I have really fond memories of growing up in Chicago, and I always love going back. I still have a lot of really good friends from high school that I go to dinner with. It's kind of become a tradition when I go out there to do a show to give a few friends a call, tell some funny stories about high school and walk down memory lane.
The producers and writers of dance music are becoming the stars, not so much the DJs.
It's interesting: in the late '80s, there was this really random mix of new wave, industrial, and these early house records. And a lot of it was coming out of Chicago because of Wax Trax! So I always visited Wax Trax Records.
I think that most people who hire me to do a remix just want it to work in a nightclub, whereas when I'm writing my own album, I don't have to worry so much about 2 A.M.
As a kid, my parents had the typical stuff going on in the home, like Bee Gees, The Carpenters. Then I got exposed to what my brothers were listening to: a lot of classic rock, Led Zeppelin. It was around the mid-'80s when the whole Electro-Techno-Pop-House music thing started happening in Chicago.
Listening to music is such an uplifting, spiritual thing. It's far-fetched to some - I understand that. But the way dance music brings people together, it's not a big stretch from hymns.
I think people look at dance music and see it as kind of a bad thing, and bad people hang out in nightclubs, but it never felt that way for me. Growing up in Chicago, music was the thing that saved me, that kept me on the straight and narrow.
I'm a person who has always been clear about my love of music and vocal about trying to live in a way that lends itself to health.
When I can control my own show, I want the price to be affordable so fans can actually see me. It's a challenge because I have to do a lot of navigating to make the production stellar but do it on a realistic budget.
To do more of a concert thing, it takes so much preparation. You don't just show up and wing it. You're putting countless hours in the studio, not just to write and produce stuff, but to come up with edits and special things for the show.
Music leaves such a big impression. I always wondered, 'Man, if I grew up in Nashville, would I be making Country records now?' I honestly feel like Chicago had such a big impact on me.
I do feel like there's a level of ridiculousness going on in electronic music... It's getting borderline absurd out there.
There is so much great talent in the underground, and electronic music is finally getting the props that it's deserved for so long. I feel like now that everyone is discovering it and it's so fresh sounding to so many people. It doesn't get any more rock n' roll than playing EDC or the Staples Center. It's really madness.
I don't feel that electronic music has to stand on the back of urban artists or anyone else to be recognized. It's great music.
It's weird, when I go back to San Francisco, the few times that I've done shows there since leaving, it still feels like I live there. It's very, very strange for me. That's where my daughter was born, at UCSF. I have this huge attachment to San Francisco. It's like a love affair.
I'm more of an artist and a songwriter than I am a DJ. That word seems a little bit - well, it doesn't really describe what I do.
People book me because of the songs I write, not because of the sets that I play, per se... I'm sure I'm going to be moving to a laptop really soon, but I was one of the last guys to let the vinyl go. I was crying. In my room, I still have thousands of records. I still pull them out and play them all the time.
I think people in electronic music are trying to get these big features: 'Oh my gosh, I'm gonna get the biggest pop star to feature on my track.'
The art of DJing is sharing music with one another... The technology's definitely taking it into a new direction to where it's really becoming performance-based.
Club culture is about leaving your cares behind, and I am trying to create that environment.
