225 Adventures: My night as a DJ

Photos by Kristina Britt

It’s 8 p.m. on a Friday night in downtown Baton Rouge. The door guy at City Bar looks at me after I tell him my assignment.

“Are you going to drink?” he asks, between drags on a cigarette.

I tell him no, taking a sip from my iced coffee. He puts on my wristband and gives me some advice.

“Just don’t start a fight,” he says.

I tell him I’m not planning on it.

“No one plans on it,” he retorts.

And so my night as a DJ begins.

Inside the Third Street dive, DJ 2EZ, aka Justin Snyder, is setting up for his usual gig. His booth is the size of a New York apartment bathroom. You have to climb a wooden box to get to it. In front of the booth is the bar’s logo, lighting up in green, white, purple and blue these words: “It’s not just tradition, but a lifestyle.”

It’s early, and Synder is still setting up. He’s got the latest DJ rig—a laptop full of pop and rap hits, turntables for scratching and even a few 808 drum machines. It looks like something out of a ’90s science- fiction film.

“When I was putting [the booth] together, I said, ‘I want something that looks like Batman would DJ on it,’” he says.

Snyder, 34, isn’t new to bringing music to crowds. After playing woodwinds in the marching band in high school, the Central native went to Southeastern Louisiana University on a music scholarship. In college, he played bass with the cover band Exit 32. A decade ago, he was playing bass in the rock band Maven. Then around 2010, he met Matt Tortorich, aka DJ crackaTRAX, and quickly got involved in DJing.

“You can learn how to do anything on YouTube,” Snyder says. “Watch it and learn it. It’s not really that difficult.”

Tonight, he starts with Top 40 jams, a remix of the Taylor Swift song “Blank Space,” then goes through his playlists. He mashes up songs like Crazy Town’s “Butterfly” with Montell Jordan’s “This is How We Do It.”

“You play whatever the girls like,” he instructs me. “Whatever they want, you play it, because that’s what keeps it going.”

On a typical weekend night, Snyder says, the crowds get crazy. The night before this one, he DJed to 300 college students.

“It was a hundred miles an hour for three hours,” he says.

Tonight is more relaxed, but he’s still on his A-game. Before 10:30 p.m., he has more people in the bar than he did with his former bands. He’ll make more at this show, too.

By 11 p.m., he’s got his mic hooked up.

“Welcome to City Bar. It’s Friday night,” he announces. “I’m DJ 2EZ. Come say hello and give me your requests.”

After introducing himself, he lets me get behind the machine. This thing has so many buttons. My eyes, like my arms, don’t know where to go. I’m too intimidated to press anything, because I don’t want to stop the people from dancing. I act like I’m doing stuff and point at no one in particular. I put the headphones on and pose, becoming that guy DJs across the country hate.

I thought I could press play and fake my way through a song. Maybe my white guy dance moves would help sell the fact that this task was more overwhelming than I had originally thought. But I could not amateurishly disrupt the dance party.

I let Snyder take command again, and I see him twisting a knob to pick the next song.

He scratches his way into another track and jokes that he sold out. But he enjoys this. He’ll say a line of the song under his breath. He nods his head to the beat. This is not his musical job, and he’s not going through the motions. He’s providing the party—just like he did when he was a teen, fresh out of high school, gigging with the cover band.

Don’t knock the hustle.