Meet Team Dirtybird

You know the sound: the kind often described using phrases that include the word "booty" and "bounce".

And you know the faces: think of Justin Martin's infectious smile and affection for pizza, the allure and awe of the tiny, but powerful J.Phlip and none other than Claude VonStroke's lovable role as the leader of the Dirtybird pack.

Dirtybird is home to a special roster of artists, but beyond that, it's a collective that has managed to perfect the balance of beloved personas, respected taste and talents while still being the down-to-earth people you trust to show you a good time.

Already, most are familiar with the strong, bursting personalities of the musical minds of the collective, but with a run of Dirtybird BBQs across the United States and Dirtybird Campout on the horizon, Mixmag went behind the scenes of Team Dirtybird to unveil the faces and names you might not know quite as well.

Unsurprisingly, the personalities behind-the-scenes are equally robust and the stories are aplenty from the men and women that work around the clock and which make up Team Dirtybird. Get to know Deron, Fernando, Aundy and Barclay himself below... and get ready.

It's almost time for Dirtybird BBQ and Campout!

What do you do as the Label Manager?

I execute Barclay's vision.

When Barclay says, "I want to sign this record," I take it all the way through. It involves getting artwork, getting marketing materials together, getting it to our PR team in the US or Europe, our physical distributor, our digital distributor, negotiating deals, making sure everything is delivered on time and setting up remixes.

For Justin Martin’s ‘Hello Clouds’ album, I worked with Justin side-by-side through that whole process: determining how he wanted the track list to go, how he wanted it to be mastered, coming up with a release plan, a marketing plan and executing it.

The artists say what they want and I make it happen.

I was going to ask what a day in the life is like for your position, but it sounds like every day might be very different for you.

Right! We have our releases planned out through November, and they’re all in various stages. For example, we just got the masters for a Will Clarke release just now before this phone call and I’ve also got the artwork for a Dirtybird Selects release that I’m commissioning with one of our artists. Then I’m getting an illustration customized for the Campout compilation… then, we’ve got Walker & Royce coming out tomorrow, so tomorrow is going to be about making sure that artists and management have all the release links to all the stores, including Birdfeed…

What’s the secret? How do you balance 20 different things going on at the same time?

Really good organization! We plan everything in advance – though there are some fires that come up – but for the most part, everything is done well ahead of time so we don’t run into issues, so it’s just a matter of strategic planning with everything.

It sounds like it takes a very specific type of personality to handle your role. How did you come into your job as the Label Manager?

I was one of the co-owners of Stompy, a digital download store that started in 2004 two months after Beatport started.

I’ve also known Justin, Barclay and Fernando since way before even that. We’re all from the San Francisco scene. Dirtybird launched in 2005 a year after Stompy, and because of our natural relationship, we were one of the first digital stores to put Dirtybird on our store, before Beatport. We watched them grow and remained really good friends.

I still am also the Managing Director for Paradise Distribution. So I actually run a distribution company too.

Dirtybird needed someone with my experience from Stompy – knowing a lot about Beatport and Traxsource – but also experience on the distribution side. I also used to throw events with Stompy, so all the pieces of my skill set fit.

There are certain labels that have managed to become more than just a label and instead have become more of a lifestyle. Dirtybird is one of them. How do you think that was achieved?

Nowadays, it’s very hard to just be successful just as a label. You use the label as a brand, but at the same time, you still need the music that is the backbone to guide all the other verticals.

Dirtybird has always been accessible. You can go up to Justin and give him a piece of pizza, go up to Christian and Barclay and take pictures. People used to come and it would be Justin’s parents that were making BBQ and giving away burgers and steak to everybody. That was a metaphor for Dirtybird. It was: “Here’s what we have to offer, it’s all yours too. We’ll do our best to make sure it’s unique and exciting.” That was the guiding force for the success of the brand.

Describe Dirtybird in three words.

Fun as hell.

How did you get involved with Dirtybird?

We started off as friends doing the park parties. It was like, “Hey, these guys want to get booked, so we should throw our own party to get them booked.”

I had some picnic tables and some coolers, Christian Martin brought the sound system, we started in our friend’s garage… so at first, I was planning and organizing the events. I used to get up and go to the park at 6 in the morning to make sure that families weren't there for their kid’s birthday party.

Would you kick them out if they were?

Yeah… (Laughs) We’d tell them we were going to have loud music and that it might not be the best for their family picnic.

We’d rent a van to get the sound system from a friend’s house and drive it over to the park. It was all about the set up to make sure everyone would have a good, fun free time. There was a go-get-gas mission for the generator, or someone’s gotta pick up breakfast before Chris (Grillson) gets over and starts cooking. Once it got bigger than the $25-dollar-park-permits, we had to get amplified sound permits, gathering permits, a park ranger and extra bathrooms. It became a real thing with a real process.

It seems like the main priority of your job is to do whatever it takes to make it work.

I took four years off to focus on another job. Eventually, Barclay told me I needed to come back because we were losing the family feel and they didn’t have me there to tell people to stop being punks. Some people call me The Rave Butler.

I’ve been doing this with these guys for so long, you get to know what people want and need. Even with all the other spontaneous things that happen in between, we know it’s going to start well, end well and everything in between will be a bunch of fun.

There’s something very special about the family bonds of Team Dirtybird.

It’s special to be a part of something like this. It’s rare. We started as a group of friends who did normal things like going out to drum ‘n bass shows together or had ‘Conversation Tuesdays’ at the Lion’s Pub where Justin Martin was bartending and Christian was playing records to practice. And then this comes out of it? It’s neat.

I imagine that when you are as close as Team Dirtybird is that some strange things can happen. What’s the oddest thing you’ve ever had to do for work?

I’ve got a couple, but I don’t know if I can tell those stories…

But you have to give us one or two.

Justin’s done me in before, so you know what. I’ll give you a few.

It was at HARD Day of the Dead Dirtybird BBQ - really dark - and Justin had gone to the bathroom. He was using his phone as a flashlight and then it fell into the Port-a-Potty. He picks it up with tissue, comes walking back on stage… Barclay was playing, and I see him and make eye contact and he’s just got this look, like “Oh shit.”

He comes walking right to me and instantly, I’m like “What happened?” He tells me he dropped his phone in the toilet and he tells me it’s in his backpack! So I run over to the hospitality bucket, grab two cups and a stack of napkins. It’s in a side pocket of his backpack so I grab it with napkins, put it in one cup and cover it with the other, so now it’s in a cocoon of cups. Then I shoved it back into the backpack pocket and hand sanitized everything.

There might be worse stories - maybe from Holy Ship - but that one was definitely one of the weirdest moments. There are so many though.

Justin and Barclay at HARD Day of the Dead 2014. If you look closely, you can see Fernando in the right corner, probably cringing from Port-a-Potty residue.

One of our early photo shoots was with Chris and Justin for the Martin Brothers. They were sitting in a tub with champagne glasses with egg yolks in them. During the shoot, they needed someone to dress up in the bird suit. I despise putting on that suit – it’s the hottest thing ever – but I said I would do it since we were just in a house and not going anywhere. So I went to go change into the bird suit.

Later, Chris decided he didn’t want to wear his real pants into the tub, so Justin said he had a pair of pants in his room that were dirty that he could wear instead. Of course, Chris grabs my pants on accident and gets in the tub. When the photo shoot was over, we realized what had happened and that my pants were soaking wet.

So I’m just wearing the bottom part of the suit, the chicken legs, without the head. Everyone decides to go to the Lion’s Pub and I was like, “Wait! You guys can’t go to the bar, I don’t have pants!”

So did you end up going to the bar with the chicken pants on?

Oh yeah.

I had the bird suit on and sat at the bar. Drinking.

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!

Tell me about your role as Grill Master.

I’ve been friends with the guys for 16 years. When they did the parties in the park, we all pitched in. Chris would bring the speakers and I had a grill, so I brought it. Eventually, it just became a thing to always bring the grill.

Justin came up with the name Grillson. My last name is Wilson and I grill, so, Grillson. (His real name is Chris.)

Do you have any culinary background?

No, none at all.

I grew up BBQing with my dad. It was always a family bonding experience, but I learned how to grill because my dad would always cook things very rare. I would complain and then he’d say, “Go cook it yourself then!” That’s how I learned how to grill.

And make note – a BBQ Master is very different from a Grill Master. BBQ Masters are the guys who smoke things, but I am solely a grill master.

What does a typical Dirtybird BBQ day look like for you?

I found out that you can call the managers of Costco and have them set aside items for you, which saves a lot of time because that alone can take hours. Costco opens up around 10am, so that’s your window of opportunity before the BBQ starts at 12pm. We load up the cars and pull up on-site where we have volunteers ready to unload and help us organize.

