DownshiftRadio spotlight
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With a musical career dating back to the late eighties, equipped with a melodic love for rhythm, music achieves a new meaning when Dj/Producer Tony Draper comes on the set. Tony Draper's career came underway in 1988 with a residency at Avante, a night club in Tony's home city of Bayside, NY.
His combination of heart pounding beats and captivating tunes quickly had any audience hooked. Within a short time, Tony exploded onto the New York City club scene with guest appearances at legendary nightclubs such as the Palladium, Expo, U.S.A., Carbon, and the world famous Limelight. Soon enough he was picked up by super megaclub Exit in NYC and it was there where he held a 4 year residency on Friday nights.
Tony has shared the spotlight with many of the industries leading dj's such as Paul Oakenfold, Tiesto, Judge Jules, Tall Paul, George Acosta, and FunkMaster Flex (to name a few). He has released an array of production work on labels such as Galactic, Speed Limit, Indorphin, and Jelly Bean.
We caught up with Tony last week at his brand new production studio and spoke about his career, past and present.

Tony Draper


How long have you been spinning and what made you start?

I've been Deejaying for 17 years. To be honest, as a kid I wasn't fascinated with DJs at all, I never even thought for a second to make it a career. It's really funny, cause I knew these two kids who were sweet 16/wedding DJs and I wanted them to make me a mix tape and so I went to their place and watched them do all these weird things with the mixer and scratch the turntables and man, when I tell you they were off... (laughs)
So after awhile they had made one side of the tape and they went to get something to eat. Back then I had absolutely no background in Deejaying and the only little I knew about music was from band class that I attended at school. So after they showed me how to operate their equipment, they left me there to make the second side of the tape and when they came back I was done.
Apparently, they were very impressed with my mixes and requested me to start doing work with them. Not that I wanted to, but I was a little curious and of course could use the money, so I did. And that's how it started.
So it all started pretty much as an experiment? Did you even listen to dance music?

Yes, of course. Back then I loved the old school Todd Terry joints as well as Kenny Dope and some freestyle.
No Hip Hop?

Well not that much back then. But later on after acquiring some skills and practice in spinning I wanted to get some diversity into my mixes. I started to listen to some Hip Hop on WBLS. My favorite show was DJ Red Alert and I remember going to sleep with his shows on the radio. I guess that all of his scratching and mixing got into my subconscious and I began to incorporate that into my mixes. The next thing you know I was scratching to old House tunes.
Is that how you got your "Lord Fader" nickname?

Haha, nope. that's actually another funny story. Back then I was dating this girl who was friends with DJ Spinbad. So I used to always make her mix tapes of my dance stuff with scratch mixes.
Little did I know that she really asked me for these tapes because of Spinbad (laughs). Later on I met Spinbad and he told me that I inspired him to make his Hip Hop mix tapes. So we decided to start working on some mixes together and that's when "The Cold Cutz Crew" was born and Spinbad gave me the nickname "Lord Fader". We did a lot of intensive work together with just the turntables and a tape deck...A lot of crazy editing work.
 Were you doing any clubs back then?

No. It wasn't until '88 that I met with Adam S who is still my promoter till this very day. He got me my first residency gig at "Avanti" a night club based in Queens, NY. It was a combination of my good friendship with Adam and me getting tired of playing "16 candles" on sweet 16 parties (laughs) that inspired me to do clubs. I was working my ass off. Between doing the weekly at Avanti doing the sweet 16's and my daytime landscape job I still managed to find some time to work on my Hip Hop mixes, as well as doing local bar gigs. Little by little I started to get a following and a lot of people were booking me and requesting me to play at their clubs. Adam worked his promotion well and soon enough he got me a steady gig at "Metropolis" in '95, which was a pretty hot spot at the time. From then on it all began to pick up. That's when I got guest spots at Limelight, Palladium, Carbon, Club USA etc...



And then Exit?

Yeah. In '98 Adam wanted to branch out and get us into Manhattan. He approached Exit nightclub with a proposal. Exit was very popular and everyone and their mother's wanted to play there, so they decided to book multiple DJs every Friday night and judge by the crowd reaction on who to keep as a resident.
And you got the gig.

