I managed to grab the lads for a quick chat last week just before the birthday madness, to talk about the dark times, the good times and the time Trev sleep walked his way into Crego's bed in Barcelona....Unfortuantely John couldn't join us for this one as he had a prior engagement.

Jude: So before we go through all the highs and lows of the last five years, tell us a bit about how you three guys know each other. How did this band of brothers come together initially? (This is what The Unabombers like to refer to as “reference”!!)

Trev: Well the same way I’ve gotten to know everyone really. We’re all people who had an interest in house music. Or just people who had an interest in music full stop because when it started off it was just me and some friends of mine from where I’m from back in Meath. So it started off that way as purely a social thing, people who I knew who would be interested in dance music would become involved and we’d just see what happened. But something that really changed things a lot was for example the Internet and Internet forums, cos I met Steve Flynn through the Power FM message board and John Mahon through the same thing – I think he saw an ad for a boat party we were doing for the first website launch posted on the Power FM board and he PMed me or emailed me and then came down on the night and we got talking. And I think that’s how we met as well Eoin isn’t it?

Eoin: I emailed you after The Derrick Carter gig. That was my first Bodytonic gig.

Jude: So you were just there as a punter for that one.

Eoin: Yeah I was there as a punter and then I checked the website and then I spent two or three hours writing Trev an email which I didn’t think I’d get a response to and I got a reply the next day saying yeah you sound like you know what you’re talking about, let’s meet up!

Trev: The Internet is such a massive part of what we do now but it was such a lifesaver for me when I started off because in the 90’s the only way I would have heard about great music was through radio stations, so I was kind of slave to the radio and any pirates I could find or mad German stations or BBC in the UK and I’d reference everything I heard on the radio with magazines. That was how I knew anything about music, I’d be like right if this tune is in that category for review that must mean that’s Acid House or that must be Jazz and Funk or Soul. Otherwise I wouldn’t have known cos I was only in me teens and couldn’t go to clubs and didn’t hang around with anyone who had a clue about this. So when I was coming into Dublin as a student and seeing clubs like The Kitchen or The Red Box and I hadn’t a clue how to go about finding out how you’d get to the other side of the decks and then I started working in The Kitchen and kind of got my foot in a little bit that way. But really Bodytonic started purely through people on the Internet getting in touch. It probably seems a bit strange now that that seems like such an unusual thing, it’s such a part of our society now to be on forums and Myspace and all that, everyone does it, but back then that was quite rare and it was a very easy way to make contact with someone who you didn’t really know. Cos it’s not like you’d walk up to someone in a club and say “are you into house music, do you want to start a night?”, but if someone sends you an email it’s a safer starting block. So that’s really how we all met.

Eoin: I think it’s great. I’d say 90% of people in Bodytonic didn’t know each other before they started coming to the club.

Trev: Totally. And sometimes we actually have to remind ourselves that we didn’t actually know each other before. I don’t know if this would have happened without the Internet to be honest.

Eoin: We used to call Bodytonic the lonely hearts club for house music lovers!

Jude: So fill us in on what the clubbing scene was like in Dublin when you guys kicked off. If I remember right it wasn’t too healthy! How familiar were you then with what was going on dance music wise?

Eoin: Well personally I was totally unfamiliar cos, people are probably sick of hearing me say this, but I went to college over in Liverpool and the clubbing scene over there was brilliant. I wasn’t even into damce music until I went there. So when I came back it was 2003 and I just thought there’s nothing going on over here and then I saw that Derrick Carter was playing and I went along and I thought it was brilliant. That’s when I emailed Trev to try and get involved cos I saw that there was huge potential. But outside of that I never really paid much attention cos nothing really grabbed me.

Trev: Yeah I think around that time clubbing in Dublin collapsed in a very short space of time. It’s the nature of the music business. It’s a cruel beast and if you’re not on top of it all the time you can go from hero to zero in no time. For example take the likes of Derrick Carter, Mark Farina and Sneak, guys who’ve played for us in the last four years and all of them rocked it, but because they haven’t changed they’re almost a little bit dead to us really, which is bizarre cos when we started off one of our five goals was to get those guys to play. But five years ago…well I was working in The Kitchen when I left college. I started picking up glasses the week after I finished a business degree in DCU, so my parents were obviously really happy with the four years I spent there. But that was a way to try and get my foot in the door and up until the end of that year things were ok, but then late bars came in in Dublin and that was the start of the downturn. The club started getting a lot less busy very quickly and got worse every month. And no one seemed to be really saying “ehh we have a fuckin problem here, the club is getting quieter by the month”. I think it had a lot to do with late bars and also here in Ireland we tend to mirror what goes on in the UK. And in that time clubbing basically fell flat on its arse. And this was at the time when we started Bodytonic.

