For those of you not in the district, you might be hearing the name, and being confused. That’s ok, you’re about to find out. Will Eastman has been holding it down for the district for over 8 years with one of the best monthly dance parties in the country. And now, with that experience under his belt, he’s hard at work finishing up his solo debut, and planning his nationwide tour. If you don’t know Will Eastman, you’re about to get familiar.

JM: First of all what’s up?

Will Eastman: Just chillin with Vinyl Meltdown. How are you?

JM: I’m good. Thanks for having me out. Right off the bat tell me about Blisspop…what’s the idea behind the event?

Will Eastman: Bliss Dance Party started 8 years ago, and the idea was to bring dance music to rock venues in a no- attitude environment, no velvet rope. And since then a whole indie dance culture has developed which didn’t exist 8 years ago. Basically the idea is just to have—our motto is “No attitude. Just fun insane dancing.” And we play an eclectic format, everything from techno, hip hop, electro, indie, 90s classics…basically whatever makes the floor move. So that’s the basic concept.

*pause for interruption from random drunk guy talking about his jailbroken iPhone*

JM: You actually have a bit of a family background with nightculbs… tell me a little bit about that.

Will Eastman: My mom managed nightclubs when I was growing up, and so I was always around music and jukeboxes and musicians and late hours…so it’s kind of in my blood.

JM: What effect did that have on you going into the music industry?

Will Eastman: Well, I think I was always around music so it sort of…I didn’t know any other background than to listen music, to dance, to have parties, to have a good time. So I just thought that’s how everybody lived. And it wasn’t until later when I read about people whose religions forbid them from dancing or listening to music, and I just like wow that’s crazy. But that’s the basic effect. In terms of a more long term effect, I think it gave me a bit of a leg up. There were two things– I have a sister who’s much older than I and my parents were involved in nightclubs so from an early age it just never seemed like I was too young to do anything because I was always hanging out in clubs and playing in bands when I was 15 and promoting shows when I was 17. I never waited for anyone to tell me “Okay you’re old enough to do this now.” I did college radio when I was in high school…so I just did it when the opportunity arose. Also, just being around the nightlife environment, I learned at an early age how to behave in that type of environment. And I think unfortunately a lot of people don’t have nightlife skills…they sort of just do whatever they want. There’s sort of a culture of nightlife…there’s acceptable behavior, there’s unacceptable behavior.

JM: And you’ve been doing this for 8 years now… Any certain events stand out in particular? what’s been the highlight?

Will Eastman: There’s a couple…Definitely Moby dj-ing our inauguration party in January was huge. He played really well. But also because the power went out during his set, so he and I ended up banging on plastic garbage cans, beer kegs, and metal sheets that the 9:30 club staff assembled…for about 15 minutes to a crowd of 1200 people in the dark. And it was pretty surreal, but he was a really good sport about it. But eventually the power came back on and we were able to continue the show. It was just one of those situations where you can’t plan for it in advance. It just happens, and you roll with it. Actually, it was great…the power was out for an hour, and nobody left. Which is pretty crazy if you think about it. Normally if the power’s out, people will leave after 30 minutes. They’ll give up…but nobody gave up. And those who stuck around were rewarded when Moby came back on and killed it.

JM: And I guess conversely, what’s been the biggest Blisspop nightmare?

Will Eastman: Um, fortunately [we] haven’t had any real nightmares. There have been occasions where drunk people have killed the power or I’ve had somebody spill a beer on my head—not on purpose—while I was dj-ing. I’ve had drunk people land on the tables and do all kinds of crazy stuff to the equipment. But nothing, fortunately, that we couldn’t recover from pretty quickly.

JM: So now that you’ve really become one of the premier DJs in the city, and now you’re working on a full length album. Can you give me some details about that?

Will Eastman: Sure. I have a couple of different projects. I have a new remix that’s coming out officially in May…it’ll be on the Internet in a couple of weeks…called “So Damn High.” This band from Athens, GA and Minneapolis called the Ruby Isle. Then I have a 12” coming out this summer. An original house, disco funk track called “Feelin” which Tittsworth is going to remix. And then I have this full length album project, which has been ongoing. I started recording it in September..it’s coming along really well. I’m having different guest vocalist sing on it, and I’ll probably end up putting out one or two 12 inches before that comes out. But I think the record is going to be a surprise for people who hear me dj and who’ve heard my remixes. It’s not like other stuff I’ve done before.

So being a promoter for so long, do you have a lot friends from that who are going to be on the record. Or is it just mostly people that you got acquainted with locally. Can you name any names about who’s going to be on there?

Will Eastman: I can’t really say who’s going to be on it at this point because it’s still in process, but it’s going to be a lot people that I’ve worked with through dj-ing. A few people are people I’ve booked at Blisspop events, and it’s not really so much that I got to know them because I booked them. I like to work with my friends so a lot of times it’s bands of DJs that I’m friends with, or we’ve been sharing remixes or music with in the past and then we end up working together. It’s a lot of family people, some DC people, a lot of out-of-town people. But I’d say probably half of them have come through Blisspop in the past.

JM: You said the style on the album is going to be surprising to people who have listened to your sets and stuff. Can you describe the production style at all?

Will Eastman: I spent a lot of time playing in bands. I started my first band when I was 15, and I played guitar and bass. When I started recording this record, I envisioned it as an all- dance record, an all- club record. And I realized really quickly as I started writing songs and producing that you can take the boy out of the indie rock but you can’t necessarily take the indie rock out the boy. So there’s some actual live guitar and bass playing and singing…so it’s actual songs. It’s not just vocal samples that we’re cutting up…not to disparage that at all. But these are actual songs—there’re verses, choruses, bridges, harmonies. So I think if somebody just heard my remixes they’d probably be surprised if they came back and heard the record.

JM: Tell me a little bit more about your background with bands.

Will Eastman: I played in a band called The Secret History that was together from about 1999 to 2002. We released a record. We sort of like an indie- rock/pop band. We sounded a bit like The Go Betweens meets The Smiths, and I sang and played guitar. Before that, I played in punk bands when I was in high school. I came from a hardcore punk background…I was a big fan of Dischord Records. In fact, our band opened up for a couple of Dischord acts. We opened up for Seven Seconds and JFA…a bunch of hardcore bands that we really admired at the time, and we were all really young, like 16 or 17 years old. And again, it was just this attitude of “no one’s telling us to do this. we’re doing this on our own.” And we were making music for fun, really high energy music. And we got to play in a lot clubs with a lot of professional musicians who gave us a lot of really good tips, and that was my background as a DJ. You know, I started playing indie rock music in rock clubs. The idea was have a no-attitude, no velvet rope dance party. Because back then basically you had a few choices. You could either listen to house music, hip hop, top 40, or retro music…like 80s parties. But nobody was really playing dance punk or indie rock or electro pop in venues. So that’s basically the gist of my DJ motto. It’s like punk DIY meets dance music.

More DC content, on its way. Keep the site on lock!

peace,
-the judge

Posted on April 16th, 2009 under Music • Tags: 9:30 club, black cat, blisspop, dc, dc week 2009, dischord, moby, ruby isle, secret history, the go betweens, the smiths, tittsworth, will eastman. • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback