DJ Ron: Actually I was going to ask you had you ever been called Choo Choo before, but you…
Hec Romero: Man, I've been called Baby Hec Choo Choo Romero, how about that one? I'm telling you, I'm not even kidding man. This kid in Philadelphia at a club gig says you wouldn't happen to be Baby Hec Cho Choo Romero? I said dude, are you drunk or what? You just intertwined three people in one. I got a kick out of it actually, I think he was messing with me anyway.
DJ Ron: So how do you make the jump from the Bronx right onto Def Mix?
Hec Romero: Yes, right, it kind of knocked on the door. Basically, I was pretty happening, I was doing my thing in the Bronx and representing it there. When you live in the Bronx and you come to Manhattan, to New York City, it's almost like coming to another country. It's only a few minutes away but the city life compared to the urban kind of Bronx life is a bit different and it's exciting when you come to Manhattan. I met up with some promoters that lived in the city and was doing a couple of parties at the Red Zone where David Morales was the resident DJ back in the early 90's. They decided to do a party on a holiday, like Labor Day weekend on the Sunday when Monday was a holiday and they teamed Morales and myself on the bill. It was the first time I had ever met Morales, I mean I had gone of course to the Red Zone for years, to hear him play, and also at Ten Eighteen and other clubs. We just hit it off on our first gig together, we never even met but we just hit it off. He enjoyed how I played and my personality, and it just went from there. Then he started asking me to play for him or be his opening guy at all the clubs that he played at in the city and we built up a great relationship. I was working at the time at a record company called Emotive Records, which was a small but popular label back in the Nervous/Strictly Rhythm days. Emotive was a very, very happening label. So I was working there for years and then Morales said that he wanted to open up a record company here at Def Mix and asked would I join him. Of course I said and here I am today, now partners with him on SAW Recordings, which is an amazing thing. I've been here eight years now.
DJ Ron: I notice you're more on like the label side and less on the production / remix side.
Hec Romero: Way less! I don't do any remix or production at all. It's not for me. I tried it a few years ago and I always say that I just sucked at it and just gave up. I thought I better concentrate on the business end of it which I like much better. I love sitting behind a computer, working with the producers and the remixers, doing the A&R and doing the background scene. It really tickles my fancy more than being the upfront remixer-producer superstar DJ. I mean, if I was a superstar DJ I wouldn't knock it, but it wasn't on the card I was dealt. I really like what I do, I like the state that I'm in. I'm happy that I can contribute to this, to what I do in this business and to give more to it and make this label happen. SAW Recordings is like my baby, my passion, and DJing is as well, and they go hand-in-hand, they really do. Because I'm traveling all the time, I am keeping my ears to the street and knowing what's happing in the crowd in the clubs and what people like which then reflects to the sound that we release on SAW Recordings.
DJ Ron: I want to go back to one thing, you say you didn't do any production or remixes but you actually remixed one of my all-time favorite records.
Hec Romero: Which one was that?
DJ Ron: E.G. Fullalove "Didn't I Know (Divas to the Dancefloor)."
Hec Romero: Oh my God, really, right on. Well that happened because I was working at Emotive Records and we licensed that record. The main mixes as you might know were by Junior Vasquez and then…
DJ Ron: It was all about your mix though, be honest…
Hec Romero: Yes, right on man, I appreciate that, that's cool. I mean it was cool, I mean I did that with Ceven Fisher and Cliff Saint-Cyr and we had a slamming time doing it. That was probably one of the few times that I enjoyed being in the studio because it was my early times of being in the studio and I thought it was something I really wanted to do. But after a couple of years of trying and hacking away in the studio, I found that it wasn't my passion or my calling and luckily I found what I wanted to do was be on the production end of things in the background, in the background production of it.
