We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Mikey Peek. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Mikey below.

Hi Mikey, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

DJ Jevity actually started as a nickname. My original DJ persona was DJ Longjevity. after some years of people calling me Jevity for short, i adopted it and made it my original name since it was so catchy and it rolls off the tongue nicely

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

DJ Jevity is a Turntablist who started his journey in 2001 in the city of Chicago, listening to all the great radio DJs and club DJs the city has to offer. I learned my craft and then set fourth to do my own thing once I moved to the medium sized town of Dubuque, Iowa. I learned more about my craft through working in the bars and casinos in that town and it help me hone my skills to be a great open format DJ for the city. I’ve played every style of music from 60s,70s,80s music to the heavy top40 Club music all the way to house and EDM. I had to master them all to survive in the eclectic town of Dubuque. To make myself stand out I studied the classic ways of DJing and Turntablism so I could define myself as a Party rocker, Classic two turntables and microphone Vibes. especially in a time where digital DJing was starting to evolve and become more main stream. You can still hear differences in the way people play if they started on turntables versus the latter. Eventually I would come to Nashville to tackle Turntablism within the confines of the country music world and this is where i have been for the last three years on tour with Kane Brown and making sure his concerts have the best energy at the start of each of his shows! I’m Proud of this great Journey so far and I’m trying to push the envelope more with out taking away from what country music is at its roots. Throwing Turntablism at a genre that is defined by live music has been one of the greatest and most fun challenges I have encountered!

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I will admit the Journey of a DJ is very judgmental and it is hard to stick to a ‘Standard’ of what a DJ is in this new time within the world. The further you go on this journey you learn that DJing is more about the people that come to listen to you play rather than how you play. I’ve had to unlearn that just because you play on a certain system, software, program or turntable. It doesn’t make you any less of a DJ, Playing what people want to move to and making sure people have a great time and smiles on their faces is what matters more than anything. You cannot be a good DJ and have empty dance floors consistently, you also cannot grow as a DJ if you haven’t experienced an empty dance floor moment in your life time as a DJ. There is a lot of ego in being a DJ cause that’s just part of what we do, but the best feelings come from building an empty room into an empire!

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

The many years of DJing have lead to a lot of pivoting moments in my career. Most musicians will tell you ‘hey, That’s the business’ because they have been at it for so long. This is a big lesson that I had to learn after a few years of doing this. Here is my advice, find a place, town, or spot that works for you and what you do. Just cause someone can and has a place for you to play, make sure you fit with them and what they want to represent. I have had to leave some places starting out because the venue just didn’t fit what I was trying to accomplish. Its really powerful to know when those moments arise. Any venue trying to blame employees for things going wrong in the business is usually a sign that the place is in trouble already. fans and costumers are the main driving force of what we do. Make sure you do your best to listen to them. Knowing when to leave, or even changing your style a little bit is crucial to your success. Don’t throw away who you are completely, being you is the best tool you have, Learn to do you, but a little differently sometimes. This will make your branches grow and make you a bigger tree. Explore all the places you can play, see what you can do!

Contact Info:

• Website: DJJevity.com
• Instagram: @dj.jevity
• Facebook: DJ Jevity
• Twitter: @djjevity
• Youtube: DJ Jevity
• Other: Soundcloud – originals and remixes – https://soundcloud.com/djjevity Mixcloud – https://www.mixcloud.com/DJJevity/

Image Credits
Cheyenne moore