Darla Patterson stays busy promoting local club deejays
by Benny Smith
They work on their music some days for hours at a time, mixing in new material with tried-and-true classics. They promote their gigs on their websites and create artistic flyers to promote upcoming shows. They show off their talent at clubs or in someone's basement, playing until the wee hours of the morning.
It might sound like your favorite local band, but it's Knoxville's club deejays, who have turned the dance club scene here into one of the most passionate in the South. It's a scene not huge in numbers, but one that has managed to stay alive due to a very supportive core crowd.
"We have a smaller scene than most in the South, but I have to say we have a wide range of people in our audiences, and they are very enthusiastic," says local dance scene/deejay promoter Darla Patterson. "We have received many comments from the national touring deejays we bring in about how hype the crowds are."
Patterson, along with some longtime local deejays, promotes Knoxville's dance scene with every bit as much passion as live music promoters. She is the driving force behind three websites that promote and provide information on the local dance/deejay scene.
Each site is devoted to a different aspect of Knoxville's dance scene. Touchparties.com promotes dance parties, while supportthedj.com mainly provides details on the local deejays she works with. She also helps maintain the fictionfx.com website, promoting Fiction/Tonic, arguably Knoxville's most popular weekly dance spot.
But as hard as Patterson works at pumping up the local dance/deejay scene (she started working at Fiction 2 1/2 years ago), she is quick to add that the deejays work just as hard at mastering their craft. "Many people seem to think that deejaying is not a difficult job, that it's just as big of a party for the deejay as it is for the people drinking and dancing. But their jobs don't stop when the club closes," she says. "They strive all through the week to create new remixes and find those perfect records that will make the crowd go crazy.
"I work along with Slink [longtime Knoxville club deejay Heath Shinpaugh, who spins for Fiction] and other deejays to give credit where credit is due. The deejays I promote have been working at this for a long time, and they deserve to have their names and accomplishments recognized. I want everyone to realize that they aren't just some guys who happen to own a few records."
Patterson's interest in what she calls "any music with an electronic sound" began when she was a young girl growing up in Kingsport. Not known for its club scene, she said she was "just waiting for my 18th birthday so I could take off on a road trip to Winston-Salem, Charlotte, or even Knoxville, where my friends were sneaking off to weekend raves."
She would trade mix tapes with her fellow dance scene cohorts and procured music she could not find in the Tri-Cities. "Once I finally made it into the clubs and parties, I knew I was home," she said.
While the Knoxville dance club scene may be a bit smaller than most, it is diverse and passionate. The crowds at the Saturday night Fiction dance nights are, she says, "a complete mix, including UT students and young professionals. A very friendly, good-looking crowd."
The Touch Parties that she helps produce and promote are not as mainstream, but offer a wide variety of personalities, all looking for a good time. Patterson also helps to promote The Closet, a long-standing dance night happening every Thursday at Lord Lindsey.
Although Patterson works hard promoting some of this area's best club deejays, she also has her finger on the pulse of the national scene. Many club deejays eventually find their way into a recording studio to either record or produce a record for another artist. In fact, Slink, along with Scott Wilkerson and a few other local club deejays produced and released the regionally popular "Speed Freaks" discs in the '90s. It is Patterson's hope that, one day, she'll be promoting Knoxville deejays whose names will be as recognizable as the likes of Adam Freeland, The Plump DJs and Tiesto. "If you want to be famous and make big bucks, this is definitely a road you're going to have to take," she explains.
October 30, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 44
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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