Dirtybird co-founder, DJ, and producer Worthy has been touring the country with a different artist every night on his unique One-On-One Tour. He made his way back to his hometown San Francisco to play at Verso with the Lisbona Sisters. EDMTunes was able to sit down with Worthy and talk about his past, present, and future musical endeavors.
How did the idea for the one-one-one tour form?
I was sitting down with my booking agent John, and my wife brittany, we had a lunch meeting and talked about creating a tour for me. John kind of came of up with the idea of putting me with a different artist in every city, thinking that it’s really going to stick out, because no one has really ever done this before. I thought it was a cool idea even though it seemed hard at first, and then I brought up the idea of doing interviews with the artists each night to make it stick out a little bit more.
Was it a collaborative process to choose who you’d perform with each night?
I started by hitting up friends of mine, a lot of the Dirtybird artists, and also just people I knew from over the years. I told them that I’m trying to put together this tour and asked them if they could do the specific dates. So it just started with me getting people locked in, then figured out venues that wanted the tour; John worked his magic. Other artists popped up who I had never even thought of wanted to join in. We had to juggle a lot of different factors, but we really put together something awesome that no one has really ever done.
Tell us about your compilation album that you just put out in December. It was for the 10th anniversary of your label, Anabatic Records.
Yeah its pretty crazy, I can’t believe its been ten years. When I started off the label it was kind of like hey lets start a label to try and put out some of my own tracks at the beginning, and then people actually started sending me records and I thought they were really cool tracks and that I should put these out. From there it just grew into what it is now and I have had the honor of putting out stuff from great artists over the years. When it hit our 10 year mark, I figured we had to do something to commemorate the moment and it would be an easy way to incorporate other artists into it instead of it being just me.
Was there any nostalgia with this release?
It’s cool going back to these tracks and thinking wow these are still so good and it was fun to pick up the tracks that I think would be timeless and people will still play today. It was definitely a bunch stuff that I thought would be timeless pieces of music, that if someone were to put it out today for the first time, it would still resonate with people.
What motivated you to start your own label?
It was just me trying to find a place for me to put out my own music and learn the industry a little bit better when I was first coming up. It was right at the beginning of Beatport and people were looking for labels to start selling digitally, so I had some in’s there with some friends and the connections I had made already. It was basically a different way for me to be more involved in the scene.
Dirtybird fans are known to be super dedicated, like a big family. In your experience from working with the label for a long time, would you say that Dirtybird fans stick out in any particular way from others?
I feel like people are super dedicated to what Dirtybird is these days. Coming from what it was years and years ago, it’s super crazy to see how many people around the world have become such big fans of the label, the music, and the vibe. There’s definitely a family-like vibe where everyone is connecting with each other because they are also a Dirtybird fan. If I see someone at the airport with a Dirtybird hat or something, I’ll say whats up to them. It’s pretty to cool to be able to connect like that. I can’t say how its different from other fan bases because I’m not really apart of them, but Dirtybird’s vibe is pretty awesome.
So you’ve been DJ’ing since 1997, was there anyone or anything what was a major influence to you?
I went out to a rave around then when I was in college and I didn’t really think anything of it. It was in New York City, I walked in and the vibe just got me right away. I just kept thinking that this is so cool and I want to be apart of this. It inspired me. I went to pick up records and wanted to start learning how to DJ. Justin Martin and I were friends then and he had been DJing quite a bit at that time too, so I took what little money I had to buy another record player and bought a really crappy mixer from a friend and just got into DJing. I would go out a listen to drum n’ bass and early trance stuff back then. It was super inspiring to listen to all this cool music and it stuck with me, making me feel that I really wanted to do this.
You have a handful of new music coming out, anything that we should keep an eye out for?
I have a new EP on a new label called Strangelove which is a Toolroom sub-label. It’s called ‘A Little Weird’ and it comes out next week. After that I have a track on Sweated Out Music, I just signed another track to This Ain’t Bristol which is this super kind of crazy fun track that people have been asking me about every time I play it, so I think it’s going to be great. Its a pretty different sound. And there are a few other things I’m finishing up, maybe another Anabatic release in there somewhere as well.
How is the sound different?
It’s just a really crazy track that I made back in September. I was kind of scared of it for a minute thinking that it was going to be too much, but then I went back and started playing it again recently and people have been coming up and asking me what it is so I figured it was good. I actually sent it to Billy Kenney and the Maximono guys asking if they maybe wanted it. They wrote back saying how awesome it was, so we talked and decided to release it with them because I thought it would have a good home there.
Check out Worthy’s recent releases below!