Jaz caught up with Bellingham, WA-based EDM producer, Beefsdick in the fifth RepostExchange podcast. They chatted about branding, performing live and making the transition from rock to EDM!
My name is Wade Dietrick and I go by ‘Beefsdick’. I produce electronic music in Bellingham, Washington, but I identify mostly with Seattle because that’s where I was born. So I was a Seattle-ite and now I’m a Bellinghamster.
Beefsdick? It is pretty unique, so the story behind it was that I was at Bass Canyon, which was the first year, so 2018, put on by Excision, who is a huge American bass producer and DJ. That was definitely one of the most inspirational shows for me. I would say that I get a lot of my inspiration for music from other artists in the rave community. But I have a long history of going to concerts, so rock and metal is where my background is. I was playing in rock bands and my Mom was kind enough to take me to every show.
Anyway, with Beefsdick, I was at Bass Canyon and my friend at the time, she is super into Slim Jims and so am I, it’s one of the main things we’ll get. So it’s really common to stop at a gas station here or a convenience store and get a beef stick, which is like a pepperoni stick, you know? And the ‘D’ part of it was just our play on it and if you can imagine a bunch of very inebriated post-ravers walking back, like a whole group of people, chanting “Beef stick!”, over and over. Like you say, “Beef”, you say, “Stick”!
So, there’s not really a solid explanation as to how it came about, other than it was a thing that a bunch of my friends at the time got into and I was just very excited about it. So, I think the next day, after a long drive back from The Gorge, which is where they hold the big festival. Actually, most of my favorite festivals happen out there, shout out! On the way back, I came up with what I wanted to name my new electronic project.
As I said, I had been in bands playing bass guitar, like metal and rock bands and I play a lot of slap and funk bass privately, which I’ve always really liked because it’s more fun.
That’s kind of a hard question because seriously, I mean like as far as Beefsdick goes, I suppose I would link it to my first upload, which was just after Bass Canyon, I think in August of 2018. But if you were to ask how long I’ve been a musician, it’s been since… I’m 25 now. And it started when my Mom got me a bass guitar when I was in sixth grade because I wanted a drum set, but that was going to be too loud. So, starting there, that was huge. Really, I’d say dance music is less than a year, which is wild to me because I really love it.
I really value branding and I see and learn from everyone that’s making it big. One of my main influences, aside from REZZ, it would be Whipped Cream. She was recently in an interview in which she was talking about getting hate for using samples in her music. Basically, every stage of her journey of being a DJ and becoming more of a producer, she’s talked about how people always will judge and say that she’s not doing it the way that she should be doing it, and she’s not sound designing in the beginning, and then she’s using the cheaper set-up live and then she’s working up. And now I look at how big she is and she’s only skyrocketed up there in the last year or two, which is impressive.
And so, I look at people like that who really do invest the time and just make it happen for themselves. That’s where I want to be, and especially now I just graduated college, I now have the time. As far as branding goes, again, I look at Whipped Cream and because she has her name, ‘Whipped Cream’, which is really recognisable. But then she often has a scorpion for her visual and what does that have to do? But it sticks! I have some of her merch and it’s usually just like a photo of her and her logo. With mine, I went with a local. Actually, a friend of mine who is in the rave community and she’s Amanda, Atanadinata Designs. She’s amazing and she came up with the Beefsdick logo, as it is today and the actual text for the Beefsdick part of it on the logo was made by another artist.
I’ve always enjoyed using local art and I try to bring that to the global market as well with what I’ve been doing with RepostExchange. And for just a moment, I’d like to shout-out RepostExchange!
One of my good friends, Jordan, he goes by the rapper Dopé, and he’s been blowing up on Re-Ex as well, I often see him in the charts and he’s the one that introduced me to the site. He’s in Bellingham here and we both worked together for a time. So, we’re planning to put out a lot of music together soon, which is going to be really wonderful.
I really, really value his mentorship as he’s figuring out all of this stuff at the same time. But he’s been my main influence for making sure my branding is on point and that’s why I went through and updated all the art on my albums. Every single has fresh art, as of a few months ago, so that’s been really wonderful to keep everything looking cohesive.
Go to some shows! I mentioned earlier, my Mom is my main influence and my muse in a lot of ways because she was the driving force and brought me to any concert I wanted to go to and it was huge festival shows, little backdoor concerts, shows in alleys and house shows – it didn’t matter. She would have gotten me a fake ID to go to shows(!) She was so committed. And I love her for all of that.
And then I started getting into rave music around high school. My initial influences were Excision and Skrillex, so like 2010 and I do try to bring a lot of that older influence to a lot of my dance beats. As far as what I’d recommend to people getting into it, starting the transition would just be experiencing the music. It was so hard for me to write this style.
I really dove into music like Sullivan King – and he’s another American bass/electronic artist. But he’s another total metalhead and plays guitar and solos live and does scream vocals and it’s the perfect hybrid. It totally reminds me of some of the earlier stuff like Korn, one of my favorite bands. They collaborated with Skrillex for a song or two and that was just mind-blowing! I saw them like and they played the Skrillex version at the White River Amphitheatre, it was amazing. I like that live energy music and I really want to get there with it and I think I’m getting closer and closer all the time.
I have a really decent studio set-up in my home and it’s more of a portable gig. And I do plan to do recordings. If anyone’s listening and is local, I would love to set-up something. I notice this on my music all of the time and this is a big one for anyone listening, when you get into a song and you’ve been writing and composing, especially if you’re one of those people like me who often sound design and composes in the same session, you can hear that same track hundreds of times before you end up getting to the mastering session. So even if you put in only a few hours, I think it’s really worthwhile to get somebody else’s ears on it. Just having fresh ears, you hear little things you just can’t notice anymore because you’re too close to it. I get way to close to my music, I definitely do. I’ll play it on repeat.
I’ve got a ton of plans, I mean what’s the future? Live performances.
Well, I’m a producer and I’ve been working in the box and in the studio. So when I do live shows, it’s more or less how I do a radio show in which I play my songs pretty much to completion and do a little bit of transitioning in between. But doing a few shows, like house performances in which I did have the DJ table and everything through a friend who was also a producer. So that’s been my only exposure in that realm.
So that’s the next step for me is I think that I’m hitting it really strong online, I’m getting a lot of interaction and all that, but I want to have some more face time with people. I’ve been doing a lot of remixes, which has been really fun. I did some bootlegs. But I’ve been having artists from RepostExchange collaborate with me recently and it’s been really wonderful. So since I did this remix with Ras Bootin’, that is going to be real big, which is really great and has inspired me to do a ‘Burnin’ Up’ remix album, so that’s going to be the future, maybe six or seven remixes from RepostExchange-found collaborators and from a few of my local friends here.
It’s a feminist anthem of sorts. It’s very dark and features such a tender, yet powerful vocal over dark synth melodies and a heavy bassline and I don’t know how to describe the beat… it’s kind of a tropical and a mid-tempo vibe to it. It’s only at 100 BPM, which is perfect for mid-tempo beats, but it features a lot of dubstep sounds, especially in the drop. But the vocalist, she is a wonderful vocalist and does have some work on SoundCloud from a few years ago, back when she was doing acoustic covers. We just got together and started talking and then we’ve planned now three tracks.
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This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
