Photo Credit: PJ Moody
This month, Milwaukee producer-DJ Asher Gray celebrated a milestone in his 15-year career: his first vinyl release, XLT, four tracks of buoyant bass, aggressive house beats and funhouse synthesizers. It was released by the Portland label Disposable Commodities (run by Milwaukee native Justin Grall), and, at times Gray could have been excused for thinking the project was cursed, given all the pressing delays and headaches it faced. He finished the album in early 2015 and had originally been shooting for a release that summer. Instead, he had to wait more than two more years.
Such are the indignities of his field. If anybody ever suggests that being a DJ is glamourous, Gray can willingly attest otherwise. At times he’s been one of the Milwaukee electronic scene’s more prominent draws. At others, not so much.
“Milwaukee is such a weird test tube since it’s so small, and people are really fickle,” Gray says. “The trends can get hot and then they burn out really quick. You have to work a little harder here, and you have to be willing to put in the time and effort to create a scene or community that’s going to come out to your event—and even then you also have to be willing to play for five people. If you’re not willing to play for five people, then in my mind you’re not in the right industry. If you want to be a DJ to throw your own parties, and you expect it to be a hit right off the bat, it’s just not going to happen, you know?”
Lately, Gray says he’s been enjoying the freedom of performing for mostly small crowds at mostly small venues. He’s a regular at High Dive, 701 E. Center St.—just as he was at that bar’s predecessors, the Impala Lounge and the River Horse—and he runs a night called Club Ritual at Quarters Rock ’n’ Roll Palace. That event will celebrate its one-year anniversary on Saturday Dec. 2, with a lineup of DJs he’s bringing in from Minneapolis.
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“Having DJed for so many years, there have been times when I was really self-conscious about drawing crowds,” Gray says. “And then some years I would be like, ‘I really need to just share my vision of music I’m into and stick to that and show people that if they come and hear me it’s going to be a taste-making type of event where they’re not going to know anything; I’m going to beat them down with underground stuff.’ To be honest, that’s more where I am now.”
For years, Gray co-hosted Le Freak, one of the city’s most popular dance parties at the late Hotel Foster on North Avenue. “We hit a critical mass at that party where I felt like I could do no wrong,” Gray says. “I was playing only the stuff I wanted to play, and people were showing up. But even then, were people showing up because of the music, or because we were on North Avenue, and we gave free pizza away at midnight? When an event gets to that level of popularity, you lose the focus of the music. The majority of the people there were not there to hear me play some weird track from a crazy producer in Berlin. They were there because it was an experience.”
Club Ritual may not be the destination event that Le Freak was, Gray admits, but it’s not trying to be.
“When attendance is low, it’s easy to feel like you never get any momentum,” Gray says. “I’ve been doing this for so long I feel like I’ve pushed through a lot of low dips, but I’m definitely still as into the music as I ever was, especially house music, which has been the one thread that’s carried throughout my career.
“Of course, it’s always easier to play things that people know,” Gray continues. “There’s going to be a wider variety of people that walk in and stick around and dance and have a good time because they hear music they recognize. I know I can play Jay-Z or some Top-40 track and get everybody dancing, but to me personally, it’s not as rewarding. The more rewarding moments come when I play stuff that’s really close to me, and I’ll have one person come up to me afterward and ask me what tracks I was playing. That, to me, is way more rewarding than the more pandering approach.”
Asher Gray’s album, XLT, is streaming at disposablecommodities.bandcamp.com.
