You may know him as Blake Lewis from American Idol, but followers of underground dance music know him as B-Shorty, the beatboxing host of Seattle nightclubs who has performed with everyone from BT to Crystal Method. His new EP, How Many Words, features dance remixes by DJ Dan, Dave Aude, and Jake Benson. A fan of glitchy noise and IDM, you can hear more work from Blake as B-Shorty on KJ Sawka's drum and bass CD Cyclonic Steel and BT's upcoming album.
DJ Ron Slomowicz: Congratulations on this hot new EP "How Many Words"
Blake Lewis: Thanks.
RS: Were you involved with choosing the remixes for it?
Blake Lewis: Oh yes, definitely. I reached out to Dave Aude and DJ
Dan, I've known them for quite some time now.
RS: How did you meet up with those guys?
Blake Lewis: I've been doing electronic music for such a long time -
going to raves, hosting parties and beatboxing. I met Dan like four
years ago and we were instant homies. I would always scratch over one
of his records or I would hype the crowd and throw one of his shows
when he came back to Seattle. The same with Donald Glaude. I met
Dave Aude through Dan and that was right before American Idol, and we
just hit it off. I'm such a fan of both of them, that it was just
kind of a no-brainer. I called them instantly as soon as I got the
approval that I could get some remixes out there. All I listen to is
electronic music. I listen to everything else too but I'm constantly
banging beats at home and producing with my drummer KJ Sawka, who's
an amazing drum and bass producer.
RS: How did you meet Jake Benson?
Blake Lewis: I met Jake at that Winter Music Conference and he did a
really nice sound - a vibey trancey track. It's really cool to see
the interpretation. I talked to Dan and I was like Dan, just do what
you do, don't even, like, put my vocal in it, maybe just a hint of it,
but just to glitch it out and do something underground. His basslines
are always just strict and thick, I'm such a huge fan.
RS: Very cool. It's interesting that your vocals are on the KJ
Sawka album and I would guess at American Idol they have you signed to
some blood contract where you can't really do outside projects. How
do you get clearance to be on the KJ Sawka CD?
Blake Lewis: Well, we just didn't care, we just put it out and I told
them to. I was on the show and I was like put it out, put it out, I
don't care. To the American Idol people, as long as I'm not selling
like a hundred million copies it really doesn't matter. It's drum and
bass and breakbeat with a reggae influence, I don't think they even
noticed, honestly.
RS: Coming from the electronic music background, what was the
American Idol experience like?
Blake Lewis: The American Idol experience, to me, was a remix
project. I mean I'm not scared of going on stage and performing,
that was the easy part. To me it was like OK, I've never really done
covers before, how can I tweak these out to my liking. So to me the
challenge was OK, this is a remix competition, and basically I just
put everything into Ableton Live and put new beats to it and samples
and loops and took the the original and fixed it down, fixed it up,
time scratched it, and tweaked it out. Then I basically set up a
studio in my apartment and/or hotel, wherever we were at with two
little M-audio monitors, a little MIDI keyboard and my laptop and just
went to town when it was supposed to be. It was good for me because I
did my homework at night so when I had to go to the arranging days, I
just skateboarded all day. I put my iPod on and listened to my track
that I did and that's how I rehearsed, I was just on a skateboard just
listening to the remix I did.
