Alumnus DJ Steve Porter ’97 Remembers His Roots
Photo courtesy of DJ Steve Porter
DJ Steve Porter mixing during the Bacardi Live Tour with Major Lazer.
As a student at Williston, Steve Porter ’97 was not your typical, preppy child. You would have seen him walking around campus listening to early rave music. He and just a few other students were part of the DJ Club with Mr. Moffett, a chef at the time. This is where the famous DJ and Williston alum got his start.
Porter noted in an interview that Mr. Moffett took Porter under his wing and brought him to a few of his gigs. He took Porter to a Franklin Tech semi-formal dance that Mr. Moffett was DJing.
At that dance, Mr. Moffett had to take a bathroom break in the middle of the show and asked Porter to mix the next two tracks while he was away. Porter says, “It was literally the first time that I had ever mixed two tracks in front of people.”
Porter credits Mr. Moffett for being his guide into the DJ business and helping him get to where he is today.
Now when Porter plays at dance clubs around the country, and the crowds trust him to play what they want to hear. He plays what flows that night and what he can tell that people are in the mood for.
When Porter plays at music festivals like Ultra and Coachella, there is not as much of a connection between him and the crowd. He is just playing what he says are his “20 most banging tracks that [he] has…and everybody is just gonna throw glow sticks.”
Porter said he most enjoys playing at venues with a medium-sized crowd due to the connection with the crowd. He likes to play shows like Williston because the tracks are harder to mix together and there is more of a challenge.
About the Williston community, Porter says, “There is a great mix of the people [students] living on campus and off, the professors, and the mix of old and new professors.” He thinks that everybody is very kind and helpful to each individual student. He really enjoys how the school is always willing to welcome new faculty and students onto our campus each year.
Porter also enjoyed the mix of day students and boarders. When he was a student, Porter really liked to hang out with his friends, go on school trips, and he liked that the teachers lived on campus and were always there for the students. Porter has come a long way since his Williston days, but he is thankful for the experience because he would not be who he is today without the school.
