The pressure climbs up a bit more as days go by here in Miami having us ready to attend one of the biggest events of this year’s Conf’ by the likes of NYC Clubshelter’s first ever reunion in the Sunshine State as a part of their 14th Year celebrations. The ideal opportunity for us to pay them our tribute via excerpts of an interview that we’ve managed to have with Timmy Regisford back at the end of 2000.

Yaow Timmy. You’re far from being a nu comer. What gives you such energy to keep on after so many years ?

This is simply my favourite hobby. The love of what I’m doing…

Can we talk about passion ?

Nope. Passion is something inspiring as compared to a hobby which is something you may do at any time.

You keep on talkin’ about a hobby, in a period when the so called dance music (or shall I say the club music) doesn’t have the same exposure as it used to have some 20 to 25 y. ago in the States. How do you explain such a situation ?

Dance music comes out of a period when we used to have people to write songs… Stevie Wonder, The Trammpps, The Spinners, etc. All of those into R&B at the time (Donna Summer, Cher) were making dance music, but first of all songs. Then the things have started to change with the arrival of beatboxes. Synths, computers and people who’ve then written music with no lyrics because they were not authors, so that we ended up having things around that the crowd was unable to sing which make the things quite hard in terms of promotion, knowing that there’s nothing like being able to interact while singing for the latest. We can’t simply promote n instrumental. The scene looks like having assimilated the technology on one hand, meanwhile turning its head as far as songwriting is concerned.

Some label managers tend to say that the lack of exposure is mainly due to a lack of investments.

I find this a bit of simplist… Let’s take for instance Europe as a whole. You’ve got France which to me appears as a place whereas you have multiple influences at the same time, thus making it the most open country of the planet in terms of ‘world music’. And then, we have the Brits who change their music once every 3 months ! So that, we can’t find anything consistant enough in terms of lasting basis of work.

Isn’t that one of today’s signs, having us surrounded by an ever evolving technology which is said to be already out of date when launched ?

This doesn’t have anything to do with music. Music to me is supposed to be able to be considered as a reference. I myself have made my incomes while remixing records. I could make a disco track out of a classic song, transform a reggae tune into a house concept etc. But this is the only thing which I can’t do is change the lyrics. You can rework the music as much as you want, but what someone is singing is something that’s gonna represent him/her til the end of his/her life. And if ever unable to sing what I would call a proprer song, what ever the genre whereas you express yourself, then don’t expect to get much credit out of it…

You was telling me soon after we met that something looked like starting to happen for quite some time in NY…

I think that people are slowly but surely going back to songwrting. Instrumental are less systematical as they used to be and I don’t believe impossible the fact of seing dance music going back mainstream within a 2/3 years time, as things always evolve one day or another, and I can feel it. I don’t see the majors seriously going back to it before we have 2 or 3 really breaking artists, but this is something which I may feel when talking about the independant labels. Songs with lyrics will come back. It’s inevitable.  Let’s not forget that it’s the labels’ obligation to have a repertoire whereas people will have the capacity to get what they need. The music of the third millenium will have to have consistancy, whatever its formats may be.

We’ve ended up having somehow the feeling that the NYC production was making rounds and rounds…

The lack of creativity… Some 20 years ago, Stevie Wonder used to write what was considered as dance music at the time and everybody was performing live. This tends to come up again with people such as Ron Trent who started working with live percussions or Joe Claussell. All the signs seem to be like back for another round. So what we need  is a record label to put out this music, but when talking about this music, I mean music with lyrics… You simply can’t develop artists on the basis of simple tracks. We could count of the fingers of one hand those coming out of the dance music who’ve really emerged. Once you’ve got C&C Music Factory, CeCe Peniston, the Weather Girls and Robert Miles, what about the others ? And I’m not talking about about all those works from a vast amjorité of DJ’s being first and foremost followers !!!

Going back to those people like Ron Trent who’re more and more working with musicians, it gets them in the obligation to have more and more resources for giving birth to their projects. Joe Claussell who’s been working for years and years on the recording of his first artist album said to me how expensive it was to put shapes to his project…

Everything is relative. For me, working for Dreamworks, I need approx US $ 300,000 to sign a new artist/group. And I’m not even talking about an artist who would come to me with a top producer thus meaning budgets able to be multiplied per 10. So I would tend to say that putting US $ 75,000 to 100,000 on a dance album is something of reasonable to me.

