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Q&A with Claude VonStroke: What Went Down at Dirtybird Campout East Coast

February 7, 2018 By Tori Matthews

Photo by: Tori Matthews

As many of you know by now, there was a bit of a rough start to the inaugural Dirtybird Campout East Coast festival this past weekend. With little to no cellular service, it was tough to get answers. On Friday, fans were left hoping that the music would suddenly ring throughout the campgrounds from the stages again, and all of us Dirtybirds could properly flock together. Throughout the night, we were still left to our own devices. Luckily, we found a few campsites that started up their own party, and even stumbled on a silent disco at the Airplane Renegade stage hidden among the RV’s. Although we were able to get down that night, we still had many questions and only few answers from campers and Dirtybird Campout Facebook posts that didn’t exactly provide all of the information we were looking for.

Luckily, we had the chance to join in on a Q&A with Claude himself, his Dirtybird team, and some of the record label’s artists as well. Check out what he had to see below about East Coast.

Q: Thank you all for coming guys, we know yesterday was not the easiest of days for everyone, least of all us. We appreciate your patience and bearing it with us. We’re going to talk about some of that stuff and also give you a background on campout.

So, this is the big man, Claude VonStroke.

CVS: 20 inch calves.

Q: Yes, those 20 inch calves. Haha. So, how are you feeling today?

CVS: Well, you know, feeling pretty good. Feeling great.

Q: So let’s address the elephant in the room. What can you tell us about last night and yesterday?

CVS: Okay, last night was darkness. We were like, I’m not even joking, we were 99.999% done. Like, it was over. And everyone in the crowd was like, ‘Don’t worry about it dude. It’s gonna come back on,’ and I was like, ‘I don’t know, I don’t think it’s going to come back on, I don’t know.’ And they were like, ‘No… it is going to come back on.’ And then I started being like, ‘Maybe it is going to come back on?’

Then a series of events happened that I cannot even believe. We got in touch with Kent Boles, Marco Rubio, and then JOOX Music hooked it up. We were done and JOOX came, got on the phone, and started making these phone calls. Caythan is originally from Florida and we invested in the company called JOOX, it’s amazing. That shit saved our whole festival, I’m telling you. We were basically a complete no fucking way because they had double dropped us. They said, ‘We pulled your permit, and then we made an injunction so even if you get the permit back we pulled it again.’ They double dropped the permit drop. Then we triple dropped them, like Andy C does a triple drop on the drum n bass, you know what I’m saying?

We Andy C triple dropped them. But really, we just got a lot of help from people who cared about us and honestly, even if we didn’t get the sound back on, the crowd and the people were so amazing and so supportive. I had a couple moments last night.

Q: Walking around last night, everyone seemed to be in such good spirits, in spite of the shitty situation. What do you think that says about the Dirtybird Family and the fans and what we’ve created?

CVS: The color leaders came to me yesterday and they said, ‘Listen, we’ll work 24 hours. We will do whatever and make extra games. We’re gonna make it happen.’ We had an acoustic band do Lap Dance for your life, which was really great. Who brings a double bass? A standup bass to Dirtybird Campout? We had a guy with a banjo, it was really good. Anyway, everyone kept it together. Rusty on the bingo? I sang the music so he could have tunes.

Q: We saw you out having a good time on the soccer field as well.

CVS: The soccer field killed me. Honestly, man I am not cut out for soccer. I fell down at least three times. One time, one of my legs went to the right, one of my legs went to the left, and my spine went up and down. I was like, ‘This is bad’. I thought I blocked it on these 20 inch calves but they scored on me off the rebound.

Q: So how is losing a day going to impact programming and what have the artists reactions been like?

CVS: The artists are amazing. They’re like, ‘Just put us in coach.’ Everything else is just going to come together. It’s just going to be awesome. As soon as the sound came on, everyone’s like, ‘Okay, we can do it. We can make this party, let’s do it!’

There were people working in the office, reprogramming everything from scratch. Thank you. It was actually kind of hard. Gotta give it up.

Q: So what are some set time highlights we should look out for?

CVS: There is gonna be some weird stuff. Eprom is opening the Bass Lodge tomorrow. DJ Tree, which is my drum n bass alias from 1990, and he will be coming back with Justin Martin. We’re going to have people play some amazing stuff. I can’t believe everyone still came. I thought DJ Tennis was going to be out of here and he’s like, ‘I’m staying even if the sound doesn’t come on.’ Tennis is a G. He understands the pain, he’s from Italy, they have even more politics than us.

Q: So Campout, at least the three on the West Coast, had such a singular vibe to it. What is it that makes this event so special?

CVS: I actually think that this is gonna be the most memorable one. This is going to be: we were dead and we resuscitated ourselves back to life. People are going to remember this one. I need to take a quick focus group. Should we come back here next year?

Us: Hell yeah! It’s a good spot!

CVS: I don’t know, I think it’s going to be painful. I didn’t hear a resounding cheer.

