70’s punk and power pop wedding, Danville, CA. Photo: Nick Wolf
"To start, we want to say that Jamie was an absolutely amazing DJ. We found Jamie through our wedding photographer (who we also had a wonderful experience with), and were immediately impressed. After very promising email correspondence, we had an hour-long video chat with Jamie where he asked us all about what we wanted in terms of music for the wedding ceremony, reception, and everything in between. He then went on to ask about each of our favorite songs, bands, and genres, as well as what our family and friends liked. This may seem like a simple step, but it's far removed from what we experienced with the other DJs we interviewed - his interest in our musical taste and how to cultivate a great experience for our guests was incredibly genuine. He clearly took time to listen, take notes, and think about how to create a wonderful experience. It's obvious that Jamie didn't simply take the music that we and our friends liked and make it into a simple playlist. He very clearly dove into the genre and came up with a killer soundtrack informed by our input and interests. We had at least three people stop us the night of the wedding, and more since then, to compliment him on his playlist. If you're looking for a non-cheesy, fun DJ who will listen to what you, your friends and your family like to hear, and take the time to build a playlist you will love, we highly recommend Jamie. If you're looking for a cheesy wedding DJ, we suggest you go elsewhere. If we were to do it all again, we couldn't imagine a scenario where Jamie wasn't our DJ." - Tommy Good
“Jamie was the best DJ! We were planning our wedding from afar, so we had a call with Jamie just to chat with him and understand his vibe and his services and he was hands down the best DJ we spoke with. We had several other calls with other DJs and the all sounded like yourtypical, cheesy wedding DJ. Jamie is completely the opposite. It was so clear to us how much Jamie loves music and cares about what he does, so it was a pretty easy decision to decide to book with him. Once we booked, we had another call with Jamie to go over our musical tastes, what our friends and families like, and the overall feel we wanted for our wedding. Then we went through his insane list of music that he has, marking off what we liked. He took so much time to really understand what we liked and craft the most perfect soundtrack for our wedding. The wedding day was perfect. Jamie’s music was exactly what we hoped it would be and more. Our friends and family still talk to us about how great the music was. I’ll also note it was about 107 degrees the day of our outdoor wedding and Jamie was a champ setting up all of his equipment in the horrible heat. You really could not find a better DJ so just save yourself some trouble and go with Jamie!" - Amanda Lawrence
Awesome 70’s Punk and Power Pop Wedding
Tommy and Amanda had an epic wedding. It was in their family’s backyard, but the place was literally a palace. At least to my taste. They had the ceremony in the garden behind the house, the cocktails out by the guest house near the pool and the reception and dancing in the adjacent field.
Amanda’s not kidding, it was hot. Danville in the summer can hit 100 degrees no problem and the whether was gratuitously nice. If you ever wonder why I don’t look fancier at some of these events, it’s because moving all this equipment around is really labor intensive and I have to bring three sets of clothes just to keep looking respectable throughout the whole process.
All the heat aside, it was really a beautiful day, and as the sun set things cooled down and the whole thing was just about as pleasant as you could ask for.
An Epicly Cool Family
I didn’t totally appreciate this until the event was really underway, but Amanda’s family has a deep history in the Bay Area music scene. Her father was in a punk band in the 80’s and had they had his record framed above the mantle next to the killer vinyl collection. All her aunts and uncles were in the scene too and had organized events with Bill Graham throughout the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.
So it was a rock and roll family.
When you have a rock and roll family, right there it really raises the bar for what you can do at a wedding. Tommy and Amanda are cool, but their folks could definitely hang with all sorts of art music weirdness, so we definitely tried not to be shy there.
A Classic Garage Ceremony
For the ceremony, we did classic rock stuff, but with quite a few subversive ones like Syd Barrett “Baby Lemonade” mixed in with The Kinks, The Beatles and The Stones. I think we did The Rolling Stones “I am Waiting” as people gathered for the ceremony and some stuff more like Donovan “There is a Mountain” and Leonard Cohen “Lover, Lover, Lover” during the cocktail hour.
A Punk and Power Pop Dinner
For the dinner we tried to slowly make it a little more power pop, but blend in more recent ones that had similar influences. So we did a couple of things like Elvis Costello “What’s So Funny About Peace Love and Understanding”, Nick Lowe “Cruel to Be Kind” and Wreckless Eric “Whole Wide World” but also Spoon “Cherry Bomb” and The Strokes “You Only Live Once.”
A Top 40 and Trap Dance Party
For the dancing, I think we started out with some accessible classics like The Talking Heads “This Must Be The Place” and Fleetwood Mac “Everywhere” but once it got really down to it we did some pop hits, a ton of 2000’s hip hop and some more recent trap requests for the friend part dancing. I didn’t know what the Stanky Leg was before this but I surprised them and ripped it, then blended it into Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em.
That was pretty funny.
A Reggae After Hours
We went until about 1am and I gotta say… I always tell people I’m willing to DJ as long as people are willing to dance, but these guys out danced me.
We did a cool down set of reggae as everyone packed up and I got to hang out with Amanda’s family a bit and hear some crazy stories about their show promoting days. Apparently, they were down with bands like Heart and would throw huge secret shows in the forest in Oregon or something.
Very, very cool.
Big Ups & Shout Outs
Special shout out to Tommy and Amanda for having me be a part of this whole thing. It was the first night we bought our gigantic sound system, so when you have huge speakers at your wedding, Tommy and Amanda are in part to thank!
Special shout out to Blue Heron catering and Nick Wolf photo, both of whom I’ve gotten to work quite a lot with since. The food was great, the photos speak for themselves. Hire these guys!
Special shout out to Amanda’s aunt and uncle. It’s really cool to see people rock the mic with ease and they did some great emcee’ing, speechifying, and all around crowd controlling. I learned a lot just watching them do their thing.
Ceremony Songs
Prelude:
Processional:
Recessional:
First Dance:
Sam Cooke “What a Wonderful World”
Photographer: Nick Wolf / DJ: Ceremony DJs / Caterer: Blue Heron / Lights: Dennon & Doyle
