How—And why—we work: A (slightly fake) origin story
Blake:
Small business owners are always looking for ways to ‘differentiate’ themselves from the pack. I have been a wedding DJ for almost 20 years now, but I’m still shocked-still constantly learning and re-learning-that the best way to differentiate from competition may just be to…do the job that people have asked you and paid good money for you to do?
I’m still shocked-and horrified-at how many DJs DON’T do this. How many ‘Wedding’ DJs simply throw away a couple’s playlist and are like ‘I got this’, and set off on voyage no one asked for. I’d heard a horror story or two throughout my career but I still don’t know if I would really believe it unless I’d seen it with my own eyes-and heard it with my own ears…at my own sister’s wedding.
I was there to be a big brother-not work-and a family friend who was a real live NYC Club DJ (!) was brought in. I was actually excited to see him work!
While cocktail hour and dinner was relatively smooth, dance hour devolved into his personal playlist quickly: he ignored most of the previously-discussed songs, themes and requests from my sister and her wife, or just botched them outright e.g. they asked for line dancing music/ he played that Kid Rock song that samples “Sweet Home Alabama” and thought that would do it.
Many guests of the wedding-myself and my brother included-made trips up to the DJ table to tell him overtly ‘this is not what the couple has asked for and they are unhappy'. Maybe that’s where the NYC Club experience really came in handy, because he just kind of laughed off everything and went on about his business.
My sister’s union was beautiful, with pretty much everyone agreeing that the only lowlight was the DJ. In retrospect, I wish I had done more, but I’m not sure what. Fighting another DJ at my sister’s wedding would be a bad look personally and professionally.
It IS a good story about why I do this, and so I just wish it had happened to START my wedding DJ career (rather than after I had been doing it for many years), because what an origin story, right? Imagine the dramatic weight as I deliver this story with steely eyes and finish: “From that day on I swore…I would do everything in my power to make sure…NO couple would ever suffer that same fate on their special day! I’d make sure that a couple would get EXACTLY what they want to hear on their wedding day and nothing they don’t! I would become… A WEDDING DJ.”
So the chronology is off a little, but the reasoning is the same: why do this if we’re not going to do what a couple wants? Who else is it for?
Our playlist is your playlist. Our job is to make you feel comfortable and happy. To give you a memory of how you and your loves ones danced all night.We don’t overcomplicate that.
our history
Blake & Atticus (Blatticus, if you're nasty) go waaaaaay back, back even to a time when Atticus wasn’t old enough to get in to the bars and clubs they now sometimes DJ together. Blake was/is friends with Atticus’ mother, and thus became friends with her son, forging an odd-couple relationship that includes Blake getting Atticus his very first job, many rec league basketball faceoffs, playing Joy Division and Cure covers together for a benefit show, some vulnerable Cocteau Twins listening sessions, and now an actual business DJing weddings together.
Blake and Atticus have been DJs independently on their own track-and in their own arena-for while. Blake is the old head with 20 years of wedding DJ experience; Atticus is the young gun who has been at Seattle's KEXP radio station for over a decade. They can’t remember how the actual partnership came about, but think it maybe started when Blake asked Atticus to DJ his own wedding (but as kind of a proxy for himself).
Today, they’re your favorite DJ tag team, filling musical gaps for each other, bouncing ideas off each other in real time, talking (and playing) a lot of Curtis Mayfield together.
*This photo is now older than Atticus was when it was taken
