For his current 23-date "One on One" tour, San Francisco-based DJ Worthy has enlisted artists and friends such as Ardalan, Billy Kenny, Christian Martin, Gina Turner, Golf Clap, J. Phlip, Justin Martin and Kevin Knapp, to name a few, to accompany him.
The Cleveland date, which takes place on 9 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 21, at Touch Supper Club, will pair Worthy with Sepehr. Tickets to the show are $10.
“I just brainstormed with my booking agent and my wife, and we sat at the table to try to come up with an original idea for the tour instead of just me going out by myself,” Worthy says via phone. “I wanted to bring something different. It’s been really hard to coordinate. I just asked my artist friends if they were interested. Sometimes, things didn’t pan out. It was hard to get everyone lined up to play the dates. My booking agent is amazing and I owe lots of the coordination to him.”
As a thank-you to his fans and as a celebration of the tenth anniversary of his label, Worthy plans to release a Ten Year Anabatic Compilation. Curated by Worthy, the mix includes a new remix of his own critically acclaimed track, “On The Floor” featuring Kevin Knapp. With its bits of percolating electronic percussion and funky bass beats, the song draws equally from dance music and hip-hop.
“It’s ten years of Anabatic, and it has 20 tracks on it,” he says of the release. “It has some of the biggest hits that we’ve had over the years as well as tracks that I just like as well as artists I’ve been lucky to work with who have gone on to become bigger stars. I wanted to show the range of artists that we’ve put out. When I started the label, I just wanted to make a place for myself to put out some music. It’s when digital music was starting to take form. I wanted to put out my own music whenever I wanted and didn’t have to worry about fitting into what some random label wanted.”
Worthy also plans to release a series of singles on labels such as Exploited, Strangelove, Defected and Sweat It Out throughout 2017.
“I just had a release on Exploited and after that I’m working on a mix for Defected," he says. "I have one side done and I need to make the next side and I have a collaboration with Gary Gonza for Sweat it Out. I go back and forth between wanting to make some house-ier stuff and after I make a house-ier song I want to make something edgier. I do something fun and then want to pull it back and then want to make something more aggro. For the show at Touch, I’ll play some of my bass-y records and then bring it down and bring some more melodic chord-driven stuff. I love all those aspects, and I like to take fans on a journey.”