It was rough, but the crowd was responding really well to my sets. I love them, if it wasn't for the crowd I'd never made it so far.
Not a lot of people know that you are the only DJ that held a residency at THE biggest night club in New York City for four years on a Friday night playing dance music for thousands. I remember seeing this picture of you behind the DJ booth at Exit, you looked like you're all worn out and the crowd is going crazy behind. How long were your sets there?

12 hours straight sets. It's very hard, not a lot of DJs understand how hard it is to throw a set as long as that, most of the DJs nowadays play all of the new shit in the first couple of minutes and they wear their crowd out fast.
What happened with Exit?

Nothing really happened, me and Adam S really got annoyed with this whole promoter-politic-bulshit game. There's a lot of that going on in this business. A lot of politics and cut-throat promoters that just want to see you hit the curb. We just moved on.
What's the best gig and worst gig?

Best gig was the Willy Wonka gig at Exit and all of my birthday parties were great too. Worst gig was the one with Tiesto (shakes head and sighs), I'm not gonna go into details, but lets just say that for "technical reasons" I wasn't able to play all of my new records and I was left with my old school ones and that actually turned to be one of my best gigs at the end. The crowd was really feeling my set.
Does Tony Draper have any favorite DJs nowadays?

Of course, matter of fact, a whole bunch of them; Jonathan Peters, Razor and Guido, Junior Vasquez, David Morales, Johnny Vicious, Mada and Moody and my all time favorite-Carl Cox.
 Lets talk about production a little bit. How did you start getting involved with that?

Production really started back in the days when I was mixing with my turntables and tape deck machine, that's how I became fascinated with the whole recording concept. I met up with producer Carlos Rodgers at his studio once and was amazed at the way he had his studio set up. So I started to work at a musical instrument store and that's where I got my drum machines, samplers, keyboards, mixers etc... at the beginning it was all frustrating and I remember almost throwing my MPC3000 out the window at one point (laughs) but soon enough I got the hang of it and I started to make tracks. My first release was "Wake Up" on Speed Limit records. It did pretty well and that led to some work on such labels as Jellybean, Groovalicious and then "Rhythm Ready" on Galactic.
What happened after that?

I stopped putting out tracks, I was still producing but didn't want them released. It was around 1999 and with all the free download services online I found out that everyone was getting my music before I even released the record. They were all playing my tracks in the clubs and record sales weren't as good, so I decided to have 100 percent exclusive rights on my tracks and not putting them out, just playing them at the club. That was another reason why everyone came down to Exit, they knew their gonna hear exclusive tracks.
How do you rate music nowadays?

Well, I think that music today is less exciting than it was back then. Nevertheless it's more complex and there are a lot of different styles created with newer technology, some of the stuff produced today is still fresh.
What comes first Deejaying or producing?

deejaying, definitely. It's all about the crowd reaction, that immediate response. You can't get that in the studio. It's dance music and we all work hard in the studio so we can play the tracks at the clubs and enjoy seeing the crowd go crazy.
 Do you think it's harder for DJs to break into the field?

Not at all. There are by far a lot more DJs in this business and that's because there are a lot of promoters who get their best buddies who download music online to play at clubs. that's why the real DJs, those that buy records are getting the impression that there are no jobs and that this scene is dying. So to answer your question, no I don't think it's tough but at the same time there definitely aren't a lot of talented DJs out there. I'd like to also mention that Djs nowadays got it really good and they just don't realize how good. I remember that back in the days I used to get goose bumps just crossing the bridge to Manhattan to play at a bar. I get to see DJs nowadays that play at clubs and lounges and their so fussy as to how they want to set their speakers and how the equipment in the clubs is bad, they just don't know how good they got it now.
What would you do if you weren't a DJ?

I'd be damn miserable!!!!!
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To check Tony Draper on the web djtonydraper.com.

Tony Draper - Mondays - from 10:00 pm-12:00 am EST.
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