On the road in the deep South with Williamsburg DJ Westend

By Joshua Encinias

Westend (Photo by Jeffery Tremmel)

Before Westend performed at the Hangout Festival in Gulf Shores, Alabama, he played at EDC (Electric Daisy Carnival) Las Vegas, then hopped on a red-eye from Vegas to Atlanta with his tour manager Kyle Williams.

“There was a maintenance issue with the next flight so we were planning to go right to the Hangout, without a shower, which luckily we didn’t have to do,” says Westend (né Tyler Morris). “That’s the DJ life. There are flight delays all the time. It’s part of the routine, you can’t control that stuff.”

Since debuting in 2016, the Manhattan native of the Westend End Avenue neighborhood (hence the moniker) has consistently ranked in the top 10 best-selling artists on Beatport and boasts 30 million streams on Spotify.

Although he studied public policy at Duke University, he has been creating music since high school when he attended The Bronx High School of Science. There, he was inspired by Robert Moog, synth inventor and Bronx Science alumnus, class of 1952.

Westend recently moved to Williamsburg where he likes to live a normal life when he isn’t playing shows on Las Vegas speedways or the emerald coast beaches of Alabama. Joe’s Pizza and local halal food are the mainstays in his diet, with stops into Whole Foods to balance out the junk food. He stays active by playing tennis at the McCarren Tennis Center and basketball with friends in Long Island City. “If I didn’t have that normalcy, if I was on the road 24/7, I think I’d go crazy,” he says.

This summer you can catch Westend on tour across or holding sunset Circle Line Cruise shows on the Hudson River. He just dropped his new single with Tudo and Punctual, “EYAH (You’ll Be Alright),” available anywhere you stream music.

Brooklyn Magazine recently spent an afternoon with Westend at the Hangout Music Festival in Alabama where we got an all-access pass to his routine.

YOUTUBE
A few days before a show I go on YouTube and see the venue. If it’s a club, I’ll watch old videos of other DJs playing there. If it’s a festival, I like to check out the stage I’m playing at to get the vibe of what the physical space looks like. That’s really important for picking the music. If I’m in a dark warehouse where there’s not an LED screen behind me, I’m going to play a little bit differently than if I’m playing the beach in the south. The music I’m going to pick for that is a little different. I never go into a show and be like, “I don’t know what I’m doing right now.” I want to have plan A and plan B and go between them.

BEACHSIDE ACOUSTICS
I’m not so worried about the acoustics because all the music I play is very similar. I play a lot of house music and electronic music, so you’re going to have a strong kick drum on every four beats. You’re going to have a lot of bass. But if I know a venue has a bad sound system, maybe I’ll play less bass-driven songs and play stuff with more vocals that people can sing along to. For me, it’s more about the crowd and what they would respond well to. I’m not going to go with a more European sound at Hangout because this crowd is not familiar with it. I’m going to go a little bit more vocal-heavy, and maybe use some songs they know.

PRE-SHOW SHOTS
When I got to the show, it’s bad advice, but I did a few shots of tequila. I have a drink to try not to get too nervous. It’s not really a ritual but a shot of tequila is pretty necessary. I socialized with some people and we got a game plan with my photographer to get videos of certain songs.

‘DREAMS’ BY FLEETWOOD MAC
I ended my Do LaB set at Coachella with that one and it had such a good reaction. I felt like it kind of fit the vibe at Hangout. I was like, “They would love this in South Alabama. They would sing along to that.” So I knew I wanted that to be my last song here. I found the edit I used on SoundCloud. When I got into electronic music, SoundCloud was really big. Artists like Kygo broke out on SoundCloud just doing remixes and tropical house stuff. Then it went away for a bit and Spotify was king and now SoundCloud’s making a resurgence.

HOW’S THE SOUND?
Hopefully, my sets sound good. Usually, I have my booth monitor so loud that to me, I’m just jamming out, having a good time in there. If it sounds shit out there I don’t even know because I’m in my zone in the booth.

