News & Views

25 June 2011

It’s All About the Fun

 
BY MIKE DEVLIN, TIMESCOLONIST.COM JUNE 21, 2011

Davin Greenwell figured his chances of a traditional career in music were limited after he was kicked out of his elementary school choir for singing too loud.

“I was in key,” Greenwell, 33, said in his defence. “But I was having too much fun.”

Fun is a recurring theme in the life of Greenwell. The Gordon Head native appears to make the most of everything at his disposal, be it a career opportunity or an extracurricular activity. His job titles in recent years — musician, graphic designer, web designer, radio host, record label owner, blogger, photographer and festival producer — run the gamut. And pretty much all of them have been self-taught.

Greenwell, who spent 12 years as a graphic designer for Smallbox Software, a local website management company, and continues to run his own photography company on the side, Bergamont Studios, is currently a research analyst for the provincial government. But when the day turns to night, he retreats to a studio, club or all-ages venue, usually ones that specializes in dance music.

Greenwell takes to the stage once or twice a month under the moniker AFK. DJing is a lot of fun these days, Greenwell says, now that it has been reduced from full-time pursuit to part-time hobby. “It’s less about DJing and being that guy fiending for gigs, and more about shows that could be special.” Greenwell has been added to a pretty special bill at Club 9ONE9 on Sunday, which will see AFK open for popular big beat duo the Crystal Method. The opportunity to open for a influential, Grammy-nominated duo isn’t something Greenwell takes lightly. That rings true for all his passions in life, be it music or photography.

“I’ll be that guy on Granville Street at 1 or 2 in the morning trying to get the right exposure settings for a shot of some people going crazy.”

He tinkered with computers at an age when not every household had one. He had learned enough by the age of 16 that a career in commercial design was a realistic possibility. Knowing he would need some book smarts to go along with his natural ability, Greenwell enrolled after high school in business administration and marketing courses at Camosun College.

His musical experiments, which ground to a halt when he quit the Lambrick Park Secondary School band in Grade 9 [“Music appeals to me, but like any musician you want a bit of control over what you’re playing,” he says] were resuscitated during his time at Camosun. He had been exposed to electronic dance music in bits and pieces over the years, with help from his two older brothers. Their influence, both as longtime fans and creators of original dance music, loomed large over Greenwell, who essentially put a career in business on hold to pursue one of his own as a DJ.

Under the name ariz0na, he began performing at shows in Victoria, Vancouver, and up-Island, where the all-night party scene was in full effect. He was given a rare opportunity, in 2000, to co-host with Tim Dotchin the city’s first dance music show on commercial radio. Really Good Music ran on the former Extreme 107.3 FM each Saturday night until 2002, amassing a solid local following along the way.

Greenwell was at his busiest during this period. “A Saturday night for me would be opening up at a club from 9:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m.,” he explains. “Then I would go from the radio station from midnight to 4 a.m., then drive up-Island to a rave and DJ from 6 a.m. to 7:30 a.m., all thanks to coffee.” Sleep was in short supply back then. Greenwell and his friends would cap the day with an early morning feed session at one of the city’s all-night haunts. “Those were crazy days for sure.” When his commercial radio career came to a close, a new role as record label co-owner began.

Greenwell co-founded in 2004, with fellow DJ Justin Humber, local record label Pacific Front Recordings. When hatching their business plan, Greenwell quickly realized the costs involved were well outside of their minimal budget. “We were looking at the business model of pressing vinyl, and it was quite expensive. The case for making a record label and putting out vinyl was iffy at best, so we looked at digital options.”

In what is now seen as a pioneering move, Pacific Front Recordings sought out some emerging digital portals, including Beatport, which has since become one of the biggest online suppliers of dance music in the world. Pacific Front Recordings averaged close to a dozen releases annually. By the time the label ceased operations in 2009, their banner had spread worldwide. Due to its popularity, however, Pacific Front Recordings became more about administration than anything else. “We accomplished a lot,” Greenwell says. “There was a point where you could buy some toilet paper at Walmart and also one of new tracks, so we achieved our distribution dreams.”

With a lot going on simultaneously — be it radio shows or club nights, or his duties as the former creative director of the Victoria Electronic Music Festival — Greenwell brought everything down to a more manageable level in 2009. With more free time than ever, Greenwell put the focus back on music of his own.

At first, he was producing music “without any real aim to it.” But over time, he started developing a purpose. “I wanted to make dance tracks that were listenable at home as well as a club or party. Music that could go the distance, so to speak.” These days, he does it mostly for fun, if not for free. Each of his AFK mixes since 2005 are available on his website, davingreenwell.com, free of charge. His mixes as ariz0na, which he retired in 2006 in favour of AFK, are up for download as well. He has branched out with remix work, working with subjects as varied as rock bands Jets Overhead and Vince Vaccaro.

Artistry of any kind is what interests Greenwell — as much today as it did 20 years ago.

“There’s a lot of people like that now, people who are passionate abut perfecting their art,” he says. “The proliferation of technology and sharing, some people say it has led to a lot of garbage. But being able to share something that I’ve created, for me, is really cool.”

mdevlin@timescolonist.com
© Copyright (c) The Victoria Times Colonist

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