Touring can be a hellish experience for performers. There's the nonstop travel, fitful sleeping on trains and planes, and night after night (after night) of gigs. Just ask DJ Soulman, a veteran road warrior who's spent decades touring with local rap-rock act Phunk Junkeez and as a globetrotting selector.
He's just back from three weeks in Asia, where his wee hours were spent spinning at nightspots like Tokyo's Low-Cal-Ball or Privé in Hong Kong. And, he says, the clubgoers tend to go much harder over there. "Dude, they drink all . . . night . . . long. The party doesn't start until two o'clock in the morning and goes strong until six," Soulman says. "Hong Kong was just off the chain. I've never seen 15 bottles of Dom Pérignon go out at once to one table."
Understandably, he's beat. There's no rest for the wicked, however, as Soulman immediate leapt back into his busy slate of club shots around California and the Valley. "I'm tired as hell," he says. "But I'm used to being a road dog, so I don't give a shit. As long as I get four or five hours of sleep, I'm good to go."
And this weekend he'll be going to Maya Day and Nightclub, 7333 East Indian Plaza in Scottsdale, for its "Back 2 School" party on Friday, August 16. It's his first-ever appearance at Old Town's "it" spot and he's planning to mix things up, figuratively and literally. "I'll be bringing in some unusual suspects," Soulman says. "I'm gonna go up there and work, not just play Calvin Harris all night. I do kind of new-school mash-ups, and I'm planning some genre-hopping. So you may hear some Michael Jackson remixes over a Deadmau5 beat."
Whether or not any Maya patrons will pop more than a dozen bottles at once remains to be seen. Doors open at 9 p.m. Call 480-625-0528.