D-wayne: Behind The Songs [Interview]

From learning how to make music in his hometown in The Netherlands, to performances around the world at Tomorrowland, EDC New York, club shows in Spain, Mexico, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, and many more, DJ/Producer D-wayne is in the midst of his beaming global music takeover. 

D-wayne started his DJ career at school parties which eventually led to local club performances. As much as he loved the sound of Tiësto, Skrillex, Laidback Luke or Axwell he wanted to develop something more. He wanted to tell his story in music to the world so he started to produce his own music. Fastforwarding a bit into his journey, his stellar DJing ability landed him a contract in Las Vegas, which made him one of the youngest DJs ever to hold a residency in Vegas, at Drais’ Nightclub.

D-wayne’s talent has infiltrated throughout the dance music scene, and led him to not only flourish in producing original masterpieces, but to collaborate with some of the industry’s leading artists. Today, the Dutch star has scored an enormous amount of releases on an array of labels including Steve Aoki’s Dim Mak label, Nervous Records, and Wall Recordings, just to name a few. On the remix front, he has dished out revamped versions of songs by internationally acclaimed artists such as Tiësto, Afrojack, Enrique Iglesias, Jennifer Lopez, Sheppard, and R3hab.

2018 has seen captivating new releases by D-wayne, and as the year comes to a close, his rapidly growing fanbase is thrilled to see what 2019 has in store for all things new music and fresh performances. “Loving You Always,” “FUNKYFEELIN,” and “Wonderful” are a few highlights of 2018 for singles by D-wayne.

In addition to producing music, D-wayne strives to go above and beyond for the electronic music scene. In our interview below, he discusses his new project: a documentary series titled “D-wayne: Behind The Songs.” Check out everything he had to say about new visions, the series, inspiration behind his music, and much more below!

The Nocturnal Times: Your new series “D-wayne: Behind The Songs” is giving fans a real in-depth look at your creative process, as well as a general glimpse into your style and life. Why did you decide to go this route with a documentary?

D-wayne: Most of the songs that are released nowadays have a very superficial meaning or no meaning at all, while I always want to incorporate a message into the songs that I put out. With “Loving You Always,” that’s also the case – yet I felt I wanted to show more about the songs I put out by introducing a documentaries series. Obviously people may have an idea what the song is about after seeing the title and listening to the lyrics, yet we explain it more careful in the documentary, combined with what inspired us while writing the song, how I met with the featuring artist etc.

The Nocturnal Times: Did you look to any past or current documentaries about DJs & Producers to gain inspiration for your series?

D-wayne: Not really, honestly I just thought it would be fun and good to make a documentary around the new singles which is why I decided to do it – also I’ve experienced the studio sessions, inspirations for songs and all that are pretty vague to fans of electronic music, so I wanted to give them an insight into my life.

The Nocturnal Times: Do you think this documentary series will lead to future video projects?

D-wayne: Definitely, we’ll see where this will take us! Video is becoming way more important than it was a couple years ago, so this most certainly not a single occurrence 🙂

The Nocturnal Times: Tell us about the inspiration behind your latest single “Loving You Always?”

D-wayne: Jack and I had been writing together for a while up until I was on the way to a session with him in London, when a song was playing in the car to the studio, featuring a great trumpet melody. We already had this idea of a ballad kinda, sampled feeling, chorus, and I suggested we should use a trumpet for the drop – little did I know, Jack used to play the trumpet for years back in the day and actually had one in his studio. Lyrically the song is about an event in my life, in which I fell in love but wasn’t sure whether or not to pursue the relationship as so many things had just changed – I asked Jack for advice and we decided to write a song about it – about embracing love, not running away from it.

The Nocturnal Times: How did you get together with Jack McManus for the track?

D-wayne: We met through a writerscamp that our publishers organised, around 5 years ago in 2013. That writerscamp we wrote a song together, called If You Come Back, which is unreleased due to all kinds of political reasons (sadly enough), yet the hype around that song was very real back then and up until today people still ask about it actually. When all that happened we knew we had a good connection musically, and we became great friends later on as well.

The Nocturnal Times: Talk to us about your visions for life releasing on Big & Dirty?

D-wayne: Loving You Always is the first of a new direction I’m going into – I’ve always been into pop music and writing songs, yet never really have been able to properly put these projects out, and working with them has enabled me to do so. There’s much more lined up for the future, so please wait patiently but I’m sure you all won’t be let down! Besides that I’ll also be releasing more club music in the near future, there’s a bunch of stuff lined up for the end of this year and early 2019 already. 

Photos Courtesy of D-Wayne Facebook