Yes, MA’AM–stylist to the stars and veteran Brooklyn DJ Knox Sloop has an important anniversary coming up at the end of the month!
Thotyssey: Knox, hello! Thanks for chatting today! How is February?
Knox S.: Hey there, great to catch up! Whew, February has been kind of a whirlwind: preparing to celebrate six years of “MA’AM” at C’mon Everybody at the end of the month on Feb 28th, settling into a new apartment, and getting some great new professional opportunities in the day job area of my life. So I’ve got some silver linings.
What can you tell us about that day job?
I’m a hair and makeup artist, working in everything from film/TV to fashion ecomm.
I see that portrait of Elizabeth Warren on your IG… she’s a hero of ours!
Yeah, I’ve had some amazing people in my chair over the years.
Can you tell us a bit of your back story: where are you from originally, and was music always a part of your life?
Well, where to start? I grew up in Western NC, at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and was always taking some sort of music or art lesson. Piano, dulcimer, choir… I even picked up trombone in middle school. In high school I continued with choir, but dropped the instruments for a camera and a pottery wheel.
My parents always had music going–Mom was a 70s hippy, and dad was a 60’s frat boy. Lots of Carol King, Joan Baez, Fleetwood Mac from mom. Dad got me hooked on Ike and Tina, Dionne Warwick, and Aretha. They knew how much I was obsessed with Tina Turner and got me tickets to see her for my twelfth birthday, and sent me with the 20 year old neighbors. It was wild.
That same year, I got my first CD player; one of the first CDs I picked up was MTV’s Party To Go Vol. 3. These [MTV releases] were everything that other compilation CD series going on volume 100-something wishes they were. We’re talking Cece Peniston, Positive K, Madonna… all remixes. Needless to say, the boogie got me at a very early age.
I moved to Winston Salem, NC in seventh grade, which was a much bigger city with a nightlife scene. I hear you saying, WTF, seventh grade? Yeah, I went to my first party at 14… don’t tell my mom, lol!
What ultimately brought you to NYC, and how did you start DJing here?
I moved up here working in the retail makeup arena in 2012. A few years later I reconnected with DJ Reaubert, whom I met in Chapel Hill, NC around 2007, and who moved to NY a year before me. He had a residency at Metropolitan Bar on Saturdays called “Honey Please,” and asked me to bring some records and hop on. I had thrown / promoted / worked a lot of parties in Atlanta when I lived there in the early 2000’s, and dabbled in some turntables in friends’ basements. I had been out of that scene really since about 2005–but I still had my records, so I said why not?!
“Housework” has been your solo weekly residency at Metro for awhile now!
Yep! I started “Housework” three years ago when I took over Saturdays at Metropolitan: 6-10pm in the winter and 5-10pm when it’s warm enough to setup on the patio. I like to keep it pretty open format to start to maintain happy hour dive vibes, with lots of good chuggy classic disco and soul edits–give folks time to settle in and catch up with each other.
Metro was always “that spot” to meet up with a gaggle of your friends to get the night going, so I wanted to give folks somewhere that wasn’t cranking at 135 BPM by 5:00pm, to hang out and boogie when it strikes ya. Then I’ll transition on over to more 90s club classics sprinkled with some pop anthems, etc. to get them going for the rest of the night. It’s a real family vibe, like pregaming in your kitchen with your friends in your 20’s.
And your monthly-ish party with Reaubert at C’mon, “MA’AM,” turns six years-old at the end of the month! It must be real fun and chill to helm a party like that with a friend for so long.
It’s been great! I feel our styles compliment each other in a way we’re able to–as one gogo we had for our Pride events put it–“edge the crowd.” Keeping them on the verge of a total dance floor meltdown.
We are both problem solvers that share a brain sometimes, whether it’s musically or tech related–we can usually figure it out. For example, we just did a wedding in Vermont this fall with Horrorchata, Merrie Cherry, and La Zavaleta. The wedding planner got us the wrong controller for the job; thank God we had our laptops (that we don’t operate off of). [We made] wire patches with whatever we had in our bags and running through mic lines, we made it work… and no one was the wiser.
Our whole team has been great from Jacob Marsh on flyers to Michael Tom on our amazing video edits that we play through the party. This year we’re starting to focus a lot more on bookings, and taking this show on the road more than we have. We had the pleasure of playing “TRICK” at San Diego’s oldest gay bar The Rail for Pride last year, and can’t wait to go back. We see y’all listening to the mixes on SoundCloud, holler at us!
Have a great anniversary! Our last question is: musically, are you looking forward to anything coming up? Releases, remixes, concerts, etc.?
I haven’t really booked any concerts this year except Gossip and ESG at Lincoln Center. I can’t wait to see the band reunited, and ESG is icing on the cake! And I’ can’t wait to see what new artists and new art / music comes out of during these trying times we’re in. When threatened, artists do what we do best: we art with our whole hearts.
Thanks, Knox!
Check Thotyssey’s calendar for DJ Knox S.’s upcoming appearances, and follow him on Facebook, Instagram and SoundCloud.
Thotyssey 