The Residents Series has been by far one of our most interesting features on When We Dip this year with everyone from Anek (VIva Warriors) to Lewis Boardman of Circus joining us for a forthright chat and of course the obligatory mix. Now for the first time we move stateside as we welcome the multi talented Devon James of NYC. A resident at a number of the city’s upcoming parties including Codes House with Codes himself and his very own RVDIOVCTIVE a name which has been attracting widespread plaudits and more than a few well known fans he is the ideal candidate for version IX of our series. Alongside his residencies Stewart has also found time to play a significant role in the latest album of the legendary Felix Da Housecat, a surefire indication of his undoubted talents in the studio. We caught up with the budding talent recently to discuss his role as a resident in today’s world and his burgeoning career in underground music.
WWD : Thanks for taking the time to chat Devon! We’re delighted to have you featuring in our Residents Series. First question from us, bring us back to the start, how did u get involved in djing?
-Thank you so much for having me!! Well, I think the first time I ever touched a pair of decks was probably at Guitar Center when I was 11 or 12. I’ve been playing guitar since the age of 9 and would always go in to music stores for hours and hours messing with equipment. When I was 13 or 14 I recorded my bands 3-track EP on a 4 track recorder I found at a garage sale. I’ve always been the type of person that just messes with stuff and figures out how things work. I even used to take about computers and remote controls to see how they worked and if I could put them back together.
When I was 18 I would hang out a lot with my sister and her friends who were all 3-4 years older than me. We were living together in Boston and one of our friends had a residency on Tuesday nights at this bar where he played Reggae, Ska, and Rocksteady on 45s. In the USA the drinking age is 21 so I used to help lug the gear into the venue so it looked like I was there to play music and they never carded me or asked me my age. I would stand behind him for hours watching what he was doing and trying to just figure out how everything worked. It was around this time when Justice released their first full length album, Cross. That blew my mind open and I started diving deep into the world of dance music. I knew about Daft Punk and listened to some industrial stuff like Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, and even Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers, but that Justice album is what really broke me into the scene. A few months after that I was a freshman at Syracuse University and I had this huge PA system I would take out into the quad and play music all day. People would come up to me and asked where I DJ’d and I if I could do their organization’s event. I ended up playing a lot of campus functions and formals for Frats and Sororities and that kind of stuff. By sophomore year we lived in campus apartments and threw parties that I DJ’d probably every weekend. The parties got busted up so many times and campus security used to ask if we were trying to break some sort of record, haha. I was cutting my teeth there but I also had a band during this time and was really focused on that too. It wasn’t until my friend and fashion designer, Timothy Westbrook, asked me to compose original music for a fashion show he was putting together, completely on his own. He organized this whole show and it was a really awesome experience. His idea for the show was super conceptual and I had to match that with the music. I would be in the studio and would have to walk to the music as if I were the model on the catwalk. It was a eye opening experience that made me realize I could not only DJ but play music I had composed myself. I was already producing beats in Logic for about two years by the time I started DJing but I never really thought to try and play my own stuff out.
In my junior year I met John Kunz in an audio production class. We really hit it off and spent a whole summer DJing, pretty much non stop. I remember there was one night we were partying and DJing for like 16 hours. I actually fell asleep at one point, then woke up and started DJing again. We formed Chemicals of Creation and won a bunch of DJ competitions which led to some opportunities like opening for Steve Aoki back in 2008 or 2009. After that we became the go to support act for any DJ or electronic act coming to our area, then that led to more bookings outside of Syracuse.
WWD : You currently hold two residencies firstly as part of the steadily building Codes House alongside Codes himself perhaps more importantly at your very own night Rvdiovctive which has been going from strength to strength. How did those opportunities come about? Have they provided a solid platform from which you can build your career?
