Making a life out of what you love is always in season. The holidays just make for one more opportunity to celebrate the creative, the artistic and the all-around inspired. With Lucky Brand’s Homemade Holiday, we bring home some of our favorite local talents who represent their communities as they turned their passions into professions. Meet DJ Danny Dodge as he runs us through his unique style and shares details of how he got his start in music.
I grew up in a family of musicians so I learned young that I can communicate with anyone through it. A second language type thing.
Tell us about your first gig as a DJ. What was that experience like?
When I lived in Portland, Oregon, DJing was really just a hustle. A way you could work nights and get paid a little more than the guy wiping counters. But you quickly find the thrill in it when you inadvertently make someone’s night 'cause you played something they loved that you thought no one even knew.
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How did you go about developing your own mix style?
I try to play a lot of linear yet just-left-of-comfort-zone songs, like 50s American hits interpreted by Jamaicans, or Blondie in Spanish, or a Persian-sung “House of the Rising Sun.” Maybe it’ll get people a little more comfortable with art from other cultures.
What’s one of your favorite holiday traditions?
Drinking a Hot Buttered Rum in the Timberline Lodge atop Mt. Hood and keeping dinner rolls in my pockets.
Reflecting on the years that have come and gone, what’s an important life lesson you’ve learned?