DJ Ron: I want to go back in time with you to 1994, you were here in Nashville and you autographed a record for me at WRVU, the radio station. It was the Tamburi Project record on Stick Men.
Josh Wink: Really?
DJ Ron: Yes. It’s on my wall, it’s still framed. I asked you about the music you played and you made a comment to the effect that ‘I bring ten records with me when I spin out, and those are the records that I play’. Does that ring a bell with you at all?
Josh Wink: When was this?
DJ Ron: This was in 1994 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Josh Wink: Well I definitely know that I didn’t travel with ten records. <laughing> Probably the basis of that statement is that I’m fortunate that people come out to hear me play and there's a crowd that come out. The DJ world is different than the live band world, if you want to go out and see George Michael, you go to a George Michael concert and expect to hear George Michael songs, not him doing everybody else’s songs.
With DJing it’s completely different, I mean I’m an artist who happens to DJ, but I don’t always play my own music when I’m out. A lot of people used to frown upon a friend of mine, Todd Terry, because all he would play when he would play out was just his own records. I thought, well, what's wrong with that, I mean people come out to hear him play.
So the interesting thing about DJing is that sixty percent of the people come out to the clubs for the DJ and forty percent come out just because it’s a club. Obviously the ratio varies all the time, but give the DJs a little bit more props. When you go to a concert you go out to hear that one person, when you go to a club there's a bunch of people that don’t know who the DJs are or anything about it. I’m fortunate that, when I play out there's people there that also want to hear me play. Like the George Michael fans, they may be Josh Wink fans and they want to hear music that's in my box, and if I have ten records then fortunately they would want to probably here those ten records because that represents me. I like to be able to educate people along with entertain, so that's my role as a DJ.
DJ Ron: Very cool. Now to close us up, there's a lot of thing going on that are effecting the dance community big time.. online piracy, the recent election, subdivision genrefication, hip-hop domination. What advice do you have for the dance community about any of these?
Josh Wink: Not to be lazy. That’s really my concern, is that people are becoming lazy and people aren't becoming responsible and being lazy. What I mean by that is there's a lot of people that just go online and they download DJ sets and they download music illegally. That also creates an aspect where people don’t want to go out because they’ve heard them before. Why go out and spend fifteen bucks to go and hear so-and-so when I just downloaded their music. So that actually has a big thing to do and I think it’s helped kind of put a stifle on electronic dance music, it’s a fact that people aren't going out as much as they were because it’s so available online. A DJ can play at a club and the next day their set is available and someone may not come out because they heard the set already. I think people need to become consumers more and go out and buy the CDs and go out to their record stores and order some things that they feel passionate about. Otherwise it’s just kind of all go away or the quality is going to slip. Those are my biggest fears.
DJ Ron: As long as we have great DJs/producers like you I am a bit less afraid. How important do you think it is for DJs to produce and producers to DJ?
Josh Wink: I mean I can only answer it on speaking from myself, which is I like the balance in between the DJing and production. When I make electronic dance music it helps me get a vision, in the studio visioning myself DJing or being out in the nightclub on the dance floor. When I’m at the night club I think of myself oh I have this great idea, I can’t wait to get home to do it. So for me it’s a balance in between the two when I make dance music. As I need inspiration of being in the studio thinking of the dance floor and the DJ, and when I’m DJing, I think of the inspiration and ideas I get from doing that and taking them back to the studio.