-RVDIOVCTIVE owes it’s inception to Dubspot, really. We all met because we were working there together. There were a few of us who would hang out, go to shows, and make music together. We ended up living together in this huge loft apartment and threw a few parties there. It was Pierce who was like lets make this into something real. He came up with the name and the fish logo. At that time there was Me, Pierce, James, Brian, Jon, Jim, AJ, Ben, and Lubo. Then we brought in my good friend Matt who is an incredible designer and artist. My sister, Amanda was the final addition to the crew. She has helped us out a lot, she put up the money that allowed us to secure our WMC venue and has really help in finding non-musicial performers. Our third party was a massive success, A-Trak even showed up. After that we knew we had to relocate to a legit venue and found our homebase at the newly opened Tutu’s in Bushwick Brooklyn. Apart from Tutu’s we’ve also done parties at Brooklyn hot spots Verboten, Cameo and Brooklyn Bowl. Doing these parties has been huge for me because I have been able to book really dope artists that are new and interesting and we are like a family so we develop personal relationships with these artists too. It’s great because after every party you feel like you’ve made some great new friends. It’s also helped me, and all of us become known here in the NYC scene as tastemakers. We’ve gotten attention from some of the bigger clubs and promoters so it’s totally reassuring we are doing the right thing and popping up on the right peoples radar.
I also met Codes because of Dubspot. I remember the first day he came in we had a DJ instructor meeting and he was brand new. Before the meeting we were chatting about upstate New York. He mentioned he was from Rochester, which I’ve played a few times so between there, Buffalo and Syracuse we knew a lot of the same people and were chit chatting about that. In the meeting he introduced himself as Codes and I was like holy shit I know who you are, I play your shit!!! I used to see his stickers all over my neighborhood and It turned out that we lived across the street from each other. He was selling off a bunch of his vinyl so I went over one day and sat in his apartment digging for like 6 hours. Whenever he had a show I was there to show my support. We became pretty good friends, would go to shows together and we had him headline one of our parties at Tutu’s. He was one of the headliners of our first WMC party in 2013 and has played every WMC party since that in addition to headlining a bunch of our events in NYC. He told me he was starting up a new party early this year and asked if I wanted to be a part of it. Cody has been doing this a lot longer than me and knows a lot of the people in not just New York, but all over the country, who are very important to the underground movement that we are a part of. I am very grateful for the opportunity to play alongside him every month.
I’ve always believed that at it’s core RVDIOVCTIVE is really just a support system for my group of friends. I’ve always had this idea that if one person on the team does well, we all do well. I very much believe in the “everybody eats” mentality.
WWD : Talk to us about some of your fondest memories as a resident dj! Who are the guys who have impressed you behind the decks?
-Things got pretty crazy during our residency at Tutu’s – especially during the summer months. We’ve had Tony Quattro play a bunch of times because he is an absolutely animal behind the decks. Everytime he plays I’m drawn to the dancefloor for the entirety of his set. Jaw Jam played for us a while back and his set was really incredible. There was one time when my friend LeahV from Boston came to play and I made a joke about us playing topless. She didn’t take it as a joke and took off her shirt at some point in her set so I joined her behind the decks, sans shirt, for a topless b2b which was pretty legendary. There was another party when Tutu’s had this new manager, he was an ass clown and really didn’t understand what we had going on. At the end of the party I got on the mic (maybe somewhat encouraged by Mezcal) and thanked everyone who came out while calling that manager out for being an asshole. He was fired the next day. We had MikeQ come out once, who I am a HUGE fan of. It was one of our slower nights because we were competing with EDC put he still played like the room was packed. I loved that set because there were maybe only 50 of us or so but because of the vibe it felt like 500. Same thing happened when we had Todd Terry at Verboten a few months back. We did a free show and it started earlier, I think around 7 or 8pm. There were maybe only 100 people there and I was super bummed because it was a big deal for us but the energy of the people who were there was nothing short of incredible. There wasn’t one person in that room who wasn’t on the dancefloor that night. This year at WMC, Mija blew my mind. I knew she was dope but hearing her play live was something else. This year for my birthday JPatt from the Knocks played a set of some amazing throwbacks like Wayne Wonder and shit. That was such a fun night. WMC is one of my favorite events too because we all rent a house together for the week and it’s like a retreat for us. Every year we end up at Diddy’s after party because Felix always plays and I’ve been lucky enough to play a few times too. I’m able to invite our friends, including the artists that play our party so that is always something we look forward to.