Jude: So it wasn’t an optimum time to be trying to get a new club going?!

Trev: No. And the only reason that I didn’t get into clubbing when I left college or get into it when I left school was because I always that it was going to end. Dance music magazines always had an undercurrent of paranoia to them, as if they were always waiting for the end. So when we started, what was happening was exactly what I would have feared most, it was on its arse. The Tivoli went bust, Influx as well. And Influx were the equivalent of what we are now. They were massive, they were doing huge gigs – Homelands, all the big names and the good names were playing for them, they ran two or three clubs, had an office. Then they took on The Tivoli and they were internationally respected and in the space of time that they were in The Tivoli they went from a high to literally going bankrupt. So the way I looked at it was, we came in at the worst time, but because we did and because we struggled so much it means that no matter how successful we get we’d never take it for granted because we know the dark days were dark.

Jude: So how dark were they?!

Trev: Well it was funny cos we started off quite well, we ran a few gigs and in the first year we got Voodoo lounge on a Thursday, which was a big thing cos it was the city centre, we did a gig in Belgium which was a big thing cos we were abroad, we did a few gigs out in Meath which were a disaster but we learned from them. And then after knocking on the door of The Kitchen’s manager we got The Kitchen every Sunday and back then that was like getting The Pod now or Fabric, it was THE club and it just put you on a certain social ladder, people took you a bit more seriously. So when we got that we thought Jesus this is it we have it made! But then we started doing as badly as the promoter before us who got chucked. And then six months later the club was closed. So the next year was really the dark period whereby we just sporadically did whatever we could, and when we built Bodytonic, as in the foundations of where it is now. I met Steve Flynn then, I met John then and Eoin as well, Paul Hughes, Eoin Callanan, The Resoul guys. So we just started doing these one offs, we did Derrick Carter in the Red Box, we did Charles Webster on the Rooftop, we did the Howth beach party. Those three parties and that summer changed everything for us. And in the October when we started doing Wax, the place was rammed from day one, because of the reputation we’d built up doing these parties.

Jude: So was there ever a point in that period when you thought to yourself this isn’t going to happen.

Trev: Always, I lost a lot of money on those days and I got fired from a job I had. I was a rep for cigarettes and I used to go around giving out flyers for gigs and go around town putting up posters for stuff and they eventually found out I was doing nothing cos I was doing this all the time. Then I broke up with my girlfriend on the same weekend that we did Jori Hulkonen in The Voodoo lounge and the venue owner ripped us off by a grand which was absolutely huge money then. Then we did some gigs in Molloys and we got thrown out of Molloys cos it was too busy. He’d be giving out that it wasn’t busy enough then we brought Charles Webster in one night, it was really busy and then he rings me up the next day saying we had loads of complaints from people upstairs complaining that there was too much noise, it was too hectic here so I don’t want to do this anymore! Then we did stuff in Spi where a guest DJ from England didn’t turn up.

Jude: Can you name and shame?!

Trev: It was Eliot Eastwick actually who I’ve met since and he’s a lovely guy, but for whatever reason he didn’t turn up that night and we lost a fortune on those gigs. So throughout all that time I was getting a lot of grief from my Dad about it and I had to go back working for him on a building site. So that January which is about four and a half years ago when we’d lost a shit load of money on the previous three months of gigs and I was back working for my Dad, which I’d only ever done during the summer holidays. That was definitely a period where for a good month I was like “I’m out of this”, but you know, we kept going.

Jude: So who was the first big international guest, where you thought this might actually be going places?

Trev: Derrick Carter without a doubt. It was in The Red Box so, number one Derrick Carter was my favourite DJ and, number two, it was a space that I’d always wanted to do stuff in. Like I was saying I had a few goals when I started Bodytonic. One was getting Sneak, Carter and Farina over and the others were doing gigs in The Red Box and The Kitchen. We’d already done gigs in The Kitchen. We got about 600 people in for Carter and that was when that place was on its arse a little bit so that was a massive turning point.