Also, have you ever noticed that the bun to hot dog ratio is never right? You end up having like 700 buns and only 600 hot dogs and it doesn’t make any sense.

What’s the funniest thing you’ve had happen to you while on Grill Master duty?

They actually opened up an application / contest to be a Grillson assistant. It was pretty funny and we ended up getting some characters – you know, some kids are just on one and have no idea what they’re doing. I had a kid once who had no idea how to cut an onion, and I was like, “Dude, you really don’t know how to cut an onion?”

So I taught him how, and he was like, “Wow, life lessons from Grillson!”

Sometimes you have to channel your inner Gordon Ramsay and yell at the kids, because we’re actually cooking and really need to get things done. Whip your towel around, you know? People forget that it’s actually a job!

What’s the politest way to tell someone who asks for a steak well-done that they are wrong?

Probably just burn the hell out of it. Then hand it back to them.

Or send them to the back of the thousand person line, like "Try again!"

What kind of musical background do you have?

I played the cello for 14 years, piano for a long time when I was a kid.

I also was into electronic music probably way before anybody would be into it. Maybe not now, but back then, for sure. I bought my first sampler when I was 13 and it was $2,000 and I had to work for a year to afford it. I mowed a lot of lawns.

But it was terrible! New, they were $5,000 and this one was a used unit. But I was that dedicated.

What did you hope would happen when you first came up with the concept of Dirtybird?

I really just wanted to get DJ gigs and have fun. I didn’t love my job and I wanted it to be a real thing.

I was always positive. I thought we could be as good as everyone else and I knew what I was doing. There was a little bit of naivety, but you have to be like that when you first start out.

DJing, producing, running the label, throwing events… Amongst all the things that you do now, do you have a favorite role?

Music producer is the most inspiring. There was a point when I really enjoyed the business end of it, but every year, that gets less and less. It’s so annoying!

I realized that if I could stay in the studio, that all the business stuff would just take care of itself. I try not to get too wrapped up in the business stuff because I’m too meticulous about all the details.

It sounds like you’ve figured out a good team to help handle that portion, at least.

I definitely do. Especially our Label Manager! Deron has made my life much easier and helped me a lot. For 10 years, I couldn’t get it all off my plate, and even though he’s pretty new, he’s taken it all off my shoulders.

What’s the process like bringing new members onto the team?

There are two different levels.

The employee level is pretty straightforward. We hire like anyone else would - you either qualify or you don’t.

The musician side is a bit weirder. It’s not only having good tracks, but also being able to get along with everybody and caring about the right things. You have to fit into our little group, and that matters in Dirtybird.

I do say that I’ll sign any track as long as it’s a great track, and that’s true – but I won’t sign the next track by you if I don’t like you. (Laughs.) It takes a little bit of time to figure out what people are all about and who they really are.

Do you have any traditions for officially bringing people onto the team?

We used to have a bit of a boot camp in Miami… but no one can ever get through it, so we just stopped doing it.

What was it?

If you could last with Justin and me for the weekend, and no one ever can.

We’ve conditioned our bodies to take brutal amounts of staying up all-night and partying.

Speaking of partying, let's talk BBQs and Campout. What’s your favorite part about the events?

There’s just no other reason why they would be there besides liking Dirtybird or one of us. It’s not a festival put on by someone else, there’s no guests that are outside the label. It’s a benchmark to see where we are and to see all our friends and fans.

We hang out in the crowd most of the time. We might have the only festival where the artists don’t hang out in the VIP area, they just walk around the entire time.

What’s new this time around?

There’s a bunch of new games for Campout! A few things will get beefed up a bit, but in general, it’ll be the same vibe. We had such a great time last year that we’re not really monkeying with it.

For the BBQs, we never really went past having a concert and some free hamburgers. So this year, the BBQs are different. They have real BBQ food, Dirtybird is coming out with a BBQ sauce that we made with this shop in Lower Haight called Memphis Minnie’s, we have games, a “fashion show” called ‘Best In Show’ for creative outfits or self-made merch.

We learned what was possible from Campout. We didn’t know if anyone would play any games or go to the comedy show, but everybody participated in everything, so we decided to integrate the ideas into all of the parties.

What’s the craziest thing you remember from Campout last year?

The talent show was the most shocking!

Shocking?

Not in a bad way. I couldn’t believe how talented people were! I thought the talent show was going to be funny and made up of people who had no talent. It was the exact opposite! It was hilarious and people were insanely talented. I was surprised!