Mike Relm

Learns to Skate

By Kyle MacKinnel

11.10.08

Mike Relm is a true innovator. He’s a DJ, yes, but by no means is he your average DJ. Relm proved his chops early, winning the International Turntablist Federation’s USA competition in 1999. He is recognized for his multi-faceted performance style, pairing visual performance elements up with his spinning wizardry. He has worked alongside such notable artists as Lyrics Born, Money Mark, Gift of Gab, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Outkast, and Mos Def. He has even toured with the Blue Man Group. It does not stop there. Recently, he was the featured DJ on Tony Hawk’s Boom Boom Huck Jam Tour, where he even became part of the act. Most importantly, Mike Relm is far from satisfied.

So you recently went on tour with Tony Hawk?

Yup, I think it was 26 shows over a month and a half. For me, it was a little bit lighter. I’m used to doing 5 or 6 shows a week because musicians don’t usually fly 15 feet in the air, or have motocross and BMX flying over them. But we did four shows a week, because of the demanding physical aspect of the show. It was great for me, because I’m doing the same thing.

Do you skate yourself?

I do now.

You learned from the guys on tour?

I guess I learned from them, but not by watching them skate vert, because that’s something that I’m probably not going to be able to do in my life.

Not many of us can.

Yeah, and I didn’t know there was a difference. There are guys who skate just “street,” and they can’t skate vert ramps. And there’re guys who can skate vert ramps like crazy, but really can’t do stairs or handrails. There’s a difference. Tony can do everything, but there are guys in the new generation who are more specialized. It’s like DJing. At first it was like, OK, it’s just hip-hop. And then, “once in a while I’ll throw on an Aerosmith track,” or something. And now you’ve got specifically dance DJs, or scratch DJs, or hip-hop DJs. And within that you’ve got, “Oh, I just do the commercial hip-hop,” or “I just do backpacker hip-hop,” or “I just do hardhouse,” “I just do trance.” It all split off into completely different things and a lot of times one guy can’t do what the other one will do, even though they’re all DJs.

I read that by the end of the tour you were familiar with all the skaters’ individual music tastes and would personalize the DJ sets. Is that right?

Yeah, totally. They all had really different tastes. The first day that everybody was at rehearsals, I was like, “Hey, what do you guys like to ride to?” And everybody said something different. It was like, “I like Metallica,” or, “I like Slayer.” One guy was like, “I like indie rock.” “I don’t like hip-hop.” It was like, “OK, this is going to be tougher than I thought,” because one ride can be a minute to fifteen seconds. If they bail early, I’ve got to switch the track, because the next guy might not like what the first guy liked. When I started locking in with them and getting the timing down, I noticed a big difference.

Did the music have a big impact on the skaters’ performances?

Yeah, and they’d tell me after, “Thanks for throwing that in right when I dropped, that really helped.” And it did, because music helps a lot. If they didn’t have music, you would just hear the wheels grinding. It would be like, “Yay.” There’s no excitement, and I think when they all feel like they have their own track, it’s kind of like wrestling intro music. They have their own thing – when boxers come out – they have the certain track that they use and it gets them all juiced, and then they punch each other.

Did you find that the skaters inspired you musically? Did they give you any new ideas about the way you’re going to DJ in the future?

A little bit. It’s always great to get different people’s perspectives on music, because they look at music differently than I look at music. They live at a different pace. I honestly have never played so much punk music in my life, but that’s great because it opened up that door for me. Honestly, hip-hop’s easy. It’s really easy to use, because it’s almost music that was made to be mixed. Punk music isn’t. I had to go through this time when I was like, “How am I going to do this? This is crazy.” The details are everywhere, the instrumentation – there’re no breaks. It was definitely different, but I learned a lot and I actually figured out ways to mix that stuff. So that will definitely help.

What was your initial inspiration to add video into the concept of DJing?

It was mostly just being able to do shows – being on stage. I wanted to do something that people would want to look at as well as listen to. With the exception of DJ Shadow or the performance guys, it’s never much to look at. I wanted to be like that. I wanted the audience to say, “That was as good a show as The Raconteurs.”

Where can DJing be taken from here? What’s the next step?

I’m stepping up the visual element. There are a lot of visual tricks that I haven’t done yet, but I’ve been wanting to. I’ve done every single kind of show I can imagine myself doing in the last few years, from opening for Del, to Blue Man Group and Tony Hawk. I’ve got a few ideas that should get different emotions out of people. Tell different jokes, I guess. Having the visual element really sells it.

Do you find your eclectic choices in the gigs you do is a sort of experimentation in the art of performance?

Oh, it totally is. If I had stayed in my comfort zone and done traditional hip-hop and rock shows, or college stuff – which I love doing – I wouldn’t know the whole game of working with the older audience. At the Blue Man Group shows, there were people ages 7 to 70. They all loved it. I didn’t know that could work. So it taught me a lot, performance-wise.

How’s your set transitioned to festival crowds?

I put out the new record [Spectacle] on October 23rd, which is when the tour started. I love doing festivals. I just know that an hour before the show I’m going to be like, “I really should have done this at a smaller club first to try it out,” rather than testing it in front of five, ten, fifteen thousand people.

Baptism by fire, right?

Exactly! Go big or go home.

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