This is a series of interviews with our favorite electronic music artists, celebrating the Arrival of Thump and made possible by the new Heineken Star Bottle. In this edition: Wolfgang Gartner. For more arrivals check here. California-born producer (and Beatport chart king) Joey Youngman has experimented with so many aliases and sounds over his ten-year career, calling him a chameleon would be an understatement. The dude makes Madonna look predictable.Let's take a quick look at all of Joey's aliases before he finally settled with Wolfgang Gartner in 2008: Bosco & Terell (extra sneaky because he was just one guy), Count Funkula (awesome), Frequent Flyers (sort of French), Girth (just awkward), The (annoying cliffhanger), Mario Fabriani (soo Italian), Spyro Pappadopoulos (classic Greek), W. Gartner, Wolfgang Gardner, Wolfgang Garttner, and Wolfgang Gärtner (nice umlaut).Some people criticize all of these name changes as attempts to sound more European—which could've been a big plus when EDM was still underground in America. But when I called him out on this, Wolfgang said three things. 1.) He wanted to have a different name for all the styles of music he was producing, from tech-house to electro. 2.) He didn't want to piss off fans by being inconsistent. 3.) He wanted to make lots of money. Fair enough.Regardless of what the ultimate motive might be, all of these monikers prove one important thing: Wolfgang is full of surprises. From remixing Britney Spears to releasing Weekend In America—a hip-hop-loaded album featuring Cam'Ron, Eve and Jim Jones—and performing at Spike TV's Video Game Awards, there's little that Wolfgang won't do.While running on two-and-a-half hours of sleep in Brazil, Wolfgang took the time to tell us about why the genre "complextro" makes him want to gauge out his eyeballs, being too shy to seek out a mentor, and how he taught himself to love the spotlight.THUMP: What kinds of parties did you play at when you were first starting out?
Wolfgang Gartner: I started as a bedroom DJ when I was 13, and by the time I was 16, I had proper turntables and was decent enough to start playing at local clubs and house parties in my small town of San Luis Obispo, California. It was the late 90s, and we'd play disco house until the sun came up.Who are your mentors, or people who've helped you along?
I feel like that's one thing I really lacked coming up. Most people find or seek out a mentor, but I was too shy, or too proud, or I just didn't know anybody who was doing it at the level I wanted to be at. So I taught myself everything from day one. Looking back, I think I could have gotten here a lot quicker if I'd had a teacher.You started out calling yourself Joey Youngman, and then switched to Mario Fabriani before settling on Wolfgang Gartner. What was the logic behind all of these transformations?
I changed it from Joey Youngman to about seven different names, then to Wolfgang Gartner. The logic was that electro house is so different from anything else I had previously made that I needed a new alias. Wolfgang Gartner ended up being more successful than all the previous ones combined.Did you choose "Wolfgang Gartner" to sound more European?
The early aliases were just a way for me to release two records with four tracks every month, and trick people into buying them all, because they wouldn't have if they realized they were playing just one artist's productions. It worked pretty well for a while until people caught on. I don't know how I came up with the names. I had a little text file of cool first and last names. I think I mixed and matched to get most of them.When did you realize you'd arrived as a full-blown DJ, not just someone who did it as a fun project?
I started putting out all my music on my own record label in 2003. I was doing everything from mastering the records, making the lacquers, testing the pressings, building relationships with domestic and international distributors, manufacturing mass quantities of vinyl records at a pressing plant on the East Coast, and having my orders drop shipped to distributors… all from a makeshift office in my studio apartment in Oakland.
That's crazy.
Yeah, I remember the first round of checks for my first label release all came in the mail in one week. The profit margin on vinyl was pretty insane at that point, and my stuff was selling really well. So I got all these checks and had a "holy s%&*" moment when I realized much money I was about to make if I kept doing this. I dropped out of college the following Monday and that was the end of that.So would you consider that moment your grand arrival onto the DJing scene?
Some people have one big break. I feel like I had a dozen or so medium-sized breaks. When I started making electro house as Wolfgang Gartner, my first two songs got licensed to a video game by the company that does Grand Theft Auto. But starting up a successful and lucrative business releasing my own music was the biggest deal I'd ever done in my career up to that point.Since then, you've toured all over the world. How have you learned to connect with the crowd at any venue or city?
Thinking about it, I've toured every continent on the planet except Antarctica—which I'm determined to play, even if it's just for five minutes to get in the Guinness Book of World Records. But having played in every possible scenario, it's like some part of my subconscious associates it with a memory of a gig I've played in the last ten years of touring and tells me how to approach the current one.Are there any exceptions to that rule?
I think Vegas is one city where I play completely differently compared to anywhere else in the world. People really need to hear stuff they recognize there or they get bored. Then the opposite would be an eclectic festival like Coachella or Sasquatch. I'll play a more hard-edged set and expose people to music they've never heard before. I feel like people at these things are really hungry for something new, and that's a special kind of crowd to get to play for.Today, you're often cited as one of the leading DJs in the "complextro" scene. What does that term mean to you, and do you consider yourself a pioneer in that sound?
