Fort Knox Recordings and The Vinyl District are proud to present Memorial Weekend Blowout at U Street Music Hall this Sunday night, May 29th. Get your summer started off right, and blow out that three day weekend with the best DC funk, soul, reggae, and dub beats.
Memorial Weekend Blowout
Sun, May 29, 2011
10:00 pm – 3:00 am
U Street Music Hall
$10.00
Tickets available through Ticketfly
Ages 18+, ages 18-20 must buy tickets in advance
LIVE SETS:
See-I
Empresarios
DJ SETS:
DJ Who
Thunderball
Empresarios’ DJ Arsam and Sonny Cheeba
Continuing our spotlight on the Memorial Day Blowout artists, Chip Watkins aka DJ Who, is what a journeyman deejay’s deejay is all about. A pop musicologist, as well, the DJ gave me the scoop on the Baltimore scene and yonder.
You’re pretty much a resident at the Mosaic.
Yeah, I’m still DJ there on Saturdays.
How did you and [the lounge] Mosaic come to be?
It was a project that we built several years ago. And it’s gone through multiple lifetimes. I’ve always been involved. It was pet project of mine.
Tell me about the world of DJ Who, Mosaic and beyond.
Well, at Mosaic we got about 900 people screaming and yelling every week. My people focus on all the social networking [to reach out]. I’m playing at the Starscape festival this year. I [played] with Afrojack at the Bourbon Street live, another venue [in Baltimore]. And Thievery [Corporation], I’ve worked with them from the very beginnings of all of the above, at a bajillion different venues and dance parties. We’re grown up together, a lot of us.
You been described as a deejay of a lot of different genres, breakbeats and electronica to name a few. What’s your musical style? How would you describe yourself?
You know I read this BS all the time. I’m more of the deejay’s deejay. I play venues where I have thousands of mainstream people before me, where I remix sounds. I do underground events where they’re more on the rave side of things, you know, where I play more of a progressive sound. And there’s definitely breakbeats, which is a big part of what I do because I like the funky swing and syncopation of all of it. But I have really always played all different kinds of music. [I’ve done] crazy things for Red Bull where I’m playing at stadiums where I play for radio crowds. It is what it is. I have new records coming out in New York that are house, more acid house. The hardest thing for me is to not be genre-fied, to not do one thing. Because it never really is my bag.
[Adamantly] I mean a breakbeak that’s been played for two hours loses its funk. If you mix it in and out with house and other rhythm combinations then when the breakbeat comes there will be a drop, and it’ll make you throw your ass to the left. But one style of music [a long time] is boring. I don’t care what it is.
DJ Who | A NEW DECADE MIX
In your career, have you ever felt pressure by your fans to change your sound to the musical status quo?
Nah. Not really. I grew up playing with people, in the early ’90s, who had incredible evenings I’ve had the pleasure of being the soundtrack to. But I’ve always played what I like, you know.
Me: And people love you, regardless.
[Laughs] I don’t know about that. But [the fans] realized, you know, the B-boys will want the breaks. Then I’ll play something for the girls. And then I’ll go into something that [someone else] likes more, et cetera.
What’s the longest you’ve played, nonstop, ever?
I don’t know. Not all that crazy. Five or six hours, maybe.
What are your musical influences?
I played drums by the time I was born. I spent time in my early life trying to figure out how to be Stewart Copeland and a bunch of other incredibly cool guys in the rock-and-roll world. And then after being in a ton of bands in high school I decided I wanted to make electronic music. Very quickly met the Chemical Brothers and other people that helped guide my way. Growing up, I spent an incredible amount of time playing all kinds of music from jazz bands to marching bands and everything else. As a section we were doing drum and bass… a group of dudes walking around with drums hanging from our necks. The convergence to dance music was definitely a simple one because it’s all about the drums and bass.
But I don’t play UK double time drum and bass by any means.
If you had just a minute in music appreciation class to describe Baltimore Break beat, how would you?
I always said I love the drums of house and the drones of trance. Because I love the ethereal sounds the synthesizer has brought into our world. But it’s got a slammin’ beat that gets you up. I guess that’s it.
