Steve Moody

An mp3 of the Interview is available lower in this text and via ITunes.  Full text is below and selected portions are published in Mobile Beat Magazine – to subscribe go to https://members.mobilebeat.com.

Ryan Burger: This is Ryan Burger, the publisher of Mobile Beat magazine. I’m here with Steve Moody, from Maryland’s eastern shore, I’ve been told. What is Maryland’s eastern shore? What else is around there, basically?

Steve Moody: Basically nothing, Ryan. I moved out to the country pretty much. I originally started over in Baltimore, and when I met my wife, her whole family lived over here on the eastern shore, which is on the other side of this huge Bay Bridge. To me, it just seems like we’re way out in the country. To them, this is the big city.

Ryan Burger: Okay. So again, judging by myself, I’m in a little suburb outside of Des Moines, Iowa and people consider that the middle of nowhere because you’ve got cornfield, cornfield, cornfield, cornfield.

Steve Moody: Hey. We look like that.

Ryan Burger: Okay. So you’re the East Coast equivalent of Des Moines, Iowa.

Steve Moody: I would say so. This is a big retirement area for folks. They come down here to retire. It’s a huge farming population down here. They’re so many people involved in different parts of agricultures and things like that.

Ryan Burger: How far of a circle do you travel out from there?

Steve Moody: We’re only about an hour and 20 minutes from Baltimore, so I still go up to Baltimore quite a bit. I go into Delaware. I would say maybe about an hour and a half radius around here is the primary place where I play.

Ryan Burger: Okay. And you said you grew up in the Baltimore area?

Steve Moody: Oh, yeah, and I started the business back there. I was there for about 15 years or so DJ’ing, so I still have quite a bit of clientele from that area, in addition to the new folks from over here.

Ryan Burger: I remember hearing from Nick Burke [ph] and from other information that you sent us that — experience in radio; do you still do any radio at all, or did you totally get out of the radio thing?

Steve Moody: You know, I help out from time to time with different things. I’m not on the air regular any more. The last station that I did was a local station here on the shore called WCEI, and it was like a Top-Pop 40 station; more adult contemporary than a younger crowd. It wasn’t like a Hot AC, you know? But it was a lot of fun and it was a great way to get my name known in this area when we moved to the shore. So when they offered me to come in and do the morning show, I was like, “Yeah. That’s a great tool to get my name out for my private DJ business.”

I did it for about a year and a half and it just got to be so much. We started a family at that time and so I just stepped away from it. They still call me from time to time. I do some pretty good production work, and they call me to do special projects they’ve been working on or if they need a DJ for a station event that’s really large and they need a lot of extra sound and lighting, they’ll call me for that, too.

Ryan Burger: It’s a nice connection still to have. Did you do the mobile stuff or the radio stuff first?

Steve Moody: I started in mobile back in 1989. I didn’t get into radio until almost eight years later.

Ryan Burger: Okay. And was that move one that you did up in eastern Maryland along the shore there, or you had done that before? I want to get a timeline of your DJ history.

Steve Moody: Okay. I started back in 1989. I was still in high school. I was a sophomore. It was kind of neat. Our church youth group decided we were going to have this dance and have all the other youth groups come to it. And they were like, “It would be so great if we could hire a DJ,” but we didn’t have a budget. And I said, “Well, I’ve got a pretty nice home stereo system and I’ve got some CDs, so I’ll do it.” And that was actually the first gig that I ever did. It was like in the spring of 1989. And by the summer of ’89 I was set up and ready to go with professional gear and a huge music library and it kind of took off from there.

One of the guys that came to that event is one of the youth group leaders, was actually a DJ, and I think I kind of impressed him a little bit. He took me under his wing and explained the different things that I needed to get in order to get started with it. I lived with my mom and my grandparents at the time, and my grandfather had stepped in as that father-figure role for me, and he and my grandmother gave me the money to get the business started, basically.

Ryan Burger: So you started rolling pretty quickly, then?

Steve Moody: It really took off. My mom knows so many people, and this is because she’s in a business where she talks to people every day. She’s actually a hairdresser. And when your mother’s a hairdresser, man, you know everybody in town. My grandfather was in the military and retired, so he had a lot of friends from the military. So I did a lot of events for them. When I started, I maybe did like three of four gigs a month for those first couple of years while I was still in high school. But it was a lot of fun and it was a great way to have some extra pocket money.

So when I got into college, I originally wanted to be a music teacher but got involved in the mass communications department to do some radio and I just really fell in love with that and it took off. And the next thing I knew, I was doing an internship at WPOC, which is the station in Baltimore — and at the time, country music had really come into its own. Remember in the late ’90s it really took off with Brooks & Dunn and Garth Brooks and all those guys.

Ryan Burger: Billy Ray Cyrus and “Achy Breaky Heart,” that kind of thing.