I don't know where that term came from. Some people say it was actually coined to describe my music once other people started copying it. I'll go on the record and say that I hate that word. But as much as that word makes me want to stick an icepick into my eye socket, yeah, I think I'm probably a key pioneer of it.Looking back, what's the most surprising thing you've learned about yourself from DJing?
My dad was in a lot of bands, and he would always tell me, "Joey, I'm not a front man, I'm a side man. And you're the same way. It's just how you're wired." And up until recently, that was true. I used to get so nervous that my hand would be shaking too violently to put the needle on the record sometimes. But talent is not just inherent and genetic. It can be learned, almost completely, without having any prior disposition to it. Through years of practice and a few really uncomfortable experiences, I learned to become a front man.
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Wolfgang Gartner: I started as a bedroom DJ when I was 13, and by the time I was 16, I had proper turntables and was decent enough to start playing at local clubs and house parties in my small town of San Luis Obispo, California. It was the late 90s, and we'd play disco house until the sun came up.Who are your mentors, or people who've helped you along?
I feel like that's one thing I really lacked coming up. Most people find or seek out a mentor, but I was too shy, or too proud, or I just didn't know anybody who was doing it at the level I wanted to be at. So I taught myself everything from day one. Looking back, I think I could have gotten here a lot quicker if I'd had a teacher.You started out calling yourself Joey Youngman, and then switched to Mario Fabriani before settling on Wolfgang Gartner. What was the logic behind all of these transformations?
I changed it from Joey Youngman to about seven different names, then to Wolfgang Gartner. The logic was that electro house is so different from anything else I had previously made that I needed a new alias. Wolfgang Gartner ended up being more successful than all the previous ones combined.Did you choose "Wolfgang Gartner" to sound more European?
The early aliases were just a way for me to release two records with four tracks every month, and trick people into buying them all, because they wouldn't have if they realized they were playing just one artist's productions. It worked pretty well for a while until people caught on. I don't know how I came up with the names. I had a little text file of cool first and last names. I think I mixed and matched to get most of them.
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I started putting out all my music on my own record label in 2003. I was doing everything from mastering the records, making the lacquers, testing the pressings, building relationships with domestic and international distributors, manufacturing mass quantities of vinyl records at a pressing plant on the East Coast, and having my orders drop shipped to distributors… all from a makeshift office in my studio apartment in Oakland.
Yeah, I remember the first round of checks for my first label release all came in the mail in one week. The profit margin on vinyl was pretty insane at that point, and my stuff was selling really well. So I got all these checks and had a "holy s%&*" moment when I realized much money I was about to make if I kept doing this. I dropped out of college the following Monday and that was the end of that.So would you consider that moment your grand arrival onto the DJing scene?
Some people have one big break. I feel like I had a dozen or so medium-sized breaks. When I started making electro house as Wolfgang Gartner, my first two songs got licensed to a video game by the company that does Grand Theft Auto. But starting up a successful and lucrative business releasing my own music was the biggest deal I'd ever done in my career up to that point.Since then, you've toured all over the world. How have you learned to connect with the crowd at any venue or city?
Thinking about it, I've toured every continent on the planet except Antarctica—which I'm determined to play, even if it's just for five minutes to get in the Guinness Book of World Records. But having played in every possible scenario, it's like some part of my subconscious associates it with a memory of a gig I've played in the last ten years of touring and tells me how to approach the current one.Are there any exceptions to that rule?
I think Vegas is one city where I play completely differently compared to anywhere else in the world. People really need to hear stuff they recognize there or they get bored. Then the opposite would be an eclectic festival like Coachella or Sasquatch. I'll play a more hard-edged set and expose people to music they've never heard before. I feel like people at these things are really hungry for something new, and that's a special kind of crowd to get to play for.Today, you're often cited as one of the leading DJs in the "complextro" scene. What does that term mean to you, and do you consider yourself a pioneer in that sound?
I don't know where that term came from. Some people say it was actually coined to describe my music once other people started copying it. I'll go on the record and say that I hate that word. But as much as that word makes me want to stick an icepick into my eye socket, yeah, I think I'm probably a key pioneer of it.Looking back, what's the most surprising thing you've learned about yourself from DJing?
My dad was in a lot of bands, and he would always tell me, "Joey, I'm not a front man, I'm a side man. And you're the same way. It's just how you're wired." And up until recently, that was true. I used to get so nervous that my hand would be shaking too violently to put the needle on the record sometimes. But talent is not just inherent and genetic. It can be learned, almost completely, without having any prior disposition to it. Through years of practice and a few really uncomfortable experiences, I learned to become a front man.