gotten a name for themselves as a good time, so we are able to release an artist, have them play a show for Deadbeats, and stuff like that. So it’s a cool ecosystem that exists.
LIANA: Speaking of your events and shows, what does it mean seeing fans make the pilgrimage to Deadrocks every year?
HOOKS: It’s amazing, it’s a phenomenon. Like Denver being in the middle of the country so people can travel easily from all over to get there. But Red Rocks is an amazing venue, one of the best in the world for sure. So I could see why people would want to come just in general, but it really is like a pilgrimage at this point.
DC: It’s kind of become our marquee event every year. And we got this amazing weekend this year for 4th of July.
HOOKS: We really don’t take those shows for granted, and we really give them our all. So I think that’s why people kind of want to go to those in particular, it’s kind of like if there was one show to go to, it’s that one.
DC: Yeah, you’re really gonna see the span of like the full gamut of what we do live to between the two Red Rock shows, the Mission Show and the Jamboree show, they’re all a different flavor of our live experience.
LIANA: How did you approach choosing support for the tour?
HOOKS: We went back and forth with our team building out a wishlist and our favourites for this, and it’s amazing who we could get. We’re stoked for this tour! We’ve been putting our…what’s the expression? Nose to the grindstone? Yea, we’re putting our heads down and trying to get this shit as good as humanly possible. It’s gonna be good.
DC: Hell yeah.
As the Journey of a Lifetime Tour approaches, Zeds Dead are proving that longevity in electronic music comes from constant evolution. Between ambitious new production concepts, unreleased music, and immersive design elements, Hooks and DC are entering this next chapter with the same creative hunger that helped define their rise in the first place. And if this next era proves anything, it’s that even after 17 years, Zeds Dead are still setting the standard for transforming live shows into unforgettable experiences.
The tour starts on July 2nd, 2026 at the Red Rocks Amphitheater. For more information and to buy tickets click here.