WWD : Can you give us a little insight into what the vibe at Rvdiocvtive is and how you as both curator and of course resident go about establishing it?
-RVDIOVCTIVE is a multi-media artist collective. We are composed of musicians, djs and producers as well as filmmakers, painters, and all sort of visual artists. We also have been doing some things with what we call character artists, for example we had performance artist, Kristen Leonard, dressed up as a Soviet zombie communist; we have mermaids at our WMC pool party. They swim around and dance in the pool and people love getting their picture taken with them.
We started off by just having friends come over to our different loft apartments and we threw parties where we would have our friends painting a mural while we played music. We also set up cameras all over the party and released time-lapses from these events. We’ve been evolving and really finding our identity over the past few years and events but overall we are looking to offer new and unique ways of interacting with arts, music, film, and various other forms of media. We believe in the power that art contributes towards social movements and ideas. We strongly advocate a culture of participation and seek to transcend the role of the audience from that of a stagnant observer to that of an active member. We try to make everyone feel welcomed and comfortable. We’ve been blessed that pretty much everyone who attends our events do so with an open mind and so the vibe is really fantastic.
WWD: What are the long term plans for the party, we know you guys held a pretty widely lauded shindig in Miami this year!
-Oh yeah, WMC this year was bonkers. Definitely our biggest, most ambitious party to date. That party was incredible because there was a tropical storm in the middle of the day, about 200 squeezed together under the festival tent covering the DJ booth and we literally had people hanging from the tent so it wouldn’t blow away. At the same time there were all these girls twerking and everyone was going wild. NGHTMRE and Meaux Green were playing at this time and they seriously held it down. I was worries people would leave with the rain but they turned it up! Lucky for us because after them we had Astronomar, Cassian, Codes, Felix Da Housecat, Mija, and Jauz.
We plan to just keep the momentum going with all of that. We did Art Basel in Miami last year too and are planning to return for that. That event suits our vibe the best because we can really show off the filmmakers and visual/graphic artists we work with. One of the co-founders Pierce, started a festival in his hometown of Buffalo, NY so we are providing some support for that; we’ve got a new Manhattan rooftop residency for a happy hour party; definitely going to be doing Miami again and we are in talks with venues in San Francisco and Providence, RI to do RVDIOVCTIVE shows out there. We are also sponsoring different events and projects too! You can stay up to date by following our page on facebook or our website, www.rvdiovctive.com
WWD : You recently smashed it alongside you pal Felix Da Housecat in what is one of New Yorks finest spots Verboten, what was that like?
– I absolutely adore Verboten. Best club NYC has seen in a while, hands down. The staff are all amazing – super friendly, accommodating, and everyone right down to the security is into the music there. I got to play for 2.5 hours so I really got to take the crowd on a journey and I got some of great feedback and reviews from that show. My friend Alex Blake, a writer at OnlyTheBeat.com gave me a lot of praise, saying that my set was one of the best he’s seen and one to remember. When I went backstage the bartender showed me a text he sent to his brother that was like “get here now, this opener is killing it.” That felt amazing because I am a frequent visitor to Verboten and really wanted to show them what I got. I just really played my heart out and I think it definitely paid off. mixcloud.com/devonjamesstewart/live-from-verboten-brooklyn-ny-july-2nd-2015/
WWD : That brings us along to our next question nicely, what was it like to work with Felix on his new album (which has been getting amazing reviews). Which tracks specifically did you work on?