But not necessarily for a small structure…

The problem is somewhere else. If the DJ’s have a dertain knowledge of music, it’s quite different when applied to business. Why not for instance signing license agreements with equally sized structures and share the costs as long as you have an idea of the potential of your sales ? Then, we also have the comps and God knows how numerous they are these days…

But there’s also this big difference in terms of mentality between American and European DJ’s. Some US DJ’s don’t hesitate to claim for real fortunes when crossing the Atlantic even if overrated. They could even sometimes being booked and avoid to come for some reason at the very last moment…

I’m not that surprised… Myself I’m not a DJ on obligation. I don’t get my incomes from this activity. Once again it’s something that I love doing and I do it home in NYC. I feel a lot of respect for my crowd, knowing that it’s so hard to make oneself a name here. I’ve been lucky enough to do my thang along the years without asking anything to anyone and I think that once a DJ has started spinning abroad he ends up forgetting the reason why he’s got into this universe. Passion gets then replaced by the obsession of making money and I personaly think that should I be in the obligation to act like this, then I would stop. Body & Soul has also done well, because of François, Joe and Danny being there each and every Sunday at the time.

It’s said that it’s also a matter of promotion.

Naaa ! When Louie was doing the Sound Factory Bar, that was on Wednesday and the place was packed at the time. Then he’s started to spin a lot abroad and got disconnected with his fan base. People come to see you in NYC, not because you spin once a month, but once a week ! It’s like a ritual.People know what they ‘re searching for and what they wanna hear and it’s definitely not what you may hear in Paris or London.

Is it to say that the DJ’s are sentenced to stay in their hometowns ?

Not condmaned, but they start loosing the credibitily when too often away.I’ve done it as well here and there and also in Italy where I ended up seing myself playing tunes I wouldn’t even think about when in NYC !

This leads us to your Shelter Sessions which have never had the same exposure as Body & Soul…

Well, when having like myself a residency which has been around for so long, I think the result should speak for itself. I don’t think being in the obligation to give interviews in order to have my club full. Simply because I have a faithful crowd who may not necessarily be happy to see buses of tourists invading the club. My people come here to dance the way I did myself when I used to go to the Paradise Garage. I think you’d better stay with the ones who support you and make them know how much you care while being faithful to them.

Is this a reason to stay away, the way you do, from people who’ve heard about your nights and would like to know a bit more about them.

They’ve just got to come…

Right but they need a history, meaning someone to tell it and someone to retranscript it. So let’s go back to the beginning…

It has started 10 years ago (14 by the time we reproduce this conversation)

At the Vinyl…

You’ve got it. At the sole exception of a few months time when it used to happen at the Tunnel. I’ve beeen the owner of the place for some time. I didn’t want to depend on anyone, but do my thangz my own way and I’ve ended up been pissed off with all the political fuss, administrative topics and whatsoever. This ain’t good when U’re Black. So I’ve ended up selling the place the day I started feeling it was like ‘subway, work then sleep’.

What about the label ?

It’s Freddy’s thing (Freddy Sannon). It’s supposed to embody the spirit of our nites… 

Including this Montefiori Cocktail’s thing that you’ve signed coming from a man better known for doing some so called easy listening music in Italy ?

This is what Shelter is ! If you stay form the beginning til the end, expect to hear this kind of music alongside many others from Count Basie, Pat Metheny or Gato Barbieri… For me, dance music is music on which you can dance to, should it be jazz, hip hop, Brazilian, Hispanic, etc. Afro stuff that no one’s never heard about on the radio. I couldn’t stand spending 14 hours playing the same kind of thing.

Let’s talk about your own debut.

I’ve started spinning at clubs at the age of 16, then I’ve joined the WBLS team with the help of Frankie Crocker who’d observed me during a whole night without declining his identity. That was at the middle of the 80’s. I was sort of competing with Tony Humphries who was on Kiss at the time.

You was refering to the problems which you’ve encountered as a Black people when being the owner of your club. What is it to be Afro American nowadays ?

Racism remains racism and the sad thing is you can see it everywhere…

Could music be a way to gather individuals ?

Naaa ! This would be notorious otherwise. I don’t think that music has anything to do with racism. I’ve been lucky enough being able to travel because of my professional activities and what I can say is that what I’ve noticed here in the US or in France is nothing as compared to what I’ve seen in South Africa. This travelo ver there has definitely changed the way I look at things and what I can say is that we’re still far from reunification.

As for an end, who are you, Timmy Regisford ?

An eternal fighter…

Excerpts from an interview printed in January 2001

Catch Timmy Regisford today as a part of the Clubshelter 14 Year Celebration Party @ Nikki Beach

More details on our diary