A Night out w/ Jason Ayers

Jason Ayers is a local artist, graphic designer, and computer programmer. But owning a web/mobile application business and organizing the local installments of Pecha-Kucha are just a few of Ayers daytime duties. By night, Ayers, or DJ Deep Freq, is a Valley veteran in the nightlife scene. He was one of the first...

By Nicole Smith

November 22, 2011

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Jason Ayers is a local artist, graphic designer, and computer programmer. But owning a web/mobile application business and organizing the local installments of Pecha-Kucha are just a few of Ayers daytime duties.

By night, Ayers, or DJ Deep Freq, is a Valley veteran in the nightlife scene. He was one of the first of local promoters to initiate weekly underground dance nights in the early 2000s and pioneered events including Freedom and Kind Fridays, as well as more recent swinging after hours parties including The Q and The Official.

After a lengthy five year hiatus from his house music nightlife arsenal, Ayers returned and brought his drum and bass night, SubConcious, to the downstairs area of Bar Smith, on Wednesday nights.

Read on about our most recent Wingman adventure with Ayers, after the jump.

The Meet Up: We started the night at Ayers' tasteful bachelor pad in Central Phoenix. After giving me a grand tour of his stylish digs, Ayers explains the then and now on his night, SubCon and gives me some musical enlightenment through his impressive sound system.

Hanging with Ayers and not talking about drum and bass/jungle music genre would be damn near impossible -- the dude is full blown obsessed with these particular styles of music. Hence the reason Ayers created SubCon back in early 2000.

"The scene then was very agro. There were a lot of fights and very few girls coming out," Ayers explains.

He and other promoters involved were also a lot older than the club kids supporting the night. Ditching his raver-like lifestyle to start a web application business, Ayers decided to put SubCon on the back-burner. After many years of convincing from veteran promoter buds/Bar Smith proprietors, Pete Salaz and Sean Badger, SubCon is back, and Ayers, along with other diehard D&B DJs such as Ariel Perez, couldn't be more excited about it.

The Company: Cabbing it over to Taste of Tops in Tempe, we run into friend Judith Fedo and a few others at Casey Moore's before heading back downtown to his Tuesday night go-to,

Bikini Lounge for 602'sdays. The place is packed with familiar faces including close friend, Sunny Thaper and featured SubCon resident DJ, Issa Emadi.

Favorite Spots: Though Taste of Tops and Casey Moore's have recently become favorite hangouts for Ayers (Taste of Tops being a Sunday ritual for him and Issa to geek out on music talk), he spends most of his time in Downtown Phoenix at places like JoBot, The Lost Leaf and Bikini Lounge. "It's nice to go to places where you know you'll see friends and laugh, and as a native, that's definitely part of the charm about Phoenix."

Ending the night was a secret after hours Ayers throws regularly. The location-- undisclosed, of course.

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