Fishing … for beats (Photo by Jeffery Tremmel)

FISHING
My dad got me into fishing in Montauk where we had a house. I got into fishing when I was young but then I stopped for a while in high school because I was like, “I have no time for this. I just want to party and do whatever.” Then once I graduated college, I reconnected with [my tour manager] Kyle by going fishing in New York. It’s just such a good activity to get away from your phone and this lifestyle. You’re just in nature on the water. Yeah, I love to fish. I’ve done it in a few places where I’ve played shows. I’ll play a show and then I’ll stay and go fishing. I’ve done that in Miami and Costa Rica. I played a show here in the south last fall and the promoter who booked me was like, “You’ve got to come back to go fishing because it’s good here.” So when I got the offer to play Hangout Fest, I was like, “I have to fit in a day to go fishing.” We’re going deep-sea fishing in Pensacola, Florida tomorrow.

FANBASE
I would say it’s not super all-over-the-map. I’ve been doing this for close to 10 years now and as the Westend project since 2016. I’ve had fans who have been with me since the beginning. I play a lot of frat parties, and during the spring and fall, I play all these festivals where there’s a younger crowd. There’s definitely a young crowd here at Hangout. My shows have a blend of some of the older people who know me from my early stuff and then a lot of new fans that I picked up post-pandemic. It’s a mix of college kids, post-grad, and older people. And then I have a younger crowd as well. I’ve done a lot of big remixes that have resonated with the youth.

FROM FRAT PARTIES TO HANGOUT
It can be jarring to play for vastly different crowd sizes but I’m used to it by now because I’ve done it so much. I did my first headline tour last fall and it was 35 days all across the country. In one market, I may play in San Francisco for a thousand people and they know house music really well and they’re all there to see me. Then another show could be like 75 people and we have to give out free tickets because it wasn’t selling well. That keeps you in check. You can go from a really good show or a huge festival with a huge stage with 10,000 people to playing to 50 people in New Haven, Connecticut. You get used to it over time and you appreciate every show for what it is. I wouldn’t want to DJ and have every show be a festival stage. I like the dynamics of having small ones.

KYLE
So my tour manager Kyle Williams and I went to high school together and he started coming on shows. He had no experience as a tour manager, but he’s learned a ton about how to do the job. He does media for me at the shows and takes all my videos and photos. It’s just dope. I do a lot of shows on my own as well because it doesn’t always financially make sense to bring someone on the road, but, whenever I can, it’s always better to have a friend with you. It’s something to bond about. It’s someone to escape weird social situations with. Sometimes you’re at the club and everyone’s trying to talk to you and you’re like, “All right, I just want to get away from everything and be by myself.” So having a buddy with you, for me, it’s huge.

DJ WITH A PUBLIC POLICY DEGREE
My parents are going to hate me for this, but I actually don’t remember anything I learned from public policy. I went to college at Duke and they had a school public policy, and it was a really popular major for people who wanted to do an economics degree, but weren’t good at math and didn’t want to do all the calculus stuff. Most people with liberal arts majors work in finance or consulting or tech jobs. They don’t necessarily use the actual degree that they studied. Some people do, but I didn’t. I worked at a tech company in New York for two-and-a-half years after I graduated. I was making music on the side and doing a few shows in New York, but the goal was always to make something happen with music, to see if I could catch a break. Eventually, I was just like, “I’m going to quit and then do music full-time for a year. Just one year, see how it goes. No income other than music.” I did that and I was able to snowball it and kept going. If you asked me a public policy question now, I wouldn’t know the answer.

AESTHETICS
It was difficult to figure out my brand because I’m just a guy who makes electronic music. I don’t have a marshmallow hat that I put on. I like to make a lot of styles of music but I don’t have a very visually identifiable brand. Only recently have I started to tap into that a little bit more. I’m focusing a lot on being from New York and showing off New York City because that’s really who I am. It was the city that raised me. I just take things that mean something to me and that I feel represent me and try to put that into a visual form, whether it be show visuals or a flyer for shows or the tour I’m playing.

INSPIRATIONS
As a DJ, a lot of the time you’re playing other people’s music. So nowadays, a DJ is a producer-DJ, they call it. You make your own music. You play that. Some DJs only play 100 percent of their own music in a set. For me, I like to play my peers’ songs and my own songs. This guy Nick Morgan has this “Shook Ones” edit from Mob Deep and that was a song we used to smoke weed to in high school. So something like that has a personal connection to me, and to be able to play it out, it’s like… I want to play stuff that means something to me. Otherwise, you’re just a jukebox and you’re just playing what the crowd wants to hear. Anyone can do that. DJing is easy, what’s different is to have an artistic vision and a style that you want to show other people.