It’s a Friday night in Tahoe City and DJ micah j takes the stage. Energy is pulsing through the Lakeside Pizza crowd, warmed up after dancing to sets by DJs Evan Bender and Antidote. Deep bass resonates through the dance floor, and funky beats are building up to a climactic sweet spot. It’s crowded and sweaty, but you can’t help but swing your hips and stretch out your arms. Like a drug, micah j’s music is intoxicating.
‘It’s a high like no other,’ said Micah Hogue, aka micah j. ‘When you have 500 people in front of you, raising their hands, jumping up and down, screaming; and every single time you put on a new track, they just get more and more pumped… It’s a crazy buzz in itself. You don’t need alcohol, don’t need drugs—DJ’ing is its own drug.’
Dirty funkin’ house and breaks—that’s micah j’s choice genre of music. His sound is electronic, traveling from the skeleton of grimy, dirty beats with heavy bass to melodic rhythms with a bit of soul. ‘Sexy music is what I like to call it,’ he said. It’s micah j’s get-out-and-dance sound that likely earned him the nickname ‘Ladies’ DJ.’ A few years ago, when the nickname was coined, micah j said he’d look up in the middle of his set and it seemed that out of nowhere a blast of estrogen had hit the dance floor. ‘It’s just stuff that makes your booty move,’ he said.
‘[Micah j] is really the pioneer, in my opinion, of putting together super funky, but yet driving sets,’ said Tim Herrlein, also known as DJ Timmy, who has worked with micah j since 2002. ‘He can basically go and set up in front of a bunch of three-year-olds and make them dance.’
More than a decade has passed since Hogue first took to the turntables in the late 1990s. Hogue worked at a South Lake Tahoe restaurant in 1998 that hosted a variety of San Francisco–based DJs. ‘It looked like something I wanted to do,’ Hogue said. ‘But I didn’t want to do what everyone else was doing.’ So he decided to play hip hop, but that didn’t last long. A fateful hot, sunny day melted all of his hip hop records in the back of his girlfriend’s car. It was a tragedy that ended up steering him in the right direction.
Hogue’s love affair with electronic music was a gradual process. In the beginning of his career, Hogue said he outright hated what he then called techno. But the music gradually grew on him. After playing a cassette tape featuring Mark Farina, a world-renowned house DJ, in his car’s tape player continuously for an entire year, Hogue finally accepted his passion for electronic music.
Over the past 12 years, Hogue’s career has seemed to come full circle, from sexy, funky music to harder breaks and back again. Micah j has also evolved from his former persona, DJ Switch, a name Hogue had to change in 2007 after he realized it was already claimed by another DJ. ‘I can tell how old my friend is by what name they call me,’ said Hogue. ‘As soon as I went with micah j, I went back to my roots. But everything evolves over time.’
‘From the day I met him, [micah j] had mad skills compared to other DJs around here,’ said Evan Bender, a DJ in the region for nine years, noting micah j’s talent with music selection, scratching, and beat juggle. ‘And he’s pretty modest about it.’
Today micah j regularly spins at a handful of festivals a year up and down the West Coast, including the Big Bounce, Lightning in a Bottle, Groove Fest, and, of course, Burning Man — the beating heart of the DJ scene in the West. ‘[Burning Man] allows these DJs who normally wouldn’t get gigs outside of this event to get to play in front of crowds,’ said micah j. ‘DJs who can get this exposure and play on these amazing, beautiful art pieces — it’s a catalyst.’
Micah j’s worst gig was at a wedding, when he was booed off the stage and told he would never play in Tahoe again. ‘It’s not all honey and sugar cookies,’ he said. His favorite memory was at this year’s Big Bounce festival. ‘People are still talking about it,’ he said, noting how the stage was so crowded and vibrant that it literally became a big bounce. ‘I couldn’t even put my beer down.’
According to Hogue, Tahoe’s DJ scene peaked around 2003 and 2004 when venues were aplenty and parties were packed.
Since then, a lot of places have closed, especially in Nevada, and the scene is at a low. ‘If you don’t have anywhere to put music, you don’t have anywhere to play music,’ Hogue said.
Despite this sentiment, Hogue and others feel that Tahoe fosters a supportive, friendly environment among DJs. And with new venues like the Grid in Kings Beach, as well as new artists and DJ collectives emerging with the rise of dub step, Tahoe’s DJ scene may be on a comeback. ‘There’s way more cooperation here in Tahoe than most, if not all, other places I’ve seen,’ said Bender, who frequently plays gigs with micah j.
Micah j says a DJ is a DJ because they play other people’s music. But he also admits that a DJ who creates his own tracks will go the furthest. Lately, micah j has been taking his work to a whole different level by producing his own music. His first track to make it beyond his turntables was ‘Why Not,’ which was featured in ‘Jusimi,’ a ski movie by Four Reel Productions. He also released a vinyl record titled ‘Tell Me ‘Bout It’ with Zebra Records in 2006. Micah j is currently anticipating the release of another track he created with fellow DJ Bass Cadet. Rock-it Science records will release ‘Bad Robot’ on a compilation CD in December.
Hogue was in the process of producing several more tracks when his computer was stolen out of his car in Reno last month — a huge disappointment because he hadn’t backed up his computer and lost all of his work. ‘People have setbacks all the time in life,’ Hogue said. ‘It’s just how they recover from them.’ It may be back to the drawing board for Hogue, but just as he came back after all his records melted, it’s safe to say he’ll be attacking the scene with a fresh sound soon. Hogue just moved to Reno with his girlfriend, and after they get settled he said he’ll be playing more gigs, this time with his eyes focused on horizons beyond Tahoe. Ibiza, Rome, London — these destinations are all on micah j’s to-do list. ‘I just want to keep the funk alive,’ he said.
Keep in touch with micah j about shows and upcoming releases at djmicahj.com and twitter.com/djmicahj. You can also listen to a few micah j produced tracks at soundcloud.com/micahj.
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