DJP Speaks of Turntabling Artistry

Having read for years about DJP's (aka Danny James Phillips) exploits as a competitive DJ, breakdancer and Las Vegas nightclub regular, I was excited to have the opportunity sit down and talk music with one of the coolest cats to ever come out of the Queen City of the Ozarks. DJP’s studio in downtown Springfield is like a museum of '80s pop culture with shelves upon shelves of vinyl plus various figurines, posters and props from his years as a touring DJ and performer.

Wow, I see you’ve got a lot of inspiration here!

DJP: Yeah, this is only a quarter of what I’ve owned. I had a hundred thousand records when I came back from Vegas.  One day I woke up and I was like, “Man, I don’t own any records; they all own me.” So I ended up selling a bunch of them at meets. I did a couple of record shows here recently. But the main majority of them, I sold to a guy in Portland, Oregon. He’s coming out here in a few days – finally – it’s been a year. So, I'm glad to have gotten him all those records. It was a lot of house and techno and electronic music, which I like, but I already had a lot of it. There’s probably tons of stuff in there I would've kept, but I couldn’t go thru and listen to every record.  So, I would just go thru and choose stuff at random and needle drop it, and if I liked it, I kept it [….] in a way, I'm glad that I unloaded it cause it was just too much stuff. Way too much stuff...

Are you going to Serato for your mixes?

I'm still on all vinyl, but I’m doing Serato in here (studio), cause I can do a lot of edits and stuff like that. I’m just not comfortable with it yet. Cause you've got so many people that know me as the guy that flips records, the showmanship of it, and they see what I’m doing. I’m not just up there pushing buttons or staring into a laptop checking my emails like everybody else. And that’s the problem that I have with it: everyone looks the same with this computer staring them in the face. And it's like, “Where’s your records, man? Do you own a record? Where’d you get that file from? Did you download it? Did you record it from a record? Did you own the record before?” It's an art for me, and that’s what killed the art for me. Call me a purist, I guess. That's what I am.  I loved the art form of what being a DJ is – or was. From having to go out and find the source on a vinyl record opposed to downloading or stealing it from a friend who gives it to you on his jump drive. That’s kind of what DJing has become: it’s just plastic, sugar-coated, microwaved DJing now.

So, where did you learn the art?

Back in the day, I started breakdancing in the ‘80s and the music that I was hearing was being mixed with turntables. I finally got my hands on the equipment when I was living up in Iowa. There was a guy up there called Les Vennard who had equipment and he showed me how to mix. I just took it from there and ran with it. Being a drummer, I think, is what really helped a lot. Because most DJs that I know who are good DJs were drummers. They know how to keep time and understand measures and phrasing and bars. So that’s pretty much how I got good at it.

What kind of drumming did you do?

I started off with snare drum in grade school. I think it was in fourth grade or fifth grade. I got pretty good with that. I took private lessons, and then I got a drum set finally in sixth or seventh grade. From there I started learning the trap set and got good at separating, you know, left hand and right hand, foot, pedal. Then that escalated into me getting into mixing and stuff, then I just kind of gave the drums up. Which I probably shouldn’t have done, but I could always buy another set. I'm rusty, that's for sure!

Did you ever play with a band?

No, I played with kids in high school. I had some friends up in Iowa back when Metallica was really hot, back in the 80s. They would all come to my house [...] and we would all be there just ripping it [...] I loved rock. I loved a lot of that kind of stuff, but I was more of a hip-hop and funk type. I just love all kinds of music from Kiss to Metallica to Run DMC to Miles Davis. All kinds of different stuff. I just love music.

Cool. Tell us about your Club Vegas gig.

Club Vegas, that’s a gig that's laid-back thing for me, where I’m not really doing what I do as a showcase DJ. It gives me the ability to go in and play records that I haven’t played in years. Because it’s not really a showcase gig where people are standing there watching me on stage – I’m in a DJ booth. Which is fine. I enjoy that because right now, I’m home for the holidays. I’m taking it easy. I’m not doing a lot of traveling, and I enjoy being able to go in and just have a laid back night [....] and the people in the club are an older crowd. So, they know the music, and I’m not being hounded by a bunch of kids to play the newest Lil Wayne or any of the new garbage, as I call it, that’s out now. But it’s a lot of fun over there. It’s really picked up [...] It’s a lot of older music, a lot of older R&B and hip-hop...new-wave stuff, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Metallica, AC/DC [...] I’ll even play some funk and soul, some salsa breaks cause it’s a laid back thing [...] Thursdays I’m doing disco and 80’s retro. Friday and Saturdays, just whatever, I read the crowd. We’re trying to build that club up for older people to come and enjoy it. I’ll cut loose a little bit cause people will come in and say, “hey, we want to hear you scratching and mixing....” And I’ll do it for a little bit, then I’ll go back and let it breathe. I usually play for 3 hours, from 10 to 1. I might rip it up the first hour, the second hour, and I usually smooth it out to the end of the night.

