"Tucson Tales" : The DJ chronicles, part 1

“Tucson Tales” : The DJ chronicles. Part 1.


OK, if you read any of my previous “Tucson Tales” entries, then you know that I had a very short stint as a DJ at a “gentleman's club”. Yeah, that didn't work out too well. And if you read any of my other stuff, including my first book “Rabbit Every Tuesday”, then you know that I used to be a heavy metal DJ at a prominent club and radio station back in San Francisco. Essentially I moved to Tucson with years of DJ and music journalist experience behind me and I tried to put some of those skills to work when I began to seriously job hunt.

Here's the deal though: Tucson is a much stranger and different beast than the hip strangled city by the bay.

After detoxing and getting acquainted with my new city, I immediately started to type up DJ and journalist resumes, thinking I would be snatched up immediately because of who I was and where I came from. I mean, hey, I'm Metal Mark from San Francisco. I'm gonna own Tucson pretty soon! So I went around to every club, radio station and newspaper trying to get some form of job.

Like I've said before the only radio stations that were hiring, outside of the endless array of tejano, country, hip hop and uber christian, were classic and new rock stations that paid next to nothing. One station offered me a position that started at 2am and ended at 9 and would pay me like $7 an hour to switch from song to song. Honestly I almost took it but when I drove out there for the interview, I discovered it was about five miles out in the middle of BF nowheres desert. So, that place was out.

Luckily I landed a job at the T-Rex museum as a supervisor, but I still really wanted to keep DJing. Not to mention make some more money.

One day I was trolling around the Tucson Criagslist (and I was super happy to find that Tucson did indeed actually had their own Craigslist page) and I came across an ad in the help wanted “entertainment” section:

'Dunn's DJ Entertainment, the leading professional DJ service in southern Arizona is hiring for the busy wedding and prom season here in Tucson. Experience preferred but will train the right people. Please contact Scott at blah blah blah...'

So my first reaction was “Oh great! I can be a DJ again.” Then my second one was “Wait...all I've ever done was rock and metal. How the heck is a guy like me, freakin' Metal Mark!, gonna DJ weddings and proms?” Hmmm.

Well, I really needed more money coming in and I really wanted to DJ again. So I sent that Scott guy an email with my resume attached and went back to work at the museum.

The next day I get a phone call. I actually picked up the receiver (for those that know me know that I never answer the phone, for those that don't know me, know this...I never answer the phone) and said the prerequisite “Hello?”

“Yes,” said a chipper voice on the other end. “May I speak to Mark please?”

“I'm Mark.”

It was that Scott guy from the DJ company. We chatted a bit, he asked me some questions then we set a time for an interview.

“What are you doing today?” Scott asked.

“Uh, well...” I had the day off and really didn't feel like being interviewed, but... “Um, nothing. Really.”

“How about we meet up here at the office in an hour?”

Oh man. I'd have to shower and get dressed and put on my “Yes, I am an outstanding member of the workforce” face and stance. But, I agreed and got cleaned up and drove out to meet this guy.

The office was in this sort of industrial complex, a strip mall of offices, down by the freeway. I parked the car, found the Dunns office and walked in.

Scott was a robust middle aged guy with white hair, a wide smile and wearing some sort of Tommy Bahama shirt. The office was sparse with two desks, some file cabinets, computers and the like. I sat down at Scott's desk, we chatted, he was nice enough and impressed that I had a lot of actual DJ experience.

“Now, now, what I'm worried about,” he said, “is that this is a far cry from being a heavy metal DJ. You might be bored.”

“I doubt that,” I said. “I've never done proms of weddings before. Should be interesting.”

With that he hired me and set me up to be trained on my first assignment, a wedding in two days.

* * *

The day of the weeding arrived and I drove out to some Elks lodge, hidden way in the the back behind some strip mall just off of a main road near the foothills area of Tucson. It was dusty, it was hot and I was in khakis and the starched white Dunn's DJ (yes, with their name and logo on the left side) dress shirt, dress shoes and a tie. I felt a little like a stooge but, hey, it was work and I was a DJ once again.

I make my way inside the Elks lodge, which was really just an extended club house with offices, a bar, meeting rooms and a ballroom, which I assumed where the wedding was to take place. There, standing in the almost exact same outfit as me is a slender dark haired guy in the center of the ballroom.

“Are you Mark?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Hi. I'm Ryan,” he said approaching me with his hand extended for a shake. “Looks like I'm going to be training you today.”

“Looks like it.”

Ryan then lead me back outside where a large white utility van was parked. In it was a huge and cumbersome DJ station, large speakers, pickups, bags of equipment and loads and loads of extension plugs and wires.

