Meet Team Dirtybird

Tell me about what you do.

I’ve always been on the sidelines looking in, helping Barclay with his career. About a year and a half ago, I started managing him and helping when I wasn’t working at my consulting gig. I stopped consulting in September when Barclay told me he needed me full time.

It became clear that there was a lot to be done for Dirtybird – which was fantastic – but we really needed to understand it all from a business perspective. From there, I took on the role of COO, which is more organization and overseeing. I also took on the role of Chief Marketing Officer.

I imagine that you're definitely not idle.

I’m reading a book called ‘The One Thing’ and I’m trying to figure out what the one overarching priority I need to be focusing on since there seems to be so much. But I don’t really think there is just one thing in music!

It’s a multitude of things all firing at the same time and figuring out how to make it all amazing and great. It’s also about making sure the voice that we have is really clear and that we’re always involving the fans in everything that we do. That’s what I’ve been trying to bring in, and it’s really fun.

You’ve had the unique experience of watching Dirtybird grow from the very, very beginning as not only working with the label, but also as Barclay’s wife. What was it like in the early years?

I don’t think we even imagined what it could be.

I don’t think the guys really knew either. They were just having fun, throwing parties and making cool music they really loved. They were trying to position themselves each individually as the producers and DJs and creating their own iconic brands. They looked up to other artists in San Francisco that were doing really well too, like Kaskade and Mark Farina.

I struggled a lot with it at first, because it was hard for me since I was working and raising kids and Barclay was traveling a lot. I established bounds for him, because I couldn’t do it all. We arranged it so that Barclay was home two weekends a month so he traveled the other two weekends, and that would be to Europe since his traveling wasn’t so much in the US in the beginning. It definitely hampered his schedule a little bit… I think it was hard for him. He really wanted to go. And I wanted him to go too, but I was working a lot and I couldn’t let him go every single weekend.

I’ve gotten used to it now. (Laughs) He’s probably home one weekend a month [now], so it’s just as hard, but our whole family is used to him being gone. We take advantage of when he is around during the week.

Does it help now that you are more deeply involved in Dirtybird and his work now?

There’s good and bad, to be honest.

It’s hard to separate our lives! Before, he didn’t really know what I was doing day-to-day and I didn’t know everything he was doing, and I kind of liked it like that. You have to have your own identity still, you know?

Barclay and I have heated debates – about everything! We’re both very passionate about it, because it affects us both equally. We both own the business and it’s both of us needing to make the right decision.

We’re a good balance though. I really respect him and think he’s so smart – brilliant about music and the industry, and he knows everything about it. Meanwhile, I don’t know about the industry as much, but I bring in marketing, branding, how to talk about it and do it.

How do your kids feel about everything?

They’re eight and ten, so I think they’re still too young to really understand. When they were really little, we brought them to the BBQs because they didn’t know the difference. Now, they’re just starting to realize that it isn’t normal.

We brought the kids to Splash House last summer because Barclay was playing on Father’s Day. After, I’m talking with Jasper and asking him if he saw anything weird or if he wanted to talk about anything. He goes, “All that I know is that all girls have jiggly butts!”

So that’s what he got out of it.

Boys will be boys, right?

Exactly.

I’m nervous though, about raising them in this atmosphere of partying. I don’t want them to grow up thinking that this lifestyle is normal when it’s not, and it’s actually an extraordinary thing.

We don’t have a “normal, backyard BBQ” kind of life. We don’t just have a BBQ and have friends over… unless they’re playing a BBQ. But the parties, that’s when we get to have fun too. It’s a weird thing.

We’re normal people, Barclay and I. It’s just the world we live in!