So that’s going to be a regular thing for the new year?

Yeah, we started it up and thought I was just going to do it thru the new year, but it looks like I’m going to be around for a little longer than I thought. I’ve had another opportunity. I think I’m going to start my own DJ school. But for right now, I am going to be playing over at Club Vegas on the weekends. I may not do Thursdays anymore. It just depends. We just really need to market it more. The place is kind of hidden, too. It’s behind Sonic on South Campbell.

Yeah, it is (former Mixology location). So, your DJ school: tell us about that.

I’ve had a lot of people in the Midwest come to me and just say, “Can you teach me?” And I’m like, “No, I don't teach it. I don’t really have time to do it. I don’t really want to do it.” But, the more I thought about it, I thought that while I’m here, maybe I should just start a school – do a DJ school. So I’ve decided that’s something I’m going to move on. I just got to figure out a location. I might even do it in here. Just clean this up, and I’m going to build an octagon-shaped table that will hold several different stations – at least four different stations. And just have turntables or CD mixers at each different station. Just teach kids, or parents the basics, whoever wants to learn it, the basics on how you mix music, the do’s and don’ts. I don’t know how big it would be here, but they’ve got a school in New York, Miami and California that does really well. Of course, I won't be that big, but for the Midwest and Springfield, I think it would really be.  I just need to think about how I would teach it.

I've heard about you for a long time, and I know that you’ve traveled all over. How has Springfield changed and how has traveling changed you?

As far as how Springfield has changed with the culture of music, I don’t think it’s just Springfield.  When you take music, I don’t want to be negative about it, but let’s go back to ’92 or ’93 in Springfield as far as the music scene goes. I think there was more support back then with local bands, and people going out were more cultured in wanting to hear a DJ or hear a band. The clubs were more popping, and we didn’t have as many clubs. Things just seemed to be a little more hip than it is now. To me now things are just a little bit more sugar-coated. You go to a bar, and it’s almost like you get the same thing. I think that’s why a lot of people got burned out on the whole dancing thing, the whole going out to hear a DJ. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that every DJ plays the same music. The older crowd doesn’t really have a place they can go to hear older stuff mixed in. I don’t wanna hang out in a bar with a bunch of teeny boppers listening to Lil Wayne. The music doesn’t move me. It’s not fun, there’s more drama, there’s more fighting. To me, people go out to be seen and not just go out to be themselves and have a good time. And I’m not talking just in Springfield, to me that’s the way it is every city because of what the media has done to music and to what it stands for. They found out they can go into a studio and make music now in five minutes and sell it. They pour syrup on {expletive} and call it pancakes, to put it bluntly. (Sorry if you can't print that) and everybody's biting in to it. That's the one thing I've noticed, as far as me being from Springfield and being a DJ all my life and starting here, the energy in nightclubs and dancing is not what it used to be. It's just more people wanting to be seen and hear their favorite songs. It's not about the DJ on stage mixing records anymore. It's just not as cool. I hate to say that, but it's just not as cool anymore. But as far as touring, my first tour was in '99 with Garbage and Lit those two bands and that was on the MTV Campus Invasion tour. Left here in October and the tour lasted until the day before Thanksgiving. I did a lot of other things in between [...] I opened up for some underground hip-hop groups, The Pharcyde, Ice-T, Tone-Loc, some of those guys. The other big thing I did was with 311 in 2003. That was a couple of months that I was out on the road with them and that was really, really fun.

Do you think this was a result of your winning DJ competitions, getting your name out there, getting the reputation?

