Joel Fletcher live at Crocks in Thunder Bay, 17 April 2015

Doors opened at ten, which for a Friday club night is the hour the floor starts to matter. On 17 April 2015 Crocks put Joel Fletcher on the bill under the label Big Ticket Friday, with resident DJs alongside him. Tickets were $15, a plain price for a night meant to fill a dance floor rather than a concert hall.

Loffredo & Associates presented it with H.I.T Management. Tickets sold at Rainbow on Bay, Joya Espresso, Waking Giant Coffee Co., Extreme Pita and Crocks itself, with a further route online through the promoter’s own store.

Crocks was at 16 Cumberland Street South, in the downtown of what used to be the separate city of Port Arthur, close to the waterfront.

Who he was in 2015

Joel Fletcher was born and raised in Melbourne and began DJing at fourteen. His name was tied to Melbourne bounce, the loud, bass-led offshoot of electro house that came out of the city’s clubs around 2010. In 2013 he and Will Sparks released “Bring It Back,” which reached number 33 in Australia and later went platinum there.

Ministry of Sound was among the labels on his releases. He mixed the second disc of its Clubbers Guide to 2014 with a fellow Australian DJ, Ember, a compilation that also carried “Bring It Back.” A club DJ with a mix on a mainstream compilation is the kind of act a room like Crocks could take on for a Friday.

The remix that made him

The larger record was a remix. Savage’s “Swing” first appeared in January 2005 as the lead single from his debut album Moonshine, and it topped the New Zealand chart for five weeks.

In 2008 a version with Soulja Boy reached number 45 on the American Hot 100. Fletcher’s 2013 reworking was a different story. It climbed to number two in Australia and was eventually certified four times platinum.

That is the biggest single of his career, and much of the Melbourne bounce sound reached a national audience through it. In 2014 he followed it with “Loco,” featuring Seany B, which reached number 13 and went gold. He also supported Avicii on his Australian dates.

A remix like that does something for a booking that a chart position does not. A promoter in a city of about 108,000 people could put one song’s title on a flyer and expect recognition from a crowd that had never heard of the man who made it.

A tour behind him

In the autumn of 2014 he toured North America on the Bounce Bus Tour with Will Sparks and Timmy Trumpet, a run of several months across the continent. By April 2015 the Thunder Bay booking was therefore not his first look at a North American club.

That same year, his “Swing” remix won Dance Work of the Year at the 2015 APRA Music Awards, credited to him together with the song’s original artists. A remix of a song a decade old is an unusual thing to hang a booking on. The trophy suggests it was a sound choice.

How the night was priced

Ticket prices at the room in 2015 ran from $5 to $95 across thirteen priced shows. At $15 this one sat near the low end of the concert nights. It cost less than the DJ Qbert show four weeks later, where advance tickets were $20, and half of the $30 advance asked for Tech N9ne that October.

A late doors time and a modest ticket are the usual shape of a resident-DJ night with a guest. The residents held the floor before and after the visiting name.

On 1 July the same room charged $5 for its Canada Day party, a night with resident DJs and no guest. The $10 gap between the two is roughly what a visiting name added. Who took which slot, and for how long, is not part of the record.

A month later, DJ Qbert played the same stage in a very different style of DJ night. The other electronic and party dates from the year are gathered on the shows page.