Tony Soul (real name Tony Spann) burst onto the scene five months ago armed with a video camera, a distinct sound, and the hopes of making Taiwan his base for a few years. Tomorrow, Soul’s Taiwan odyssey comes, for the time being, to a close at inHouse.
“My feelings on Taiwan are good and bad,” Soul said. “Good in that the people have been very friendly. Bad in that things didn’t work out exactly the way I planned.”
Music was in Soul’s genes as his father, Hank Spann, was known as “The Soul Server,” a famous deejay on soul and funk stations in the 1960s and 1970s. His mother was the road manager for legends Barry White and Chaka Kahn.
PHOTO COURTESY OF HOWARD TAYLOR
He got into deejaying at age 9. “I was damn near born on a turntable,” he said.
Soul started playing hip-hop under the moniker Sandman in New York and New Orleans, but house music was never far away. “Half my family is from Chicago,” Soul said. “So I couldn’t not listen to house.”
For most of Soul’s life, he’s been on the move. After meeting his wife in Los Angeles and living in San Francisco for seven years, he set his sights on Asia. “I looked at Hong Kong, I looked at Tokyo, but I thought Taiwan would be the perfect place for my family since my son speaks Mandarin,” Soul said.
Soul moved to Taiwan first to get settled in, and his family followed a few months later. Problems quickly arose with shifty landlords, visa regulations and school registration, so his wife and kids decided that Taipei was not for them and hightailed it back to San Francisco, while Soul stayed.
“I haven’t had time to be mad,” Soul said. “I’ve been trying to get things organized.”
Soul has got an ambitious plan lined up. He returns to San Francisco next week and will tour US cities over the next few months. In March, he will play every night at the Winter Music Conference in Miami before coming back to Taiwan for one month. He then plans to rent a secluded place in Tainan and focus on producing tracks that sound like his deejay sets. Eventually, he plans to relocate to Hong Kong.
“My sound is deep soul tech,” Soul said of his sound. “I love soul vocals but I don’t overdo it.”
When Soul is deejaying, he’s not just playing one song after another on his computer. Instead, he uses Traktor Pro software and a Vestax VCI-100 MIDI controller. This enables him to control four decks at once, looping a bass line of one track with the drums of another and then adding vocals and effects on top of those.
“Sometimes I will keep the same break going for 10 minutes and just switch snippets of tracks in and out,” Soul said.
Soul has yet to produce any tracks because he’s been focused on playing. “I rock crowds. That’s all I do,” said Soul. “I need to touch people. I need to be dancing with them.”
He broadcasts his shows live on the Internet at Radio4X4 (www.radio4by4.com), usually attracting several hundred viewers. But similar numbers have failed to materialize here.
“People don’t dance to deep house music here. They think it’s just chill music,” Soul said. “These are the same songs that in New York and Philly are making people sweat.”
From an early age, Soul was taught to look on the bright side. “I look for whatever cats aren’t doing and fill in the holes. I believe that this is my time right now,” said Soul. “My family had to roll. But I’m going to take this negative and turn it into a positive.”
Tony Soul (with BB) tomorrow from 10pm to 3am at inHouse, 90 Songren Rd, Taipei City (台北市松仁路90號). Call (02) 2345-5549 for table reservations. Admission is free. On the Net: djtonysoul.com or yourhousemusic.podomatic.com.
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