Eoin: I never saw these dark days because Derrick Carter was my first gig and I wasn’t involved then. My first proper involvement with Bodytonic was when we started at Wax.

Trev: So he only remembers the good days!

Jude: So looking back over the last five years what moments are really close to your heart, what things stand out for you?

Eoin: For me it would be how Wax took off, because I used to go to these little tiny intimate nights over in Liverpool and I was getting the same kind of buzz and excitement from a club in Dublin which is where I always wanted to move back to anyway and get involved with the scene over here. And just seeing so many people coming down who weren’t necessarily into house music, and getting into the night and becoming regulars. And the atmosphere was so good, that’s why they kept coming back. So you had a mix of people who were really into music and then you had a mix of people who were just down for the buzz. We started to see the club filling up every week before twelve and were bringing in international guests who we loved but most people wouldn’t know who they were, but they’d still go down on the basis of the hype that was building.

Jude: What about you Trev what are the moments that stand out for you?

Trev: Millions really. Bizarrely enough one of the ones that sticks out to me the most was a warehouse party in Barcelona and we weren’t even doing anything, we were just at it. There was me Crego, Shane, Steve Flynn, John I think, and we all got into the part mode shall we say and I just remember it was at that time we were just talking about going full time with Bodytonic and we were in Barcelona which is such a cool city and it was our first trip abroad as well and we were meeting people who knew who we were, not many people but a few and that was a great feeling. Then Electric Picnic 2005 with Garnier finishing off and Mr.Scruff during the day is a major one, Calvin James doing four decks one night was amazing, Carl Craig the first time, Theo Parrish the first time, every New Year’s eve except for last year which was a bit messy with the pub, the first night we opened the pub is a big one, the first day we opened the office in here is a big one.

Eoin: Every year we have these moments at Electric Picnic when we’re standing backstage looking out at a full tent and our favourite DJ is on the decks.

Trev: Yeah, I remember Yoda this year when he finished there was just this eruption of noise and then he played one more and then when Marky dropped SL2 and then a tune that Derrick May dropped it was about third from the end, I don’t know what it was but it was some epic Detroit-ish tune.

Eoin: It was called War I saw it on the deck.

Trev: Was that it, well that track anyway, and then Kormac playing this year was a particular highlight actually cos he’s kind of one of our own. We’ve had a lot of our own guys onstage but he’s one who’s definitely got the potential to do well. And I’m saying that without being biased or overly positive, but because his stage show was so impressive I saw lots of people on various forums who wouldn’t necessarily know him name check that gig which is great.

Jude: Just in terms of your day to day job, what’s the best thing about it? What do you actually do on a daily basis?!

Trev: A lot of people ask me that! (to Eoin) Do you get asked that? People think we do fuck all I think!

Eoin: The thing that I love about it is that I’m doing what I love, I’m working with music. When I was at school I was always mad about music and when I got home I’d be straight into my magazines with my headphones on. And I always thought this is something I’d love to be involved in in some way. And now it’s what I do, it’s my job. So I see people on the bus looking dreary with their suit on and their ID badges or whatever, and I don’t feel that way going to work, my job is great.

Jude: It is a bit of a dream come true in a way isn’t it?

Trev: It is but it’s not like a dream in the sense that we’re not all prancing around going isn’t this the best thing in the world. It is hard and we do have arguments, we do get on each other’s nerves and we curse and swear and throw things sometimes, so it’s not like the Brady bunch or anything. People often talk about how something’s like a family and we all love each other but I always think, you know families don’t go around all day hugging each other, they do row and they give out and it’s difficult but at the end of the day they’re the best thing you have and that’s why I do think it’s like a family in here because we do bitch and we do row and we do complain but ultimately we’ve all been mates for years and we survive every year when we go to Barcelona! I can crawl into Crego’s bed sleep walking and he doesn’t hold a grudge about it (laughs). So what do we actually do? Well we are really busy. We spend a lot of time on the Internet talking shit.

Eoin: We spend a lot of time talking shit in meetings.

Trev: Yeah basically talking a lot of shit is what we do! But you’d never be twiddling your thumbs. There’s never nothing to do.

Eoin: Sometimes it is really hard when there’s so much to do. Running nights is not as simple as putting on an act, printing flyers and putting up posters. You really have to wrack your brains and it can be tough doing that week in week out. We deal with quite a fickle crowd so you have to really delve into their minds and try and think how we can attract their attention and keep them interested.