Steve Moody: Yes, definitely. It was just really hot at that time and I had no interest in country music; I didn’t know anything about it, but when they offered me the internship, I thought, “Man, this is the most listened-to station in this area. It always falls in slot one, two, or three in the top 10, and Baltimore’s a pretty large market.” So I thought that was a great opportunity. So I did that and I did really well there. I did a lot of production there. I was a regular on-air DJ after my internship and it was a great experience. It helped to promote my private DJ business, which really took off to a point where I just could not keep up with the radio because my private business was going so strong.

Ryan Burger: Now it’s just yourself. You’re a single operator, correct?

Steve Moody: Right. Just a single op, and I work just about every weekend doing Friday and Saturday. And if I do both, I’ll take off on Sunday so we have some family time around here, because during the week I also perform every night as well, Monday through Thursday.

Ryan Burger: At a club?

Steve Moody: It’s kind of neat. During the week, years ago when all that country stuff took off, line dancing became very popular in this area and a lot of the catering halls started to open their doors different nights during the week and have an event where people would come in and have a full hot and cold buffet dinner and an open bar and mixed drinks, everything included, and in addition to that you’d have line dance lessons. That became so popular that we were starting to have a regular crowd. And I thought maybe ten years ago, “There’s no reason I can’t go out and rent a hall and do this on my own and not have to work for somebody else.” So now we go out and actually rent the different venues on our own and provide our own drinks and snacks and things like that.

Ryan Burger: Oh, wow. So you truly have been able to make your mobile disc jockey service into a seven-day-a-week business if you choose to.

Steve Moody: Right.

Ryan Burger: Most mobile DJs can’t get pass their Fridays and Saturdays. A lot of them can’t get past their having only events on Saturdays. So you have been able to make the move in that direction. So is that the unique thing about your company?

Steve Moody: I would say definitely, yeah, because the experience of doing the line dance instruction — and I wanted to let you know it’s not just country music. We dance to Latin, top 40, hip-hop, pop, some ’50s rock and roll, mixed in with a little bit of country. So we don’t really use that moniker of country line dancing. It’s just line dancing. People come in their tennis shoes or loafers. They don’t wear boots any more. They don’t wear their cowboy hats any more. It’s changed a lot over the past couple of years.

Because of that, we’ve just got a huge variety in the crowd that comes out. We’ve got all races and all ages and all backgrounds. I’ve never seen anything else like this in all that I’ve done. So it has helped me, from being up in front of people four or five nights a week, to be able to take that experience and apply that to my mobile DJ stuff for my private affairs.

Ryan Burger: On the private affairs, how do people usually hear about your company? How’s the word gotten out?

Steve Moody: One of the neat things about doing the dancing is that I’ve got like 1500 people a week in our dance classes with the four of them combined.

Ryan Burger: So the word gets around very quickly, I imagine.

Steve Moody: Right. And so so many of the people that are just regulars in my dance class, I either have done their daughter’s wedding or their parents’ 50th anniversary or child’s graduation party, and then that leads to another job, which leads to another job; and pretty much all the work I get is all word of mouth from previous bookings.

Ryan Burger: And I imagine that’s the same thing on the dance instruction. The word just gets around when you have that big of a crowd.

Steve Moody: Right. We have our Monday night, Wednesday night, and Thursday night are ongoing classes that go on year-round, every week of the year through the summer and everything else. The Tuesday night class that we do is a 16-week beginner session, so we’re always bringing in new blood to let them see what’s involved in it. They come in for 16 or 17 weeks and then we say, “Okay. Congratulations! You’ve graduated! Move on to the intermediate group.” You take a few weeks off and then start that again. So we constantly have new people coming in, which is really neat because when I do have private events on my own, like I’ll run my own crab feast or bowl and oyster roast or something like that, man, I sell tickets immediately just from the folks that I already have.

Ryan Burger: You’ve got a big crowd of friends right around you immediately.

Steve Moody: Right.

Ryan Burger: I know I’ve had people ask us, when they’re in here planning their wedding receptions, “We don’t want to look like fools up on that dance floor.” Do you run any specialty thing for a couple that doesn’t want to look like a fool during their first dance?

Steve Moody: Oh, certainly. I can tell them just about any night, Monday through Thursday, that you can make it out, you can come out and I’ll work with you and we’ll teach you some dancing.

Over the years I’ve taught everything from cha-cha and waltz and swing dancing, but just because the line dancing became so popular and that’s what people want to do, we’ve discovered there’s just such a large market for that that we’ve just stuck with the line dancing in the past couple of years.

Ryan Burger: Technically, I know DJs sometimes really get into what their tools are that they use. What do you work with? What’s your preference? Are you an mp3 DJ? Do you still touch vinyl?

Steve Moody: I haven’t touched vinyl in a long, long time. When I first started, I used to every event. Now I use a program, PC DJ, and I guess most folks are familiar with PC DJ. As far as my speakers and stuff like that, I use the EV SX-360s, which are really nice powered speakers. One of the local organizations around here got together and all the DJs tested out their power speakers and everybody voted them hands down, they sounded just phenomenal. So when Nick Burke told me about that, I was like, “Well, that’s what I’ve got to go with, then.”

