Ben Wing talks Sqrawbury and Sunday Swerve

9/30/2018

Photo Taken by VIVID

What was your experience with EDM and DJing before Sunday Swerve?
Before Sunday Swerve, I had been DJing with Kaf for a while to learn some of the basics. I met Jason for the first time when I went over to paint the background of the Sunday Swerve set at his house. We were working from 1PM to 1AM and after we had finished, he taught me how to DJ on CDJs. It's been a wild ride from there to now. I actually have two out-of-state bookings next month.

That's why we wanted to interview you. It seem like you started DJing out of nowhere and all of a sudden you have so many gigs can you tell us about how that came about?
It's all about networking. I go out to every show that I can and try and meet new people both for Sunday Swerve and for my own DJing career. When it comes to a meeting people, I like to see if there are other producers around because I always feel like there's something I can learn from them. Everyone does something a little bit differently, so there's always an opportunity to learn new tricks. For instance Will, Indigenous, has been helping at me out a lot recently. After I started managing him, he's been able to teach me so much.

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Out doing things in Birmingham!

A post shared by Ben Wing (@gunti222) on Aug 6, 2018 at 12:42pm PDT

Another instance of networking was when I met Mercury and we had been shooting messages back and forth about production. I suggested that he come down for Sunday Swerve and so he did and brought JuJu Beats along with him. That was one of my favorite takeovers. Shortly after that, he reached out to me and asked me to play in Asheville, North Carolina. Overall, there's a bit of back-scratching going on but the most important thing is to be a decent friend and a good person in general.

Tell us about the creation of Sunday Swerve.
When I was over painting the wall with Jason like I mentioned earlier, he told me about the concept for Sunday Swerve and asked if I'd be interested in doing the bookings. He had seen me on Facebook and how I was always going to local shows so I guess he figured I would know who to ask to be on the show. It's been amazing to watch it grow from being just an idea to what it is today. We've grown from zero likes to well over a thousand in under six months. I attribute all of credit to Jason for this idea. Now we have people coming from out of state like Party Matrix is planning his birthday bash with us and is going to bring a lot of people from Birmingham to our set. I can tease that we're going to have some people coming from the west coast soon but I can't tell you who yet.

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A post shared by Sunday Swerve (@sundayswerve) on Jul 12, 2018 at 7:37am PDT

What's coming next for the Sunday Swerve?
There is something I really want to hype up: We've been in talks with Heady Made Weird about bringing the Sunday Swerve over to them and doing a live show at their venue. Jason and I have both played there in the sound is just next level. Shout out to Neil and Party Matrix for working with us to make this happen. We're also thinking about upgrading the studio. Cody Ches just updated the studio for Spin and Chill and so he's working with us improve our setup as well.

Let's take it a step back and talk more about Sqrawbury and the music that you personally enjoy playing and spinning.
The song that introduced me into EDM was "F-Track" by Showtek. I was a rebellious metalhead who hated society, sol hearing a track that says "So Fuck You" really did it for me. There was so much emotion behind hard dance that resonated with me.. Very soon after that, I went over to dubstep. I came across dubstep when I was playing Airsoft and a Skrillex song came on. My old roommate, Sam. really push me to get into dubstep because he was really a huge electronic music fan. I have to thank him so much for pushing me in the right direction on this journey. He actually got shipped out in the military about two months before I got my first gig. When he got out of base and went on Facebook, he saw that I had done my first gig and was just so surprised that I was already doing live shows after such a short period of time. He's coming back for New Year's so I'm trying to get booked so he can come and watch me play. Right now, I've been into this more low-tempo deep dub music and I have to thank Jason's girlfriend, Tori for getting me into it all. Be on the lookout for her, she's a very talented DJ and so we're all just waiting for her to come out and show everyone what she can do.

How are you promoting to the show to people around Atlanta and the United States?
There's definitely a lot of posting into relevant Facebook groups. I actually got my main account post-muted so many times that I've had to create a second account which primarily handles all of sharing now. When we go out to shows, we're pitching the Swerve to local and regional artists.

At this point, we've built this brand and this family around the Sunday Swerve and so now, people are helping promote this project for us. If you look into those Facebook groups, you'll find that other people are posting this stream as well like Nikki Breslauer and Sadie Colan. I think that DJs around town get really excited when slots open up for the show because it's such a great production to be on. We wanted create something that people actually want to share with each other and show each other on their phones. We want people to get excited about what's going down at Sunday Swerve!

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A post shared by Ben Wing (@gunti222) on May 14, 2018 at 11:51am PDT

I think a question that a lot of your friends might ask is how much time do you spend on social media a day?
Funny enough, I actually just got written up at work for being on social media. I'll probably spend around six hours on social media each day constantly promoting my DJ page and Sunday Swerve. I mean, I want to see our brands grow. I just want to support Jason's project because he has put so much time, money, and effort into this and I want to make sure that he gets a return on his investment in the future. I wanted to be able to say that he got back every penny that he ever put into the Sunday Swerve.

How do you plan on monetizing Sunday Swerve?
That's the million-dollar question that Jason I go back and forth on all the time. We've talked with another group called "Spin and Chill" run by Cody Ches, otherwise known as Echobreaker, and he's been a big help in giving us some direction of where we should go from here. We both opened up multi-platform streaming on Twitch with a donation box and other major platforms that have helped us a little bit.

We have considered running ads at the beginning and end of the stream or while DJ's trade-off. In the past, we've had nightclubs and DJ's throw their flyers and promotional material in front of the deck so that you can see it on the live stream. Considering the fact that we've updated the quality so drastically since we started, we might begin charging people to put their flyers in those positions since that is technically ad space. Our reach is growing dramatically as well, like our highest reach ever was 80,000 timelines that are video came across. Having bigger acts and having them share this stream will help us and ensure that we have eyeballs for advertisers to pay for if they choose to work with us.

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What are some of the other challenges that you've faced with Sunday Swerve?
One thing that we've been struggling with is having video content to share between livestreams. Local DJs don't really have a lot of video content like highlight reels that they can share with us. That means we're not getting in people's timelines throughout the week when we're not doing our main event. Whenever I'm scrolling through my own Facebook feed, I see videos from DJ's posting videos from their concert and they're hyping up the crowd and I wish that local DJs would film the same thing at their shows even if it's just on their cell phones or for a small crowd.

Posting often and making sure that you're reminding people that you exist with videos and popping up in their notifications is super important for us as a production and getting the most engagement and reach that we possibly can. As you know, videos do extremely well in Facebook and Instagram's algorithms.

Lastly, is there anything you'd like to say about the local scene?
There are some amazing producers artists that really have the potential to take off like Zubah, Hard2tell, Archmage, and Indigenous. I don't know where Indigenous came from, it's just some next level talent that came out of left feel. Will Leclair, all of a sudden I saw five tracks of his on my timeline and I was just blown away. I was wondering how is this guy not getting booked and playing Iris, well actually he's playing Iris next week so there's that. I want to say that the support for the local scene here is one of the best around the country. I've lived in Chicago and South Michigan in Philadelphia and none of those days parallel to what we have going on over here. people here just show each other so much love. You'll see people excited for the openers for shows coming through the area. Like for instance if Halogen is opening up a show people will get excited for it or if Archmage and Reklaim are going back to back and it's so great to see people getting excited for all parts of the night and every act. Y'all get out there and get that video material so that I can better promote you!