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| DJ Joe Gauthreax heads to Atlanta July 22 for the annual Joining Hearts fundraiser, where he plans to play an uplifting outdoor set. |
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HOME > SOVO SCENE > MUSIC
By: BUCK C. COOKE
COMMENTS |
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Even after being named Out Magazine’s Hottest DJ of 2005, New Orleans-born DJ Joe Gauthreaux isn’t one to talk about his pervasive good looks or how they may have helped him become one of the country’s most popular vinyl stars.
“I don’t stand in the mirror and say that I’m hot,” says Gauthreaux from his current home in Brooklyn. “I have no idea if [my looks] have helped. I live by the old saying looks give you five minutes and rest is up to you. I wouldn’t get asked back to cities including Atlanta if I made it just on looks.”
Gauthreaux has become a staple in local gay nightlife, returning this time for a spin on the Piedmont Pool decks for Joining Hearts 19, the classic Atlanta fundraiser benefiting Jerusalem House and AID Atlanta.
“I think I’m doing what I’m meant to be doing,” he says.
Modest almost to a fault, Gauthreaux makes his 10-year DJ career seems rather effortless as he looks back on his days as a struggling DJ fresh to the New Orleans club scene. Surrounded by experienced turntable prima donnas unwilling to offer a helping hand, Gauthreaux, then only 20 years old, slowly built enough buzz to take up residency at Oz, one of the Big Easy’s most famous gay hotspots.
Barely sure that DJing was his calling and toying with the idea of becoming a writer or film director, Gauthreaux says he put on a confident face, eventually getting attention from out-of-towners who would later import him for gigs at clubs around the nation.
“I always wanted to do something creative,” he says. “I’m a Leo and I enjoy that trait of wanting to be in the spotlight, but I wanted to be in more of the behind the scenes spotlight. Being a DJ, I’m not on stage, but people might know my name.”
NOTED FOR HIS diverse sets and far-reaching musical tastes, Gauthreaux, now 29, enjoys New York City life as a thriving national DJ, spending his weeks on the streets of the City that Never Sleeps and three weekends a month on the road, playing everywhere from Atlantis Cruise Ships, to this year’s Miami Winter Party and Mardi Gras in his Katrina-shaken hometown.
“The French Quarter were I lived my adult life was not affected that badly,” he says of Katrina’s aftermath. “It’s up and running and looks great, but there are some places that look great and literally go 300 feet in another direction and see catastrophe.”
Despite his love for the South, don’t count on Gauthreaux to leave his New York digs anytime soon, as he says he’s fallen madly in love with his life in the big city, where he hopes to one day have a dog-loving partner and even a couple of kids.
“I’m totally looking forward to finding that one person,” he says. “I don’t want to play around. I want to grow old with someone, and rock with him on the front porch. I’ll cook dinner for him and be there during the week and come Friday or Saturday we can run off to my job and he can be my booth bitch.”
AS CHARMING AS he is talented, Gauthreaux’s had little trouble making friends in Atlanta, where he says he has more personal friends than any of his other stops and where the dance floor crowds are a little more forgiving as well.
“I feel such a warm atmosphere when I play down there,” he says. “I don’t know if they just give that to me or if its everyone, but I know that I would be very much disappointed if I never got to play Atlanta again.”
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