I normally just have to take two of the tops and one sub for most of the events I do and it sounds fantastic. But if it’s a larger event I’ll add on two more tops and another sub.

Ryan Burger: Are you bringing your sound system and everything to these weekday events?

Steve Moody: Yeah, because it’s just an empty hall when we get there. I have to set it up to be that event. Some of the places I actually have to set up the tables and chairs. It’s a lot involved but it’s a huge moneymaker on a weeknight. If I can come out of a two-hour dance class and make the money that I’m making on a weeknight, it’s fantastic to go in for two hours and do that.

Ryan Burger: Wow. Do you get into lighting at all, or are you just basic sound?

Steve Moody: I sure do. The lighting kind of varies from event to event. If I’m doing for a younger crowd, I will give them more the effects lights. I have a lot of Martin Intelligent lighting; I’ve got several pieces from Martin. But usually if I’m just doing a wedding reception — and my primary thing on the weekends is the wedding market — usually I just give them like a color wash out on the dance floor and I use that Chauvet LED system that they have, the Colorsplash.

Ryan Burger: Okay. So you’re not out there to blow people away with the lighting. You use it as an accent, which is the way it should be used; understood.

What are some of your goals? Where do you want to be with your business, say, ten years from now? Where do you want to be with your life ten years from now?

Steve Moody: As far as business goes, I really want to get into video. There’s nobody else in this market that does that. I’ve wanted to look at some other ideas that people have on their video and see the best ways to do it. I’ve seen maybe six or seven guys that just really have a phenomenal setup and I want to try to mold it after them and then tweak it to my own taste. So that would be my thing, business-wise. And also, to try and work a little bit less and make some more money, which from all these different conventions and workshops we’ve been going to, that seems like the key idea: work less and make more money at it. So that would be the goal, business-wise.

Personal goal — like I said, when I started college I actually wanted to be a music teacher and just kind of got sidetracked from that. I thought, “Well, I’ll get back to that.” And then I wound up getting my degree in broadcasting, which was all radio and public relations and mass communications, which was great for the business that I’m in, but I would love to go back to school. I only need a few more credits and get my teacher’s license and go to teach elementary music school, is what I wanted to do.

Ryan Burger: Fantastic. So you have your life figured out. You want to work a little bit less, you want to do a little bit different things, and you want to enjoy life a little bit more.

Steve Moody: Definitely. We’ve got a family now. I’m going to be celebrating my fifth wedding anniversary coming up in November. My wife is just fantastic. She’s a wonderful woman. She’s very supportive of the business because she’s self-employed as well. She’s a real estate agent, and so she understands the time that’s involved in it and the things that come up in working from home. She doesn’t go with me as much as she used to because we’ve got kids now, but still when she goes, she’s just great to have along.

She’s not one of those people — you’ll see guys with their girlfriends come out and they just sit there in the chair all night and she’s not like that. She’s very interactive with the crowd. She’s just got a great personality for that. She’s very personable. She knows how the sound equipment works, so if I need to run and take care of something, she can help out. She knows how it breaks down and sets up. So she’s a great asset when she can go.

We’ve got a daughter that’s three and a son, he’s six months right now. So on the weekend parties, she’s pretty much home with them unless it’s some special event that I really need her help for. But during the week, the line dancing, we actually do it as a family and take the kids with us. My wife works the door and takes care of all the food. We sell DVDs of the lessons that I teach so that people that are having a tough time can buy the DVD and take it home with them. She’s very, very helpful within the business.

Ryan Burger: Basically, anything that you want people to know about what you’re like; how to find you at a convention?

Steve Moody: I’ve only been going to conventions the past two years or so, and the first year that I went, I was kind of nervous, so I kind of stuck to myself. But man, this past year, it seems like I met just about everybody.

I love talking with people that I admire in the business, but this year I spent a lot of time with some of the folks that were brand new to the business. In fact, the three guys that I hung around with most were all in the business for under two years. I don’t know; I got a good vibe from them. They were so energetic about it and it was so fresh and so new to them, so it kind of rejuvenated me a little bit; and I think when they would ask me questions, I was helping them. We learned a lot from each other. It was a really good experience this year. I’ll sit around and talk with whoever I can get in touch with, you know.

Ryan Burger: You’re one of those guys who’ll hang out in the hallways. You’ll listen to someone, but you’ll hang out in the hallways and like the B.S.ing that happens in-between an average DJ and the other average DJ.

Steve Moody: Right. And that’s all part of it. It’s like you can be the best DJ in the world but you still got to keep pushing yourself and learning every time that you go out. And like I said, learning from new folks is just as exciting as from the old pros, people with big names that we all know and respect.

Ryan Burger: Well, I think that covers what we need. I appreciate you joining us, and look for another one of these episodes coming soon.

Steve Moody: Thank you. I really appreciate your call.