Us: YES!

CVS: It’s going to be a tough decision, let me tell you. But we will make that decision. Probably in the next two days.

Q: So we’re obviously on the East Coast for the first time. How did you come up with the idea of Campout for those that have never been?

CVS: So the whole idea for this festival, if you haven’t ever been to it before, it’s based off the summer camp I went to as a kid. It was in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, they were pretty amazing. This guy Joe ran the camp, he was a great guy, and we did all of the same activities that we got going on here. I was like, we just need to bring that into the festival and Do LaB went exponential on it. We got the colors and everything. Everybody is making friends and it just worked. Somehow it all just worked out to be amazing.

Q: So Do LaB co-produced the festival with Dirtybird, let’s give them a huge round of applause.

CVS: Yes. And we were with Zombie Disco Squad, I was with him last night. He goes, ‘You know if this festival was in England, you would have already been stabbed and kicked in the face like 40 times. And everyone would have left.’

Q: So tell us about how you came to meet Do LaB and how that relationship evolved?

CVS: The story of the first one is just so wild. I couldn’t get a partner to produce the first one, so I just posted online that we were having it. I wrote, ‘Dirtybird Campout, all your favorite DJ’s in the world.’ I couldn’t get Do LaB to produce it but because I posted that, they had lost their venue on this other project they were going to start, they had called me. They had said, ‘We saw that post. Even though we said we couldn’t do it, we’re not doing our other thing now. So who is doing it?’ and I went, ‘You guys are doing it!’ They’re the best.

Q: What should people be really looking out for in the next few days?

CVS: I really think you need to participate in the activities. It’s so fun. The activities are almost better than the music at some points. I laughed so hard sometimes at these things. Rusty doing the bingo is just killing me every time.

I’m going to do a quick little side note, the bingo guys were on their plane ride here. Rusty goes up to the flight attendant and goes, ‘I’m an international, award-winning bingo caller and I need to take over this area and run some bingo. I have these unicorn slippers and we’re going to give them away. And they’re like, ‘Cool.’ They did bingo on the flight!

Q: So this is four editions in, what have been some of your most magical campout memories?

CVS: Well the first year was ridiculous. Christian Martin on the first year was just… he had me lose my shit. It was pretty good. We had a lot of good experiences, but the Grandma’s from last year were amazing. We even called them up to make a music video. The fans are just off the chains.

Q: What do you want all the attendees to leave with?

CVS: Hopefully all of you will have positive sexual encounters and exciting dance floor moments. That’s what I’m hoping for. Haha. That’s a good goal, right? Last night when they told me I was going to lap dance that cop, I was like, ‘We need to keep this 67% gay, but not 100%.’ and then he goes, ‘You need to make it 69%.’ No flying scrotum this year, though.

At this point a couple of us got to ask more specific questions.

Q: Can you talk more about how you worked to get the permit back?

CVS: I am not the most knowledgeable person, but it was crazy. Let me tell you that. We were no, no, no, no, no fucking way, no. No way, we are going to put you in jail. A bunch of them said, ‘I guess you like going to jail because you like keeping open and you’re going to jail.’ And then we were like picking who is going to go to jail, like who has the photographer because we are going to jail. Haha.

Okay so there is this guy, Leslie, who is Pitbull’s lawyer, who Caythan called. Aundy and Caythan basically saved the festival. This is my wife, and she did all the work, as usual.

Aundy: We had a lot of people call. It was so funny in the meeting yesterday in the courthouse. I asked is there anyone that can influence you and change your mind? And they said no. So we just took it to all these people, we got political. We basically got all these political connections, all the way up to senators, it went really big. We had all the local people that we knew and Caythan’s family knows. Everyone that was on the JOOX board. They were all calling the people that they all knew and it was just 100’s of calls. That’s what really did it in the end. So, it was amazing.

CVS: If you ever want to get married, make sure you pick the right person. Sage advice. Aundy is the best. One more question.

Q: So as of right now, do you know what you will do for next year for East Coast?

CVS: We don’t have that information, we won’t be able to answer that today. But we will be able to answer that question eventually, just not this weekend.

We thank Claude for clearing the air and giving us some insight behind Campout itself. We also got a chance to hangout with some of the artists and catch up with Christian Martin, who answered a quick question for us.

RR: We didn’t get a chance to do a sunrise set with you this year. How were the vibes of the crowd and the set overall with the changes that have been made?

CM: With the sunrise set, I have a slot every year. With that set, it’s like you’ve all made it, we all made it here. But because last night was squashed, opening just had a huge impact of energy and all the campers coming together to finally get down was great. The vibe wasn’t too much different, but sunrise definitely has a different effect with the sun coming up versus starting off the day.

Dirtybird Campout East Coast definitely had some up’s and down’s, but we wouldn’t take that weekend back for a second. We, again, thank all the artists, crew, and Aundy and Barclay Crenshaw for making it happen.