Dundee DJ Gav Will is here to save your Sunday morning.
Or at least, that’s the genius slogan I insist he should use when he tells me about his new promotion, Day Moves.
Launched at Nola earlier this month, Day Moves is just like a regular house club night – except it’s during the day, from 3pm to 7pm.
Dundonian Gav, 49, was inspired to launch it at city centre bar Nola after spotting a gap in the market post-Covid.
“Since lockdown, there’s a lot of people preferring to drink or go out during the day,” he observes. “I’m not sure if that’s a Covid thing, an age thing, or maybe both.”
Gav has been DJing in Dundee for more than 25 years and is a regular fixture in city centre spots such as West House, Bird and Bear and Tinsmith, as well as the annual Dundee Dance Event (DDE).
But as well as the post-pandemic drop-off and cost of living crisis, he’s noticed that ailing public transport systems have contributed to folk staying home at night.
“People are really struggling to get home,” he notes. “So having it during the day makes that a lot easier.”
DJing to sober punters ‘a bit strange’
And it would seem he’s right, as the inaugural Day Moves event was, he says, a success. As well as packing out the Nola dancefloor, Gav kept the tunes spinning for nearly two hours longer than planned, due to dancers’ demand.
“In the end I think we sold about 75% of the tickets, which is good for the first event,” smiles Gav.
“And the dancefloor was pretty much full the whole way through, which was great.
“But the testament to the day was that it was originally meant to be 3-7pm and I think we finished at quarter to nine!”
That said, Gav admits it is “a little bit weird” going from sweaty club night to playing to a post-lunchtime, stone-cold sober crowd.
“It’s interesting because there’s a slightly different dynamic playing during the day,” he smiles. “I have to stay pretty sober anyway, to control the room.
“But you have people coming in just having had lunch, and they need an hour or two to loosen up a bit. Whereas at night people are usually coming in all guns blazing at 10pm.
“So that was interesting and a little bit of a learning curve!”
Getting dancers up is like ‘courting ritual’
For Gav, getting daytime dancers on the floor is a “courting ritual” he never gets tired of.
“It’s always been part of the process as a DJ, regardless of where you’re playing,” he explains. “I have to say, there’s been many nights for whatever reason, things just don’t happen. You play all night and never quite get it to work, things just don’t fall into place.
“So you have that courting ritual of getting dancers on, without playing really obvious records.
“With Day Moves, I don’t want to just batter people with house at 3pm. So the first couple of hours is quite low tempo, head-nodding stuff.
“There’s definitely that herd mentality as well,” he chuckles. “Nobody wants to be the first on the dancefloor, but once you’re there, it’s a lot easier to join in the ruckus.
“But then you see the foot tapping and the head-nodding and you think: ‘OK, this is going the right way’.
“Plus, once you’ve had a few drinks, it loosens you up a bit! And so by the end it was very much house tempo, full dancefloor, let’s all go for it!”
Day Moves is different to Club T discos
The initial success of Day Moves is no surprise to those who witnessed the scramble for tickets to Club Tropicana’s Disco Days and Rave Days during spring 2024.
It’s clear Dundee is hungry for a daytime dance.
But although Day Moves is born out of the same spirit as the over-30s events at Club T, Gav wanted to ensure it offered something different to what had already been done.
Instead of catering to a nostalgia crowd, Day Moves is aimed at house music fans who want to remain at the cutting edge – while still getting to their beds at a reasonable hour.
“What I didn’t want, and was really fixed in my own mind about, was that I didn’t want it to be a house tribute day,” explains Gav. “The first Day Moves was probably about 70% new music or stuff people wouldn’t necessarily know, a lot of underground stuff.
“I dropped in my favourite CeCe Peniston, Finally, which I always play. But other than that it was all kind of underworld records.
“The attraction is for people who are, for whatever reason, more prone to coming out during the day than in the evening,” he continues. “There’s no over-30s or over-25s rule.
“People still want to be exposed to new music, so it’s still the same scene – just a bit more accessible.”
Younger generation ‘too hard’ for house?
That said, Gav does acknowledge that the tracks he and fellow Day Moves DJ Mike Robertson favour may not appeal to the younger generation, meaning it is an older crowd they’re playing to.
“That’s one thing I’ve noticed with DDE, the younger generation are into much harder, faster music,” he observes.
“There’s the likes of [Dundee DJ] Hannah Laing who’s doing really well. That stuff’s a lot faster than what I would play, but it’s obviously got an appeal.
“It’s just completely different. It’s not any better or worse, it’s just the younger people’s thing. So I’ll be interested to see if the more house tempo type nights are appealing to them when the students return after summer.”
HMV job helped Gav on the decks
It’s obvious from the way Gav speaks about DJing – from his careful curation of an atmosphere using his own lights, smoke machine to his combination of digital and vinyl records – that he’s as passionate about electronic music now as he was when he first heard New Order in the ’80s.
“I’ve always preferred electronic music,” he says. “Guitar music has never really done anything for me.
“I started DJing about 95/96. Then in ’99 I worked in HMV as a record buyer, and that was really good because I met loads of people,” he recalls.
“I met the folk who did [Dundee DJ collective] Rhumba Club and all that. Because that HMV used to be the place for dropping off flyers.
“It’s probably also where I met Mike, because he used to buy loads of records off me in HMV.”
And though he doesn’t get out on the floor much nowadays, his DJing keeps him pretty busy on the scene.
“There’s always that adage about DJs becoming DJs because they can’t dance,” he grins. “I’m not sure that’s true!
“Mind you, my actual nights out are few and far between.”
In terms of what daytime dancers can expect from Day Moves going forward, the future is fluid.
“We’re feeling our way,” says Gav. “I hope I can keep it at Nola, they’ve been really great and accommodating. It may well evolve over time.
“Right now, it’s something different, something accessible. And you can be tucked up in bed for 10pm to save you the hangover!”
Day Moves is back at Nola, Dundee, on July 20 2024. Tickets can be purchased through Eventbrite.
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