Artists

DJ Will Clarke on All We Have Is Now, Touring, More [Re-Published Interview x Photos from Celine Orlando]

By FMB Staff

Posted on March 4, 2023

** Below is an exclusive interview with Will Clarke originally published on March 4th, 2020 **

“I’m closer to where I want to be than where I ever have been. It feels good to say that,” DJ Will Clarke expressed during an intimate sit down backstage at Celine Orlando.

Will had just gotten to town, had a bite to eat, and met with us prior to his “Open to Close” set at the posh hot spot in the heart of downtown Orlando.

During the interview, Will revealed his sentiments on playing longer sets, launching his own label, All We Have Is Now, and releasing several records that have been a long time in the making, including “U Take Me Higher.” 2020 has seen a major evolutionary leap for the U.K. native, who is fully enjoying his chance to play full-length sets in America.

He also talked about his ongoing motivation, best tour moments, playing non-stop with the flu, and where we can find him next. (hint: the show with Chris Lake during MMW sounds like one of our next stops.) Also, in case you were wondering about the beard, it’s here to stay.

Listen to the Podcast & Read the full interview below.

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Part 1:

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So you just touched down in Orlando, and you’re on the Open to Close tour. What is the significance of the tour name, “Open to Close“?

Well, I play from when the club opens to when the club closes. It’s to launch my record label — All We Have is Now. On “Open to Close” I get to play longer sets. Which tonight, the club finishes at 2 o’clock so that’s only five hours, which isn’t that long, but I get to warm the whole club up and take it to wherever I want to.

In America, you don’t often get to play long sets. If you get two hours you’re lucky. If you get three hours you’re really lucky. The fact I get to play longer sets — I just really enjoy it.

So you prefer that?

I prefer playing longer sets.

Is it because you catch the vibe better playing longer, or –?

I DJ because I love playing music, right? And there’s a lot of music I don’t ever get to play, because when I’m playing an hour or two-hour set, I know that 90% of that is going to be my own music. That’s because I want people to hear it. I wouldn’t go to see the Rolling Stones for them to go play Bob Marley and not play any of their own records.

I feel like if people are coming to see me, they wanna hear my records. So if I’ve only got a short amount of time, I can play two and half hours of all my own music, but if I’m playing for five hours, six, or seven hours, I can play lots of different music leading up to it and then play my music. I enjoy it a little bit more.

So speaking of your music, you’ve put out several records recently. It seems like you’ve been on fire in the studio. I really like the newest one, “U Take Me Higher.” Listening to that record in comparison to some of your past music, it really seems like there was an evolutionary leap to it. Maybe it sounds more…mature —

Yeah, yeah.

— where do you think that comes from?

I think for me it’s about wanting to make timeless music. I think it’s also about wanting to not be pigeon-holed into one genre. I think the music I’m writing now — I could be wrong, this is just what I hope — when I release my music, it’s not my music anymore, it’s everybody else’s. It’s kind of whatever the public’s opinion is of the music. It’s their choice to do with it what they want to with it.

But for me, I just want to write music that can be played in different mediums. If you know what I mean. I want people to be able to listen to it at home while chillin’. I want people to be able to listen to it while they’re getting ready and going to the club. I also wanted people to be able to play it on the radio. I want people to play it everywhere and also for it to do really well in the club.

I think last year was a transitional year with releases for me. I was moving with a lot more European record labels — Drumcode, Truesoul, Kneaded Pains, Alan Fitzpatrick’s label We are the Brave. I’ve been getting a lot of support from the European community, and of course, I’m English. So it’s kind of nice. It’s always kind of where I wanted to go back to eventually.

I think, just as an artist, it’s all about evolving and moving forward. When I was writing music with Dirtybird and things like that, I loved it. I had the best time ever. It’s super fun. But for me, this is more me, if you know what I mean.

I feel like it definitely comes across like that when you listen to it. My impression was, “I feel like he just really came into himself fully with this record.” It feels full.

