Q&A with Steve Porter
The Porterhouse DJ on Starting Out, Staying Focused & Making Good
Steve Porter, DJ and producer of electronic dance music including house, breaks, trance, techno and what he calls "underground mashup," loves his craft..and his mom.
Stats
- Genre: “Ducking between funky, driving house, breaks, techno and trance. Underground mashup.”
- Signature style: The Porterhouse sound.
- Mentor: Progressive house DJ Chris Fortier
- Next gig: WMC Miami—the Porterhouse Party, 3/22 at The Fifth
- On tour: Europe, Australia and Asia until June; Ibiza with Paul van Dyk this summer
- Hometown: Amherst, Mass Adopted town: SoHo, NYC
- Web site; MySpace
With parents who were both professors at U.Mass, Amherst native Steve Porter’s next step after high school should have been a no-brainer. Instead, he announced to his bemused but indulgent parents that he was going to be a DJ. “They were always down for me to do what I wanted to do,” he says. “So that was their stance. They were concerned at points about the direction I was going in, how far you could go, but I was determined. I didn’t want to let them down or make a total fool of myself. And I also had confidence that I could do this.” Sure enough, with a little help from Chris Fortier, Porter has become a globally sought after DJ and producer. As he gears up for WMC and other tour dates, Porter talks about his beginnings and his future.
Do you mix with vinyl, CDs, or mp3? All CDs, only because I’m re-editing all the tunes I play; I edit everything and burn it onto a CD. When I first started DJing, it was all vinyl. I hate to say it—it’s a sad thing—but when push comes to shove, vinyl is on its last legs.
Where and how did you learn to spin? As a sophomore in high school, DJ Club was an elective, run by one of the school chefs. It wasn’t popular in the early 90s. Kids didn’t see it as cool; everyone was listening to hip-hop, and I was very concerned that people would hear me listening to [dance music]. I started out listening to C&C Music Factory, Black Box, Technotronic, mainstream radio dance music in western Mass. Then I started to dig deeper. By the time I was a senior, I knew how to mix records and had taken over most of the DJ duties of the school.
What kind of tools do you use? Pro Tools I use to edit, and also Ableton Live, for ease of use and speed of translation. You can get work re-edited and put back on disc quickly, and with my travel schedule, I need efficiency more than anything else. For studio work, I also use Ableton’s sequencing programs.
Describe the Porterhouse sound. The Porterhouse sound is dance music with no borders. I prefer not to get boxed in.
What surprises are in store for the Porterhouse party at WMC? The new venue, The Fifth, looks like it will be an exciting spot to party in. I’m going to be playing a lot of my own original material. We’ve been going with a consistent lineup with my Boston friends coming down and playing with me, so I’m looking to carry on the momentum.
Which of your own songs would you most like to have remixed and by which DJ? I would love to hear a pumping DJ Dan remix of my track, “Definite Form,” on Sander Kleinenberg’s label.
What’s your advice to aspiring DJs hoping to break through with a remix? You really have to think sacrificially—sacrifice yourself as much as possible, give your music out for free, get yourself out there. Now that everybody and their grandmother is producing, it’s important to get out to as many shows as possible, offer your work on spec at first, get in touch with record labels—“sacrifice” and “free” are the key words when just starting out. There’s no room to be frugal with your music or money right now. The real profit right now is in performance.
How did you meet Chris Fortier? He was playing at a New Year’s Eve party in 1999 in Springfield, Mass. I had sent him some music and we’d corresponded beforehand, and I had one of his first mixes, “Alpha,” at the record store I was working at. When we met we decided to keep in touch. I did what I could to help Fade Records; I provided remix works. In turn, he put out my records and took me under his wing. He was fully managing me a few years ago, making sure I was making the right steps. There are many hazards out there for an artist.
Hazards like what, for example? Getting stuck in a sound. Chris preached to me not to get stuck in any particular sound, always to be experimenting, switching it up. He would give me an objective opinion, and I really did and do respect his word musically.
I noticed on the “Porterhouse” CD that, like Fortier, your mixes make the album sound like a cohesive piece written by one person. Do you find a lot of your artists from Fortier’s Balance record pool? I’m a part of the Balance family, so I do get promos from there and from various other sources. I record-shop more than anything else right now, though.
If you could change anything about the dance-music world, what would it be? There’s a lot of people who get into this industry with a scummy mindset, that they’re in it 100 percent for the glamour and for their own narcissistic pleasures, the attention. That’s certainly not where I come from; I very much view music as a science. It’s about moving music forward.
What’s next for you? After this tour, I’m going to be beginning on my next artist album. It will have a more diverse approach, not just wholly dance music, more along the lines of the Chemical Brothers’ approach. I may do one more Porterhouse compilation first. I’ve got a pretty full plate, and I’m trying to visit my mom as much as possible because she keeps me grounded.
