In honor of Summer Meltdown, Dan’s Tunes will drop a new Q&A with artists playing the festival for the next three Thursdays. Get excited, and then head to Darrington for the festival, from August 1st – 4th. Check out the first installment, featuring Whitney Mongé, here. This week, we’re excited to bring you Pheso, AKA Joe Dillon, an EDM and hip hop producer out of Seattle.

Q: You’re part of LightWav Music. Tell me about that.

A: I joined them a couple months after their founding. Sir Nic — who founded LightWav with Bogi and SlickBackMac — they explained to me their goals about what they wanted to do in the Seattle music community. At that point, it’s a thriving scene, and there are a lot of unique individual artists, but there wasn’t necessarily a cohesive place for hip hop and r&b to exist. We wanted to have an all-in-one, one-stop-shop for artists to come through and be able to record and produce, to have engineering done, to have guidance on how to promote, market, help with booking shows, things like that. It was us combining all our different strengths into this all-in-one production house and recording studio.

Now we are renting a space in Crybaby Studios called the Rec Room, and we built it out — built our own vocal booth for it — so it’s fully ready for recording, and we do mixing and mastering there. We just want to create and cultivate a collaborative space for people to come in and record. Anytime we have any musicians in there — even any non-musicians — the point is just to create and collaborate and build up this steam that we have. It’s really about collaboration in this day and age, especially with local people. They allow you to approach sound and problems differently. I’ve definitely grown as an artist and a person through all the people I’ve met and worked with so far.

Q: What’s it like being part of that collective?

A: It’s helped me grow my confidence as an artist, because there’s a lot of second guessing you can do — a lot of second guessing I do do — when it’s just working by yourself. So, one, getting immediate feedback from others is really big, and, two, just getting used to working with other people in the room, while they’re listening. With making music, you make a lot of mistakes until you get to the final product. Being more open and vulnerable and comfortable with making those mistakes with other people around and not being so self conscious, just working more in the flow, is probably the biggest thing I’ve learned. Working with other artists, they just bring different energy levels, and they have unique ways of approaching music and art and life. I’ve noticed just talking with other artists and learning from them, there’s a philosophy of life that a lot of people live by that comes with constant self-improvement. These are people that are holding down day jobs while pursuing a music career, as well, and that takes discipline and creativity. That’s been really inspiring, just seeing how other artists make it work. That inspires me to work harder in what I’m doing.

Q: Your music has a very specific, chill-EDM vibe. How did you land on that specific sound?

A: I got into producing when I was in college. I was first introduced to electronic music when it was first getting big, around 2010 or 2011. What really stuck out to me was, I was hearing sounds that I had never heard before and had no context for. That initially is what inspired me to download Ableton and start producing. I was hearing stuff I hadn’t heard before, and I wanted to figure out how to do that. I grew up listening to hip hop, and so that sampling and drums with heavy kicks, heavy snares, very bassy, that’s kind of what I stick with percussion-wise, so I think just the blending of those two is what helps to define my sound. I didn’t really start out with a specific direction I wanted to go. I made the type of music that I would want to listen to. The amalgamation of all my different influences is what’s led to where I’m at now. And it’s always a reflection of where I’m at in my life. So, that, as well. The type of vibe that I give out with the music I make matches the type of person I am.

Q: Where did the name “Pheso” come from?

A: I was trying to find a cool DJ name and ended up putting my name backwards and rearranging some of the letters and dropping the “J.” And it sounded kinda cool, kinda nice, so I stuck with that. I’d say more people I know in the Seattle scene call me Pheso more than they do Joe, so I guess it’s like a new first name now.

Q: You just won Beatmatch. What was that like?

A: It was cool. I entered in 2018, and I actually didn’t know about it at first. I kind of knew about the concept of beat battles, but I hadn’t participated or seen one before. I just thought it was a cool challenge, because you have one minute to essentially win over a crowd. I thought that concept of, like, it’s a rap battle but with beats, was really cool. So I took it on as just a fun little challenge. They asked if I wanted to come back and do it again in 2019 to try to win, and I did. What appealed to me most about it was that very defined goal of, okay, I’ve got one minute to have a crowd going off, what can I do? You pack a lot of stuff into one minute, and it was actually refreshing to write in that style, because, say, a three minute piece of music is a pretty daunting task. Being able to flesh out an idea that is that long is difficult sometimes, so having that one minute time limit really helped to help me solidify my ideas, get them out quickly, and pack a lot of stuff into one minute.

I know you shouldn’t be too reliant on the opinions of others, but it’s always good to get that positive feedback on stuff that I make and I like. To see other people digging it and voting for me is always good positive reinforcement and helps inspire me to know that, okay, I can keep doing what I wanna do and making the music I wanna make, and I’ll have an audience for it.

Q: What are you looking forward to most about playing Summer Meltdown?

A: The whole vibe of the festival. I’ve never played in a late night tent before. I remember — going back to Sasquatch! —being in the electronic tent, it was always super fun. A festival like Summer Meltdown, where there are no cars, it’s all campling, it just seems like a very inclusive, open-minded type of event. And I’m most excited to just be able to play at the time I’m playing — Friday at 11 p.m. I’ve gone to festivals in the past where I’ve been able to be in the audience for that time period late at night, just dancing to music, and to be able to be on the other end of that and be able to curate an experience for others is something I’m really excited for and something I haven’t done before in that setting.