Lansing’s Mike Weber remembers the day that music took over his life. It was in the early '70s. He was five years old and his parents took him to see Johnny Cash at Pine Knob (now the
DTE Energy Music Theatre) in Clarkston, Mich.
“I was pretty much hooked on live music from then on,” he says.
These days Weber’s musical tastes have changed, and he now runs a full time party-making machine called
Dead Beat Entertainment, a name he came up with shortly before his first electronic music DJ showcase at
The Loft in
Downtown Lansing.
“My wife was getting on my case for not really doing much of anything except for working on my thesis, not getting a job,” recalls Weber, then a graduate student.
“And so I felt like a real deadbeat.”
Dead Beat Entertainment—what you would call a DJ crew—now boasts an impressive stable of local talent. And over time, they’ve been expanding their reach beyond The Loft.
They’ve held several shows at
Mac’s Bar and host weekly DJ residencies at Downtown Lansing: the Corner Bar on Saturday nights and at
Club X-Cel on Wednesdays.
But while Weber has certainly made waves with his Dead Beat crew, he doesn’t limit himself to showcasing his own inner circle. He’s on a mission to unite the entire Lansing electronic music scene.
“Dead Beat isn’t one person,” he says. “It’s not me. It’s a collective of the DJs that work under the Dead Beat name, and we always want to work with other groups.”
With the help of experienced DJs with strong national reputations, Weber recently staged the first
Lansing Electronic Artist Showcase (LEASH), a two day event featuring artists from LEAK, Dead Beat and freelance DJs.
Getting startedWeber’s musical tastes through most of his childhood can only be described as square.
The Carpenters and other adult contemporary acts permanently occupied space on his turntable.
His life changed when he heard the
Human League’s most famous release, “
Don’t You Want Me.” Addicted to the sound of synth, from then on it was modern music or nothing. He mostly wet his feet in New Wave and the then-emerging alternative rock scene.
While working at a club in Flint he got turned on to House music, the dominant form of electronic dance music at the time.
“I’d never really heard DJ’s beat-mixing before I started working at this place called the
Copa,” he says. “I was just blown away at just how cool it actually was. “
In 1990 he tried his own hand at being a DJ. Three years later, he moved to Lansing in order to attend
Michigan State University to pursue a degree in broadcast journalism. He also started moonlighting as a DJ at Club Paradise, now club
Club X-Cel in Downtown Lansing.
He worked various odd jobs, too, including waiter and radio DJ at the recently resurrected
94.1 The Edge.
After, graduating from Michigan State, he got married, bought a house, got a real job and stopped DJing.
“I was in sales for five or six years.,” says Weber. But, “as the economy tanked, so did my income.” This prompted him to return to school for a masters in Information Technology management.
Making connectionsA chance encounter last April derailed Weber’s ambition to conquer the world of IT.
While pursuing his degree, Weber worked at the
Lansing State Journal writing bar reviews. On assignment took him to
Club Rush, the venue in the space underneath
Harper’s Brewery in East Lansing, on a night that featured local DJ’s spinning electronic music.
He met Sarah Badiee (pronounced Bah-dee-ee,) who goes by the moniker
DJ Sarah B.
Badiee is an East Lansing native who set sail for the glitz and glamour of Hollywood after graduating from Florida’s Full Sail University. In California, she’d learned to DJ and gained some prestige spinning at places such as the
Whiskey a Go Go and the
Coachella Music festival.
She’d returned to East Lansing and was throwing down with her good friend, Edward Ramp, aka
DJ Epoch, and at Rush the night that Weber walked in.
The place was packed, the local scene clearly thriving. Local electronic music parties such as the
Lansing Electronic Artist Kollective (LEAK) were proving successful, and they were seeing crowds upwards of 300 every time they played at Club X-Cel.
But there were still a lot of quiet nights, too.
After their chance encounter at Rush, Weber and Badiee had an idea.
Bringing it togetherTheir first instinct was to throw a warehouse party, but that proved to be a bit too complicated—and expensive. Between security, lighting, permits and other expenses, the looming $10,000 price tag for such an enterprise soon put this dream out of reach.
The two instead contacted The Loft in Lansing, who serendipitously had an open slot in their schedule, just ten days away. Weber and Badiee stepped up to the challenge and hastily assembled what would become known as the first in a series of Loft Parties.
Among the DJs at the first Loft Party was the mysterious DJ Xa’os, former resident DJ at Neon Tuesdays at Mac’s Bar.
“I saw something about The Loft party online and I saw my friend Chris Hoddy was on the lineup, and then I was like ‘I wanna play this thing!’” remembers Xa’os.
He sent Weber an email expressing his interest; Weber responded enthusiastically.
Since then, Xa’os has spun at every single Dead Beat show. Like his compatriot Badiee, Xa’os also sports a prolific and inspiring curriculum vitae, including the
Detroit Electronic Music Festival and the annual
Electronic Daisy Carnival in California.
When we spoke, Xa’os explained to me the importance of an affiliation with a DJ crew like Dead Beat. “You have the whole unity factor—it’s like a small family,” he says. ”It’s great for promotion. We can all sit down and figure out, ‘Alright, who’s gonna go where and promote? Who’s gonna do this? Who’s gonna help promote this way?’”
Shared equipment is another advantage. More people means more help with show set up, and more shared resources. The result is a kind of synergy not attainable by freelance DJ’s.
Weber is busy planning more Dead Beat shows and DJing again and when he’s in a dreaming mode, he contemplates eventually starting his own club.
But for now, he’s trying to stay grounded, and focusing on one beat at a time.
Adam Molner is a freelance journalist living in Lansing.
Dave Trumpie is the managing photographer for Capital Gains. He is a freelance photographer and owner of Trumpie Photography.
Photos:
Mike Weber at The Landshark in East Lansing
All Photographs © Dave Trumpie