-Working with Felix has been an insane, wild ride. Sometimes I forget that I am only 26 because of the experiences I’ve had with him. He always says I’ve gotten his 30 years of experience in 3 years, I think it feels more like 50 years, haha. I started working with him in October of 2011 as his tour manager because of my expertise with Traktor. I got to travel all around the US, Mexico, Europe and even India within my first year of working with him. The more time we spent together the more things he found out I could do. We played this super random show in Cleveland – the party was on a Saturday and I think I got the call about it on Thursday so it was all super last minute. It was a private party for someone who had recently graduated from College but it was being put on by these people who had just started an indie record label in Brooklyn. They made what I thought at the time was a joke to Felix that he should sign a deal with them to do record. By the end of the night we were sitting in their suite at the hotel talking seriously about it. A few weeks later Felix asked me if I wanted to be a part of the team to make the album. We started production at the end of September 2012. The label owned this 4-story apartment in Manhattan that used to be the residence of Ashlee Simpson. This place was huge and we moved in, furnished the whole place and built out a studio in the basement. It was Felix, his wife and two kids, one of whom was only a few weeks old, Maurice Tamraz, Travis Cross, myself and then later Felix’s inlaws came to stay with us too. It was a FULL house to say the least. We got to work the very first night of being there. I remember we were watching Saturday Night Live and Frank Ocean was the musical guest. Felix was like, “Man I need a beat like Frank Ocean. Then we went into the studio and started writing Codeine Cowboy.” It was really great living and working in the same place because you could just get to work whenever inspiration hit. Me and Maurice would sleep in the studio and really never stopped working on stuff. After about 6 weeks everyone everyone else left the house, but I stayed there until March of 2013, keeping the ship running. One of the most amazing experiences during that time was working with Lee “Scratch” Perry. After seeing the Bob Marley documentary Felix wanted to learn more about Lee Perry. He found Perry’s “The Upsetter” documentary and I remember we had just met up in the airport someplace when he told me he watched the film. He was like, “Man, do you know who Lee Perry is?” My dad is the keyboard player in the Skatalites and I grew up listening to that stuff so I absolutely knew who Lee was. He and the Skatalites actually had the same agent, as I explained to Felix. Felix wanted to get him for a track so I contacted his agent Val Wolfe. The last time I talked to Val was when I was about 12 years old I had to make a business call for my dad. It was like my whole life came full circle for this one collaboration. We recruited my dad to play keys on the track and Andy Bassford, who has played with pretty much every legendary Jamaican musician there is – including a pretty impressive run with Toots and the Maytal, to play guitars and bass. Lee agreed to come into the studio for a few hours when he was in town to play a show. The timing of this all was just so bizare because what are the chances that all of us ended up being in New York at the same time, it was the clearly sign on fate that I have ever encountered. However, I was becoming weary because Lee canceled on us the first day, I had to go to his hotel to meet with him and his wife to convince him to come the next day. This was a little upsetting for me at the time because I had this planned out to the t, I had one of my biggest gigs – direct support for Avicii on the day that we had to record. I had to call up the promoter the night before and explain I had a huge opportunity I couldn’t pass up and had to cancel. The session was magical, even Lee himself said that we were brought together by a special force to make music together. Those are some memories I will never ever forget.
