Beats Per Week: The Traxman Interview

Portland's Best Dance Music Options, April 4-9

Traxman plays Holocene on Friday, April 4.
By MITCH LILLIE
This Friday, Portland plays host to yet more footwork legends, Traxman and Jammin’ Gerald. I gave Trax, aka Corky Strong, a call to see what we can expect from the Chicago producer at Holocene on Friday.

Willamette Week: Thanks for agreeing to the interview, Corky. 

Traxman: Hey thank you. When I talk I like to make people feel at home, just so you know. 

Sure! We’re all very excited for the show here. What are your connections and associations with Portland? 

The only association I had with Portland was through Dave [Quam], I didn’t even know it was a big fan thing there.  

We’ve been getting a lot of love from footwork, though. Rashad and RP Boo have both played in the last year or so. What are your feelings on the expansion of footwork outside of Chicago?   

Footwork is something that the people wanted. If you really look at the information, it's still the music of ghetto house. It’s been around for 27, 28 years. The people made it its own genre. You can footwork to anything, you can footwork to “Farley Farley.” It could be 130 or even 110 [beats per minute]. If you can listen to most anything on Dance Mania, we just took the halftime clap. RP started that, I didn’t pick it up till like 6 years later. 


Footwork is pretty notorious for having prolific producers making amazing tracks that never see the light of day beyond a club, or are just passed around between friends. Would you prefer it this way, or would you rather have more traditional releases, singles and albums? 

Me personally, well, we all got too much music. Half of the stuff thats coming out, its stuff that I did 8, 9 or 10 years ago, that’s how strong the music is. I’ve considered putting it on wax. There’s a lot of my stuff that’s on Planet Mu—a lot of stuff that’s old. But every track tells a story. As long as they’re getting heard… Yeah I got thousands and thousands of tracks. If you catch me like every other day, I’m putting up music: regular house music, techno.   



That’s pretty impressive. Are we going to get to see any of these in Portland? 

I’m gonna dedicate a set to Frankie Knuckles. It’s not even about the money, I’m just playing for my people. Lotta people are like, I’m gonna go out there and get my couple hundred bucks... No I do it for the music. 

I read that you never dance. RP Boo suggested the same to me. Is this rare or common for DJs to stay behind the decks? 

I never danced. I can’t footwork. I’m the one that comes and parties. I don’t footwork, but I do get the party goin’. I know how to do the fila.  

Do you have any albums or artists that have touched you this year, outside of the footwork and Chicago house scene? 

My man MikeQ! 

Anything Portland needs to know before coming to your show on Friday? 

Have good weed, have alcohol. It will be cool just to see you guys. We gonna sit down and work, network. We all sit down and work together. 

Traxman plays Holocene on Friday, April 4 with Jammin Gerald, Modern Melodies, Ben Tactic and Lincolnup. 9 pm. $5 before 10 pm, $10 after. 21+.


Also this week: 

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