Trev: And then the thing is we’re always developing new things, like with Digitonic at the moment, or the website or whatever. And everyone here has about five jobs minimum. I mean even TJ, the accountant works in the bar one night a week! There’s no one here who specifically does one thing, everyone’s a multi-tasker. But yeah it’s funny I do get asked that a lot, what do I do all day!

Jude: I think it’s something people who work in a creative field in general get asked. I get asked what I do all day as well by people who work in a bank or whatever. I’m kept pretty busy!

Trev: And I get asked a lot by people why I work so much, am I a slave to the job. Well maybe a little bit but I don’t worry about it and I don’t get stressed out, because I love what I do and we do talk a lot about the whole work/life balance thing. But most people would be in a job where it’s a pain in the arse, you hear the alarm go off and you don’t want to go in. And I had that for years so I’m no different to anyone else, but I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve felt that I couldn’t be arsed going in to work today. So yeah it’ the luckiest job in the world and I wouldn’t actually trade it for playing for Liverpool!

Jude: Ok, let’s see how well you guys actually know each other. If I was to say to you Eoin tell me who John’s favourite DJ is who would you say?

Eoin: (no hesitation!) Louie Vega

Trev: Would he not say Dixon?

Eoin: As a legendary all time favourite he’d say Louie Vega, Dixon only in the last two years.

Jude: Where would Trev be most excited about DJing if he could DJ anywhere in the world?

Eoin: Ehhhhhhmmmm, well there’s a few. In the summer he would have said the Space terrace in Ibiza

Trev: Yeah, until we went to it though! Yeah it would have been there or Fabric.

Eoin: Well I think what he said was, we were watching Andy Cato and he had the place absolutely rocking and he said “I’d love to be in his shoes now”.

Trev: Ok he’s right!

Jude: Ok, is there anyone Eoin would be star-struck by?

Trev: I know when we started off he would have been by Yousef, a little bit, maybe not star-struck but he was kind of the guy he looked up to the most. Probably not anymore but back then it would have been Carter, Yousef, Sneak.

Jude: Well to put it in context the first time I met Michael Black I was star-struck cos I was such a massive fan of his show on Nova back in the day. So that was a big moment for me, bless me!

Jude: So in terms of where Bodytonic is now, did you think you’d be this successful after five years? Are you surprised by the progress?

Trev: Yes and no, as in no not surprised because we’re ambitious and we want to go places, but yes as in when you look back five years ago it seems like yesterday and when I started off it was such a simple thing – the goals I had were to play on Power FM, to play in The Kitchen and The Red Box and to put on DJ Sneak, Mark Farina and Derrick Carter and that was it. And I found as I went along I wanted to do more and more, so you’d set new goals. But overall I’m definitely surprised. In terms of where we’re going it’s pretty simple…..and complicated (laughter). We want to move away from running clubs as much, not that we’d do less than we’re doing now, we just won’t do any more, we’ve got it covered in terms of the music that we’re interested in. It’s going to be all about the Internet, the website, Digitonic, the labels. We’d like our website to be like Pitchfork Media, or Resident Advisor, we’d like our labels to be like Ninja Tunes or Domino in terms of their reach. We’d like our bars and clubs to be like Fabric. But I think certainly where we’re going is more multi media focussed – labels and videos and visuals and all that sort of stuff.

Jude: Finally then, what do you guys hope that people get from any Bodytonic experience?

Eoin: That’s a tough one. What I love seeing is people just having a brilliant time it’s as simple as that, be it the club or something they’ve read on the website that takes their mind off something else, that’s what I enjoy most.

Trev: Yeah just that people enjoy it, that the music that we play is cutting edge and that they come away from the night having enjoyed themselves. I don’t expect people to start seeing Jesus. Tony deVit of all people, who’s a hard house DJ, said that when people go to see him play they really just want to forget about their shitty jobs and their shitty arguments and they just want to go out and party and have a good time and his role as a DJ was to make sure they had a good time. And that pretty much for me sums up what I hope people take from what we do. That’s about one of the best things you can do, and it’s as simple as that.

For more Bodytonic new click [here.] (http://www.bodytonicmusic.com/news/)

Karen @ 30 Sep 2007 23:34

loving the little southpark character dudes hehe

great interview lads and lassie..heres to the next 5/world domination ;)

Jude @ 1 Oct 2007 7:46

I've just noticed that I didn't give Eoin any trousers!!!!!!! Oops!