That was only the tip of the iceberg though. We continued working on this album in Atlanta, Ibiza, Belgium and Vienna. I was in charge of our mobile studio set up and had to lug around our synths and soundcard on planes, trains and automobiles all the time. Its funny because I have the most distinct memory of walking through the Madrid airport trying to balance the Access Virus, my bag, and a Maschine controller. By the time I got to Ibiza I had bruises all over myself just from carrying the gear. I got to spend two summers in Ibiza working on the album which again is a memory I will hold on to forever. We had some of the wildest adventures out there. Felix and I would lock ourselves in the studio for hours on end, sometimes even days, in a room, just he and I, writing, arranging, recording vocals, and mixing tunes. Writing about it now it seems crazy because here I am now 26 – I was 24 and 25 at the time and I was working with Felix, a 43 year old living legend. He and I grew to be great friends because of this experience. Felix’s wife Nese has been like a second sister to me and his kids call me Uncle Devon. It’s all really unbelievable to me but I am just so humbled by it all and just so thankful that I have been able to learn so much in such a short period of time. I also met so many awesome people that have become great friends and professional contacts, aside from Travis and Maurice who I already mentioned: Dan and Marybeth at X-Mix Productions; David De Valera and Marcus from Circulate Online, Jay Pidgeon, Chris Barrat aka Eagles and Butterflies, Chris Groove. I’ve also got to make a HUGE shout out to Hugo and Luis from Flamingo Studio in Ibiza. I fucking love those guys so much and they have an amazing space where we spent so much time working on this album.
I have credits on 8 of the 11 tracks on Felix’s new album. I also have some additional production credits on “I Just Want to Be a Lesbian” and that Ali Love “Another” remix. Apart from that, I shot and produced the music video for The Natural. I went to Felix’s house in London and shot his stuff in his backyard then flew to Switzerland to film with Lee at his house, another magical experience. The video was in jeopardy of being made thanks to the lovely people at EasyJet. They lost my green screen and tripod and I only had a window of a few hours to film with Lee. I ended up saying fuck it and just drove to his house to try and make due with whatever I could. My idea was to just film him on a white background but he actually had a green bed sheet and these tubes that we were able to make a frame out of so we had this makeshift green screen that totally worked. It really freaked me out how perfectly everything came together for the song and the video. Also, one of my best friends in the entire world, Jon Conklin (who is also a part of RVDIOVCTIVE), directed the video. He absolutely killed it, I’m really excited for the world to see that.
Here are my full credits from the album:
Looking for a Reason – Additional Production & Engineering
Codeine Cowboy – Engineering
The Natural feat. Lee Perry – Producer, Engineering & Mixing
Candy Talk – Additional Production & Engineering
Karma’s Catching Hell – Additional Production & Engineering, Drum Programming
Queer – Engineering
Turn Off The Television – Additional Production & Engineering
Devon’s Box – Additional Production and Engineering.
WWD: Have you been in the studio much yourself recently?
– Yeah, actually I’ve been getting material together and ideas out for my own artist album. I’m planning on taking 3-4 months off around December to really focus on tying that all together. Hopefully it’s not another 3 year process like Felix’s album but I definitely want it to showcase my range of taste and production skills so I want to take my time with it. Other than that I have been turning out a bunch of singles and remixes. I’ve been colab-ing with a bunch of really dope artists too. I’ve been working a lot with a good friend of mine DJ Tantric of Planet Rump, they are booty shaking experts; Gary Curran of The Japanese Popstar & Confute; DKDS (Safer at Night); Will OB; and Gromo, one of my 17 year old students from NYC who is making waves with the Ultra Music Festival family. I also have some tunes of my own that feature Lee “Scratch” Perry, Felix Da Housecat, and my dad is even playing keys on a few tunes of mine. I’ve also been working a lot with my friend Maurice Tamraz, who I met working on Felix’s album. We’ve got a track coming out on his label, Dark Side, on September 4th. I’m super pumped for that because we’ve got some awesome remixes from our good friends Codes, MING, and Tony Quattro. They all killed it.
WWD : Before we leave you, give us the big dates coming up in your diary for the next few months!
-Every Tuesday at Hotel Chantelle in NYC (Resident)
-August 20th @ The Dolphin w/ Alex Burkat & Diamond Girl; Philadelphia, PA https://www.facebook.com/events/421702288014127/
-I will also be in Japan and Bali for Ultra Music Festival from September 17-26th, I have no confirmed bookings there yet, hopefully playing some after parties and stuff.
Follow Devon James on Facebook // Soundcloud
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