I think for me, I’m still not 100% there — and I don’t think I’ll ever be if I’m truly honest with myself, but, I’m closer to where I want to be than where I ever have been. It feels good to say that.

Which is kind of ironic since the title is “U Take Me Higher.”

The next three releases after these two all kind of have a bit of a meaning. The whole point of the label is to throw a bigger message out to the world, which is really important to me as well.

Speaking of the label, obviously it takes an immense amount of work to put into [creating a label]. I’m sure it was a roller coaster kind of thing. Can you tell us about some of the challenges you went through or had to overcome?

From the date we released — I say “we” as my team — Ryan, my manager, and all the other teams behind the label. Ryan became my manager in April or May of last year, but we had been talking since January. It’s literally been eight to twelve months in the making for this record label.

Which still isn’t too bad.

It’s not too bad at all, but for me, I wanted to get everything perfect. Obviously, I’m just a bit of a perfectionist. I wanted to have the right team in every part of the label so I didn’t have to worry about anything. Although I still oversee everything, I have a label manager, a guy called Nick, in the U.K. who oversees the whole label. We also deal with Good Company which is a U.K. side-shoot of a major record label. Then we have a deal with Etcetc in Australia. We also have a deal with Insomniac in America. We have three different partners in different continents and different countries where I felt I really wanted to push my music. That took awhile to get going.

I made “U Take Me Higher” a long time ago, maybe eight months ago. I’ve been playing it for a long time and it just felt right to have that as the first release. All the records I’ve got coming out for the rest of this year are all records I’ve been making awhile ago, like last year, but they just feel so right to come out. I don’t know if I’ve answered your question — it’s just been a long process.

I’ve been working with my designer — a guy called Mark with Super Fry Designs — he’s done all my design work for the last eight to ten years. He’s amazing, but it’s hard work designing a whole new brand.

You guys did an amazing job with that too. You can tell visually there was some thought.

Yeah, there was — there was a lot of thought. I’m really, really happy with the branding. There’s still things I want to change but that’s the whole point of being able to do your own thing.

Yeah, the growth. I don’t know if it’s time yet, but have you thought about bringing on other artists? Is that in the works?

Yeah, there’s definitely plans in the future. We’re not going to be releasing originals from new artists until 2021.

That makes sense.

Yeah, I just want to get the sound of the label out and show what we can do. I want to build the label with my profile — I want to be able to bring on new artists, and build a very small handful of people that can tour with me and everything like that. However, we are bringing on remixes. So we have the Andrea Oliva remix of “U Take Me Higher” which is out now. We have some really interesting remixes coming out as well for future releases.

I follow you on Instagram and you always look like you’re having a really good time wherever you’re at. What have been some of the most memorable parts of this tour so far?

It’s been an amazing tour. I was actually in the hotel earlier on, going like, ‘last weekend I was really sick — I had the flu and respiratory infection and I played like 14 hours last weekend.’ I had two gigs and I was dying. After the last show in Dallas, I couldn’t even stand up through the whole set. I had to sit down halfway through. But it’s just been one of those tours that’s been so fun.

Don’t get me wrong — they are long nights. They’re really long days. You’re traveling for three to six hours during the day on a plane. You get to the city, eat dinner, go straight to the club pretty much. And then you do the same thing again. When you have three shows a weekend, it turns into a long weekend — but it’s all been really good shows for me. Chicago is always really amazing. Spy Bar is just crazy.

New York — I’ve never headlined a show in New York in my whole career which is kind of weird. I’m not too sure why we haven’t, but I did my first headline show in New York. It was in a place called Good Room, which is like one of the last proper clubs that I’ve been to in America. It’s a very dark room. It sounds great. It’s kind of a Do-It-Yourself club. It’s not fancy. There’s no real bottle service. It’s a really raw, hexagon kind of club. That was amazing. It was really, really good. I was kind of worried about if anyone would turn up ’cause I’ve never done a headline show there. I’ve never done a solo show in New York and people turned up which was amazing.