What really sparked my career was what they call a mashup now, which is where you'll hear a rock song or a jazz song or something totally different being mixed, taking hip-hop and mixing it with rock, taking jazz and mixing it with breakbeat. I was known for doing that onstage live with records. Of course, that's all there was then, so there was really no way to cheat or do it any other way. So, I did an album in 1999 with Z-Trip out of Phoenix, Arizona. The whole thing is what they now would call a mashup album. Back then, we never even heard of that...didn't know what mashup is. We termed it blending, we were mixing records. And that album made a bunch of noise, took off. Then next thing you know, it was cool to mix rock and 80's with hip-hop. There was a lot of so-called hip-hop heads that clowned it, that made fun of it at the time. And those same people today are trying to do it. You were talking bad about it. You didn't like Tears for Fears...but now you're trying to do it cause you knew we were onto something. To me, you just have too many clowns in the DJ game, there's some good stuff out there, but ninety-nine percent of it is garbage. It's like trying to put two pieces of the puzzle together and force 'em together. Either you have an ear for it or your don't [...] I miss Springfield because it's home.  My family's here. But as far as the music scene goes, I can't say much about the music scene. Probably the most hip thing going on in Springfield right now as far as music goes is the Black Box Review. Those guys have a following and they're playing different stuff. They're playing some decent stuff. I'd rather go hear them play than go hear top 40. I don't care for top 40 anymore cause it all sounds the same. Now, I have it and I play it, cause like tomorrow night I'll have a bag of it in case my stuff doesn't work.... 

Tell me about this gig, what you're doing tomorrow night. It's New Year's Eve in downtown Kansas City somewhere?

Yeah, it's the Crosstown Station in the Power and Light district.

So, how do you prepare for a gig?

Man, it's a lot of hours. I'll be up to 6 in the morning probably. When you leave, I'll go to the gym. I'll go home and eat, then I'll be back up here getting all my set ready. I mean, I know pretty much where my set's going.  It's this right here (grabs a stack of vinyl).

And you're headlining it?

Yeah. There's a band and then there's me. And I'll be doing whatever it is I want to do, basically. But the thing is, you never know what kind of people are going show up, so I always have that crate of records to save me if it's falling a part. Or depending on my mood, I can get on the mic and tell people, “there's the door you came in and you can leave out of....” {laughs} It just depends [...] you don't want to run the club dry. But that's the thing a lot of people don't realize: you're an artist.  You're not a DJ. This type of DJing, I can't even call it 'DJing.' We're not DJs. We're turntablists. We're artists. We manipulate music and we feel it in a certain way. A DJ is just someone who pushes buttons; it's like being a jukebox. That's what a lot of people don't understand when they're going into a nightclub: if you go into a nightclub and you're requesting songs, you're being a pest. Because half the people that do request songs, they already have the CD or they have it in their Ipod. Or it's been played on the radio twelve times or fifty million times a day. And you're just like “Yo! Just enjoy! If it's a hot song and you're in a top 40 club, you're going to hear it. But I'm not going to play it at 9:00 o'clock when no one's even here.” We used to complain about that in Vegas: like, requests are so lame! Just enjoy yourself; let the DJ bring the music to you. That's the thing now: those days are over. Now everyone is a robot. The industry has made them into robots. When you get these teeny-boppers in a club, they expect to hear what they know. You can't take 'em down a dirt road anymore with that record to make 'em go “oh, I remember back in the day!” As long as we had records that we know were good and records that we knew had energy, you could drop a record that no one in the club knew and they went crazy! THAT was what made DJing DJing. Because you're delivering, you’re educating and delivering a record to everyone that they'd never heard.

Ah, this is good stuff, man.  I like that...

DJP: You know what I'm saying. That's what being a DJ was: it was introducing that song or that record that no one knew and they would never known unless the DJ played it. But now, it's not about that. It's all about what's hot on the radio and what's hot on MTV and VH1 and BET, and to me, most of that's garbage. Lemma drop a record for you that just came out by a group called “People Under the Stairs,” which is a good, underground hip-hop group[...] And the thing that I love is when someone will come up and say, “hey, what is that last track you played?” See? And you tell 'em...

So it's the reverse!

And you tell 'em it was the People Under the Stairs. They take notes and find out who that band is. And to me, that's the love of music. It's to be able to share it with people who get it.

Thanks again to DJP for giving some insight into his DJ artistry. Best of luck in all your future projects.

First published for EatSpringfield.com in January 2011.