BOW VALLEY – Andre Hall is a native of Lameroo, South Australia, and has been in the Bow Valley for three years.
By his own admission the journey here didn’t include becoming a DJ.
“I did the typical Australian thing,” Hall said in that foreign yet familiar accent common in Canadian mountain towns. “I was going to do a six-month ski trip and then go home, but sort of fell in love with the Bow Valley and everything it has to offer.”
Realizing the immediate future involved staying in Alberta, Hall got a job as an expo/food runner at Tavern 1883 in Canmore. He met Graeme Sanderson there, and they realized they had a similar taste in music.
Sanderson had a set of DJ decks and both had dabbled in the art of mixing music, so when a DJ booked for the Tavern’s regular Saturday gig abruptly left town, they suddenly had an audience. Hall and Sanderson practiced like crazy for two weeks, unsure of what to expect from the evening.
“We came up with a collection of songs that we thought were going to suit our sort of vibe,” Hall said, while also describing the nervous anticipation of performing in front of people for the first time. Once the lights went down and the music started, however, those nerves fell away.
“Yeah, it all went off without a hitch, and we had a great time doing it.”
Encouraged by the success, the pair formed Just Send It DJs and secured a place in the Saturday rotation.
Close to a year on from that first night, they have both gone solo. Hall now performs under the stage name Tenax, and Sanderson is known as Whiteboy Slim, but a Just Send It DJs reunion set is scheduled for Nov. 23, at Tavern 1883.
In contrast, Will Jentzel has been at the decks for 20 years. Known locally as DJ Strength, the Windsor, Ont. native used his passion for music as a form of therapy during a dark time in his life.
An incident outside a bar resulted in severe head trauma that required multiple surgeries. Recovery took the better part of a year. Mixing music gave him something to do as he healed.
“I played music all my life,” Jentzel said, referencing his early days playing the violin. “Music’s engraved in me, and that was my way of getting in there. I got turntables and I couldn’t leave the house for months at a time. It engulfed me. It’s all I thought about. It was a good way of getting my mind right.”
After moving to the Bow Valley in 2008, Jentzel became a regular on the Banff club scene. Working as the resident DJ at the Hoodoo for five years, as well as doing gigs at the Aurora, and later, at the Dancing Sasquatch.
These days he plays more bars than clubs and has his own thriving wedding DJ business.
“Now that I’m doing weddings, doing DJing at the bowling alley or clubs, it’s all different situations and different kind of vibe, so I don’t have to play the same music all the time," he said.
“I’ve been doing this so long and I’m what you call a mash-up DJ, so I never stick with one kind of style of music. I’m kind of jumping from, you know, Motown to hip hop, throwing things in that people wouldn’t expect. That’s what I love doing.”
The Bow Valley is blessed to have talented musicians who regularly grace the stages in various clubs and venues. There are also a handful skilled technicians reworking the rhythms and the beats, giving fresh takes on familiar sounds.
And in the end, it’s all about the music.
Hall and Sanderson can be contacted via their Facebook page, Just Send It DJs. You can follow Hall on Instagram at beatsbydre86. Jentzel can be found on Facebook at Solid Beat Productions.
