About a year after picking up my first controller, KuyaCJ, (formerly known as jefecj) offered to let me join him at his residency at a local brewery. I had really limited experience at the time (posted a couple mixes to soundcloud and brought my controller to some house parties) but was confident that I could do it.

I can look back and laugh at it now, but this experience really shook me at the time! I quickly learned that my approach to DJing at that time in my life was completely incompatible with the venue and the vibes. My library was pretty much unusable, but CJ was gracious enough to feel that I was panicking and proposed that we both play out of his library. 

I had a great time hanging with CJ and his friends, and some of my old best friends from elementary school came out to support. I'm extremely thankful that the first time I played out was in such a great but eye-opening environment. All props to CJ for taking a chance on me and putting me on.

Unfortunately, this event caused me to have a bit of a self-identity crisis. I learned so much that evening about song selection, mixing, reading a room, dealing with people, and what DJing even is that I felt like I was going to explode. I remember being so overstimulated from how much of a surprise everything was, that I had to leave after a couple hours and couldn't sleep when I got home.

In the weeks after, I remember having a lot of trouble processing my first time playing out. I felt really embarrassed about being so surprised about everything. Instead of learning from the experience, I was giving up and telling myself that I'm not cut out to be a DJ. I wish I could go back and tell younger Nathan to cut himself some slack.

From this event (Sept 14 2018) to the start of covid, I kinda put DJing aside. I would pick up a couple different controllers, sometimes bring them to house parties, and play around with scratching, but I spent time most of my time working on cars, playing keyboard/synth in a band, and playing Super Smash Bros Melee in the local semi-competitive scene.

3 years later in December 2021, my friend Josh put out a video of our skate friend's clips that he had filmed since the beginning of covid. Him and his girlfriend/fiance at the time (now wife!!!) rented out Railyard Brewing and invited a bunch of friends and family to come watch it. 

I brought a single turntable setup to the event and played a short set while people came in and chilled before the premiere. I was already pretty into DJing at this point (post-beat drop), but it was cool playing there and realizing it's not so big and scary after all. A bunch of Josh's now wife's friends that were there are also mutual friends with CJ and were there the first time I played out. So I kind of felt like I had redeemed myself, even though I'm sure absolutely nobody remembers that first Railyard event that I played at lol.