There’s a lot of different corners of the DJ world, whether in a basement club, a festival stage or a beach bar. But one of the biggest jobs any DJ can take on is to perform at a wedding – a lot of responsibility, and the possibility of helping a couple and their families have the best night of their lives! And if you approach it the right way it can become the basis of a very nice business too, as Joe Bunn has discovered, alongside various other interests he has in DJ world…

Hi Joe – can you tell our readers a little bit about who you are, and what you do?

I am a DJ at heart, and own a DJ Company called Bunn DJ Company (super catchy I know) but also the founder of The DJ’s Vault, which is a membership group for DJs to learn more about DJing. I also started Bunn Gear which builds aluminum DJ booths. And am one of the co-founders of Crate Hackers, a site to help DJs get their crates organized.

Is the white booth in your photo one of yours? How did you go about designing your products for Bunn Gear?

Yes. More can be seen on the Facebook Bunn Gear Fans page or Instagram. I bought a DJ booth from Germany that was gorgeous but not mobile friendly, and that’s when I went to work creating my own.

You started mixing pretty young – at age 13. How did you first get into it, and what did your early gigs look like?

I got into it because there weren’t many DJs in the small eastern North Carolina town I grew up in. Most of the stuff I did then were teen clubs at the local country club about once a quarter, and stuff for my parent’s friends.

At what stage in your career did you start focusing on playing primarily private events/weddings, and how did that transition come about?

After I graduated from UNC in ’94, I kind of thought DJing was over and started doing some other entrepreneurial things, but DJing kept calling me back. I finally realized it was what I was supposed to be doing all along.

DJing at a wedding is a real responsibility – you’re soundtracking the most important night of the couple’s life! What steps do you take to make sure you get it right?

I do a lot of prep work beforehand including calls with the couple and/or planner. I also redo the planner that they fill out online and make it more streamlined, and easier to read on the show day.

You’ve built a DJ agency with a formidable reputation, serving multiple cities. How did you find the transition from solely being solely a DJ to being behind placing multiple DJs on any given weekend? What skills did you find you needed to develop as you learned the trade and built your company?

It’s important to surround yourself with a team. I did the majority of everything for too long. You have to have the skills to wrangle a lot of egos, but you also have to be a book-keeper, marketer, salesman etc. Don’t be afraid to sub some of that work out.

How have you mentally handled that fact that your reputation now rests considerably on other DJs and their performances & presentation? Do you coach your team at all, and how much latitude do you give them to put their own spin on the weddings they play at?

I definitely train all of my DJs, even if they already arrive with experience. However, I do want them to shine at their events and show their personalities.

Are there any notable mistakes you have made that you’d like to be able to go back in time and warn yourself about – either as a performer or in business?

Yes, save your money. You never know what’s coming, like this pandemic. Luckily, as I got older, I got much better with handling the money we were making at Bunn DJ Company.

What advice would you give for a young DJ starting out today?

Practice a lot, stay humble, and if you don’t have good business sense then join a company like mine and work hard.

How are things looking in your industry in the forseeable future, after what must have been a really difficult 12 months?

It’s been a pretty horrendous 12 plus months, but things are turning around. We started last weekend doing 6 plus weddings on Saturday and it continues like that for the remainder of 2021. We are also getting tons of new contracts and checks for deposits in for new dates lately!

Can you tell us a bit more about Crate Hackers – one of the big gripes a lot of DJs talk about is the difficulties of managing a large and diverse digital music collection, so I think this will be very interesting to a lot of readers!

Crate Hackers helps DJs organize their library and save time finding music. It was started by Aaron Traylor, a DJ in Nashville TN. He had a great idea but it wasn’t being executed well. That’s where I stepped in along with my marketer, Dom Pirone. Now we have over 1500 paying members!

Awesome, thank you Joe! 

So there you have it! There will be a lot of weddings in the next 6 months after the year we just had – this should give you some ideas about how to do a good job there if you get booked for one!

In the meantime, head to Heavy Hits pool for all the best tracks, and hit up our socials on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. You can find me streaming regularly on Twitch!