“Oh man,” I said. “Last time I DJ'd I had a cooler full of metal CDs, a fog machine and my Castle Grayskull”.

“Oh we have a fog machine,” Ryan said, which got me rather excited. “But what's a Castle Grayskull?”

“Uh...”

So we unloaded the mass of equipment and set up shop in the ballroom area. All sorts of, well, Elk lodge folk were meandering about: white people that look as if the only clothes shopping option is K Mart and Boot Emporium, even if they were done up for a wedding.

“So...” I asked a bit nervously, “what kind of music are we going to be playing?”

“Some dance music,” Ryan said, which relaxed me a bit. “But mostly country music.”

My heart sank.

I have never DJ'd country music before. The closest I ever got to country music in my time as a journalist and DJ was seeing Hank Williams III play at the Warped Tour. That was kind of it. I had no clue what new band or popular country music artist was going on. Waylon Jennings...is he still around?

“Don't worry,” Ryan assured. “We have playlists all set up and the bride and groom even provided some music for us. Just watch and learn.”

The time was getting closer to the arrival of the bride and groom and more people were filling up the lodge and ballroom. For some reason, I was kind of getting nervous.

“You the DJ?” some guy in a denim “dress” jacket asked me.

“Uh, yes,” I said.

“You got any Brooks and Dunn?”

Who and what?

“Um, well...”

“Yes sir,” Ryan mercifully broke in. “We got a little bit of everything. Just tell us what you want to hear and we'll play it.”

The denim blazer man just looked at Ryan. “I wanna hear Brooks and Dunn,” he said before sipping on his bottle of Bud.

Pretty soon it was time to announce the arrival of the bride and groom.

“Do you want to do it?” Ryan asked me.

I just kind of pointed to myself and looked confused. “Who? Me? Uh. I've never announced the arrival of someone before. So...maybe you should do it.”

“Good idea,” Ryan said as if I actually knew what was going on. “Just watch and learn.”

Slowly I was becoming weary of Ryan and his whole approach and demeanor. I mean, he seemed like a nice guy but perhaps a bit too focused, maybe too into the fact that we're getting $12 an hour to play country music in an Elks lodge for some white trash wedding. Then I started to see the absolute humor in it all and began to relax. Just have fun with it all, I told myself. Sure it's not metal but, man, at least we get to hit the buffet they were setting up and those ribs looked mighty tasty.

Ryan and I walked over to the door the bride and groom would be entering through. When we opened it, I was both pleased and shocked to find that it lead into the lodge's bar.

“Are you serious,” I said with a snicker. “They're going to walk through here before getting married...a bar?”

It was a pretty haphazard bar at that. Lots of wood paneling, old Schlitz beer mirrors and guys that look like “Urban Cowboy” rejects sitting around as if they knew nothing of a wedding about to happen. The smile just wouldn't leave my face.

“This is the funniest thing ever,” I said.

Before long, a thin woman wearing a white bridal gown and a tall lanky guy in a black suit arrived. In that bar. My assumption was that they were the bride and groom. Another guy, who apparently was the best man, approached Ryan and said that they were ready. Ryan then got on the wireless microphone and said: “May I have your attention please? A big round of applause for the bride and groom!”

With that the hundred or so people all crammed into that ballroom erupted in applause along with hoots, hollers and I even though I got a whiff of a “Ye-haw” somewhere in there. So the couple sauntered up to the stage area where an old man, the preacher I supposed, was standing holding a bible.

The ceremony itself went off without a hitch. That is until the end. As the preacher started talking about lifelong dedication and the hard work that is love, long after he pronounced them man and wife, he then went on about how his wife is rotting away with some life wasting cancer and how he has to bathe her and clean her butt after she poops and all this horrific morbid crap. Because that's what "real love" is or something. My jaw dropped so hard it felt like an old Loony Tunes cartoon take, like completely fell to the floor. He then wished them good luck and it was time for us to spring into action.

We started off with some light “background” country as guests partook of that buffet I was eyeing the whole time. Literally, the ballroom stunk of amazing ribs and down home cooking, outside of cheap beer and stale starched denim. That's when two dorky pre-teen boys came up to us.

“You got any Jay Z,” the one with red hair asked.

“Yeah,” said the other with brambly dark hair and buck teeth. “What about 50 Cent?”

“Um, well...I'm not too sure we can play that here,” I said. “I think they want us to just play country.”

“Ok. That's cool,” said the buck tooth. “Then play some Brooks and Dunn.”