L.A. was the first weekend of the tour. San Francisco was amazing. In L.A., we sold out Exchange. It was one of those nights that felt so good. Honestly, this whole tour has been really good. We’ve had one iffy show — and that was in Boston. I’ll be honest, we knew that was going to be an iffy show.

So the first time I saw you play was in Orlando, which is a funny coincidence [since we’re here again now.] You opened for Rabbit in the Moon…

Oh, damn! That was at Blues…

House of Blues.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I knew instantly at that show that you were definitely going somewhere. So your fanbase has grown tremendously since then, I would say, definitely here in Florida.

Hopefully! Yeah.

Yeah, I would say so. So, congratulations on everything so far.

Thank you.

So, how do your new ventures affect the Dirtybird situation? Or what’s going on with that?

It doesn’t really affect anything. Dirtybird — they’re all my homies. Claude is happy that I’ve got a new record label. Everyone supports everyone. Justin is a very close friend of mine. Shiba is one of my best friends. Kill Frenzy, Walker & Royce — all of them are some of my closest friends in the industry. I just need to do me. That doesn’t mean I will never release on Dirtybird again or never do a Dirtybird party again. I would never say that, but at this moment in time, I just need to concentrate on what I’m doing and grow what I want to build for the future and for other artists as well.

What are your Miami Music Week plans?

I’m playing the Pete Tong Pool Party. I’m playing B2B with Sita Abellan. Then, I have my All We Have Is Now party which is at the Greystone Hotel. We have Huxley, Chris Stussy, and Daddy Dino. I’m playing the Chris Lake Pool Party, but I’m not too sure if I’m supposed to announce that yet. I’m playing another interesting party but I don’t think we’re allowed to announce it yet.

We went over the new label, the new songs, and Miami Music Week. Are there any other big things going on that we should know about? Are you still selling the tour t-shirts?

Yeah, there’s still a few tour t-shirts left, not many. You can Google “Will Clarke tour t-shirts” — but if you come to the tour that would be great because we’re never going to print those ever again. It would just be amazing if everyone could go check the music out and keep an eye out on the label.

One last question…out of curiosity…has anyone ever offered you money to cut your beard…

[Laughs]

Is there a threshold, or a certain amount of money, or a charity you would cut it for?

So, actually, the reason why I started growing a beard was for charity. My parents own a drug and alcohol rehab in the U.K. and they also run a mental health charity in the U.K. I was gonna grow a beard and cut it off after a year to raise money for the charity. However, during that year was when I became successful in music, so all of my press shots were with the beard. No one knew me before with a beard. So, I had to keep the beard. So, no, there is no amount of money — maybe if someone is willing to pay me a million dollars, then I would pretty much take that — but no, the beard is staying.

So the beard literally grew on you.

I think the beard is literally one of the reasons why people recognize who I am. 100%.

It’s the lucky beard. It is almost a branding thing.

Yeah, it is 100%. And I’m all about branding. Well, I don’t really like the word branding, but it is 100% all about the brand. People can recognize you walking down the street. People can recognize you behind the decks. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re better or anything like that, but being recognized is always helpful.

You mentioned having the flu and having to play through that which is definitely something [difficult] to overcome, but how do you deal with having to rapidly think about technical issues while DJing? Do you have that kind of stuff happen and what do you do?

Yeah, you always have that stuff all the time. I’ve been playing since I was nine years old so you just get used to it. It’s just like with anything in life. If something happens you fix it. Nothing ever worries me like that.

That’s good advice.

Well, you just never know. A lot of the time it’s out of your power. A lot of the time it’s just you being an absolute idiot and pressing the wrong button. [laughs] As long as you can hold your hands up and be like, ‘I f*cked up, I’m sorry,’ We’re all f*cking human — no one’s perfect out here.

Thanks for speaking with us and we look forward to the show.

Thanks for having me.

Will Clarke – [Audio Part 2]