How did you get your start with DJ’ing?
I’ve been DJ’ing for 13-14 years. It started out as a distraction. I made mix tapes for myself with no real intention of taking it anywhere serious. At the time, I was bartending/bar-backing at Clutch Cargo’s. One week the manager at Clutch needed somebody to fill in downstairs and word had gotten out that I was making mixt apes. They knew me. So, they asked me to fill in. I shouldn’t have done it because my skills and technical ability were below par. But, I guess it went over pretty well and I got asked to do it the following week and eventually, it turned into a residency.
How did you go from having a residency at Clutch Cargo’s to traveling the world with your music?
The residency quickly evolved into more gigs and one residency led to another. By 2002, I was approached by that time period’s largest club in metro-Detroit to be their main room Saturday night resident. That led to playing next to all the major DJs like Paul Oakenfold, Tiesto and Armin van Buuren. I began receiving offers to play in cities like Cleveland, Chicago and Toronto and the demand kept spreading.
By 2005, I was producing my own records and Paul Oakenfold began picking up some of my tracks for his sets. I knew some people who knew him and in 2006, I signed with his label, Perfecto Records. We, then, toured together through 2011. At the same time, I was putting records out on my own, on Perfecto and other labels. Through that, doors opened to the rest of the world. I’ve been touring worldwide relentlessly for the past seven years.
You’ve traveled the world and had opportunities all over the country. What’s kept you living in Detroit?
I can have that just about anywhere. The main reason I’ve stayed in Detroit is because there’s a mentality in Detroit that you can’t find anywhere else. The more I travel, the more I realize that fact. I think that comes from being an industrial/blue-collar city. We’ve had a tougher go which creates this mentality of you have to make it happen yourself.
Since you started DJ’ing in the early 2000’s how has the scene changed?
I’ve been through three of what I call cycles, where every five years the dance scene changes. Coming out of the 90s, the music was very drug-oriented. The U.S. government had just passed the Rave Act and nobody was throwing raves anymore so the parties died and went back into the clubs. It became more of an underground scene.
Then between 2005 and 2010, the scene started to grow again. The music had more substance and depth. Then we had the boom. Now we have all these big names doing dance music. It’s become very commercialized and gone from one end of the spectrum to the other, from absolutely underground to absolutely above ground.
How do you feel about techno and dance music being so commercialized?
From a business and marketing perspective, I like it. It gives us a better stage to share our art and reach a broader audience. We’ve never seen this many people interested in dance music. A lot of the popular tracks are so cookie cutter and generic, which is fine because it may bring in some 17-year-old who was listening to Britney Spears and is now listening to Calvin Harris. That person may enjoy what they hear because dance music provides a feeling that no other type of music does. Then, that person may wonder what’s next. Their taste matures and they end up looking for something deeper. The commercialization is bringing a wave of people into my scene who are going to look deeper and find someone like me or my peers.
The downside, though, is that now there’s a stigma coming up in the scene. Coming out of the 90s, we had the same thing. The scene got bigger and the music became about drugs and not about the journey and adventure through sound. It gives a bad overview of what the scene is and a lot of people are protesting the music instead of protesting the drug lifestyle. It’s ignorant because it’s only the top-end commercial stuff that is catering to these kids on drugs and encouraging them to act like a fool. Some of the top commercial artists are acting extremely reckless with their audience. They’re blatantly promoting drug usage to kids and my question is: Where is the responsibility? Don’t put it on a billboard. It leads to the casualness of drug use and I think that’s just idiotic.
So, why do you do what you do?
Because there is no better feeling than discovering a piece of music, being able to play it for your fans on a major stage and seeing them connect with that song the same way you did. It’s like sharing a secret. I have about 300 little secrets in my DJ bag that I can’t wait to share.
What are you up to these days?
I’m still working with Perfecto Records and Paul Oakenfold. I also started my own label, IAMPHOENIX. We’re on our seventh or eighth release and have monthly IAMPHOENIX parties in Detroit. I’m putting out four-five singles and doing five-six remixes a year for different artists while maintaining a pretty strenuous tour schedule.
What motivated you to start doing the IAMPHOENIX Monthly shows?
I wanted a place where I could play my truest sound. When I’m playing, my sound is affected by the time-slot, what city I’m playing, who I’m playing before or after and the venue. Sometimes I’m more house or trance or vocal. At these monthly shows, the record is 100% me. It’s a place where my truest fan base can come see me play and hear the sound that I want to play the most. That’s what my label is about: putting out records that speak from the heart.
You can catch Kenneth Thomas at this month’s IAMPHOENIX Show at the Grasshopper in Ferndale, this Saturday, Oct. 5. He will also be at Elektricity Nightclub on Oct. 25 with Gareth Emery and Elevation and Nov. 22 alongside Paul Oakenfold.