The afternoon was going pretty well and smooth. Once the eating was done, they did their toasts and announcements and such and right after that it was time to get down. Ryan put on some kind of two steppin' new country song and the place erupted with hoots, hollers, yes, a few “ye-haws” and folks grabbing partners and scooting around the dance floor.

“Is this Brooks and Dunn?” I yelled into Ryan's ear.

“No,” he said. “George Straight.”

Then I felt a tapping on my shoulder. I turned around to find that big fellow from earlier standing behind me, not looking very pleased.

“I thought you said you'd play some Brooks and Dunn.”

“Uh, yeah,” I muttered suddenly feeling intimidated. “We, um, we'll get to them.”

The big guy then nodded heavily and walked away.

“Dude,” I told Ryan, “you better play some Brooks and Dunn. I think our lives depend on it.”

Ryan, busy with switching music and queing up CDs, was quiet for a second. Once he got situated, he turned to me and said, “Brooks and Dunn? I don't think I brought any Brooks and Dunn.”

Boink. I thought he said we had those guys? For real?

That's when I immediately stopped manning the lights and taking requests to fumble through the enormous case of CDs that was resting on a stand. My fingers couldn't work fast enough. I gleamed through an endless supply of mixed CDs of disco, rock, party anthems, modern dance, techno, Latino fare, holiday tunes and the like. Even the dozen or so country mixes, each containing hundreds of MP3s revealed no Brooks and Dunn. How can this be?

“Hey Mark,” Ryan loudly said in my ear as the rumbling country tunes filled the ballroom air with honky tonk delight. “I have to use the bathroom. There's some songs qued up so you're good.”

Ryan then left and now I was at the console, this tower of knobs and CD changers that weighed at least 100lbs and came up to about my belt line. Luckily for me I had plenty of DJ experience so I just did was Ryan said and played the songs he had lined up, while at the same time searching for at least one, just ONE!, Brooks and Dunn song. The big guy was giving me the evil eye. Maybe someone here has a Brooks and Dunn CD in their truck or trailer. Then I'd be saved.

“Excuse me,” came a voice. It was a nice middle aged lady wearing a bright red corsage. “But, could you play this one song for me. It's my husband and I's favorite song and I think the new couple will be just tickled to hear it.”

When she handed me the CD my heart beamed a light that could only come from being saved. It was Brooks and Dunn!

“Song four if you don't mind,” she said.

Immediately I ejected the next CD I was going to play, put in the nice lady's Brooks and Dunn CD, advanced to song four and breathed a sigh of relief. When the song that was playing came to an end, I slowly mixed in the Brooks and Dunn song, which was a slow one, and hoped that the big guy liked it.

“Hey,” said Ryan coming back from his bathroom break. “This isn't the song I had qued up.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said apprehensively. “But, uh...”

“Hey!” rang a deep voice. It was the big guy, standing off to my right, holding yet another Bud and gazing at me with terse eyes.

“Y-yes...sir?” I stumbled.

“Good job,” the big guy said. “I sure do love this song. Always reminds me of my ex wife. My second one. She was the apple of my eye...until she went rotten.”

I smiled and breathed yet another sigh of relief. The rest of the afternoon went on nearly spotless and after the party was over, we packed up, got tipped out by the bride's daddy and were set to go home.

“You guys stayin' for a beer?” asked the big guy who was obviously very drunk.

“We're not allowed to drink on the job sir,” said Ryan a bit overly authoritatively so.

All I did was turn to Ryan, put a hand on his shoulder and said “But we're not working anymore.”

“We still have to unload the truck,” he said.

“I'll meet you back at the warehouse,” I said. “I'm having a beer with my new buddy here.”

Ryan, looking very displeased, walked away, got into the Dunn's DJ truck and drove off. How funny, I thought, that I work for a DJ company called Dunn's seeing as a group called Brooks and Dunn have been giving me headaches all day. Go figure.

“Once again, good job buddy,” said the big guy.

“Thanks man.”

We then walked into the bar area and I was pleased to find that most of the buffet, including those ribs, were set up in the back. I grabbed a plate, filled it with the home cooked goodness, grabbed a beer and sat down.

“What kind of music do you like?” asked the big guy.

With a mouth full of BBQ meat and a face slathered in sauce, I said “Heavy metal.”

The big guy just laughed. “Boy, then what in the heck are you doin' DJin' a country wedding?”

I'm pretty sure I just shrugged.

“Don't know,” I said. “But I have a feeling things are going to get pretty interesting now that I am.”

We then clinked bottles, drank and swapped stories for a while. It was a weird and wily introduction to my new found career as a “professional” DJ in my new home of Tucson Arizona. And just the beginning as well.

Oh, and I never did make it to the warehouse to help Ryan unpack that van.

Oops.