Let’s just say some old college photos surfaced at a party. Maybe not the ones DJ Stroud was really worried about, but interesting photos nonetheless.
Stroud came to UVA in the mid-1980s as an engineering student. He was also a brother at Theta Chi. After he finished Old Dominion University with a finance degree, Stroud came back to Charlottesville to open a silk screen and t-shirt shop on the Corner. There he hooked up with DJ Duncan Habberly and the two of them began throwing underground raves known as Wiggles.
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“I had listened to some electronic dance music like Depeche Mode, but most of them were still bands.” Then in the mid ’90s, with the decline of grunge, DJ and club culture started to really take off and many industry types thought that it was the “next big thing.” During that time Stroud was getting a lot of gigs in D.C., hosting a regular Monday night show on WNRN, producing his own music, and even had “a real job for a year.” During a peak year, he spun records at 200 gigs. He was making a good living, although he was also working very hard—about 80 to 100 hours a week. His music started showing up on dance music charts around the world, and many aspiring DJs were sending him demos to try to land a cut on his label, Mining Vinyl.
Stroud says that the best local DJ scene started out in Baltimore, but then relocated to D.C. with the opening of the nightclub Nation. The D.C. scene evolved from underground warehouses to a much more refined, club-type atmosphere. More internationals appeared in the big clubs, and the music became less underground, which Stroud says did not hold the same appeal: “It wasn’t the big baggy pants any more. It didn’t have the same raw, edgy feel that it used to.”
Then, 9/11 and the subsequent recession happened, and the club scene felt the reverberations. Stroud has always tried a lot of different approaches. He was part of a band with Everything leader Craig Honeycutt, and he was a member of a trip-hop group with some locally known musicians. He taught D:Fuse (now an international club star) how to spin. Stroud talks about missed opportunities, but they are not from lack of effort.
Two years ago, Stroud had a bout with cancer, and he was off the scene for a couple months. During that time, he started to consider his priorities. “I thought, I better get back in the water,” he says. Stroud had grown up in Virginia Beach, and he developed an early love of surfing there. But after an ankle injury that required a long rehab, he gave up surfing for 14 years and pursued music instead. When he decided to surf again, he bought a wetsuit and made a trip to California. He also rediscovered his boards, long and short, many of which he had shaped himself. He has a 6’1" thruster that he shaped, imprinted with the Stroud logo, hanging on the wall of his bedroom. He is putting as much into surfing now as he did into music: “I was obsessed before and I am obsessed again.”
Recently, he has made trips to El Salvador and Costa Rica, and he is currently on a weeklong surfing trip with his girlfriend to Nicaragua. “I love Central America,” he says. “And I get to fit it in between gigs.” Stroud recently DJed a wedding of some friends on the Outer Banks, and part of the payday was that he was able to surf Nags Head.
You can catch Stroud at Club OBL at The Outback Lodge on Friday, November 24, playing house, trance, etc., or at his regular R2 gig, or you can also check his website, www.miningvinyl.com, with some great El Salvador and Costa Rica surfing shots.
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Stroud’s recent spins: ”I spend a lot of my time on those surf trips listening to absolutely nothing, which often surprises people. It is my getaway after all, though. As far as electronic dance music goes, that stuff comes and goes so fast it’s hard to reel off a recent favorite. I am fortunate to have a couple of my favorite artists, Noel Sanger and Chuck Lepley, coming out with tracks on my label, either right now (Chuck), or in the very near future (Noel).”
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