DJ and Music Producer Carl Craig Talks Life on the Road

photo courtesy of Carl Craig

DJ and producer Carl Craig has spent most of his adult life making a weekly transatlantic commute to play music for thousands of fans around the world.

Unlike most business travelers, Craig’s peak work hours are after midnight — a distinction Craig is keen to explore. Craig’s site specific museum exhibition Party/After-Party is on view at DIA Beacon through summer 2021, inspired by an epic dawn DJ set at the Panorama Bar in Berlin.

Born and raised in Detroit, Craig is known for his work as a key figure in the Detroit techno movement. He has produced classic dance music records on his record label Planet e, often under a variety of production names, such as "Bug in the Bass Bin" recorded as Innerzone Orchestra, or "Throw” as Paperclip People." He is a Grammy-nominated artist for the remix of Junior Boys’ “Like A Child” and the co-founder of the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, that became known as Movement.

While planes have dominated his weekly work commute, like many Detroiters, Craig is very much into cars. We talked to him while he was in quarantine at home in Detroit, the rare time he’s been home for months at a time over the past three decades, soaking up the stillness.

A careful DJ is attuned to pacing. Craig has a keen fascination with speed, as well as sound.

Tell me about how cars were are a part of your childhood.

If you have a conversation with any of my dad’s relatives, they were always talking about cars. It’s not about the engine, or the modifications, it’s about the cars themselves. When I was a kid, my experience was that every time a family member got a car, they’d show it off. That was a ritual with my dad and his brothers. The day that they got the car, they would drive over. He would drive to his brother’s house, maybe drive us around the block. There’s always been this affinity for showing off what we got, as far as new cars are concerned. Growing up in Detroit, I would think it’s amplified even more. Detroit is a car city.  More people care more about their cars than they do their own homes. It’s in our DNA. We are attracted to the whole car thing.

What is your preferred method of getting around town and why?

I still have the Mercedes-Benz CL550. I love it. I didn’t think about how long I would hold on to it. It turned out to be a strong dependable classy classic car. It’s got an eight cylinder, it’s got some power in it, and it looks great. I still get people giving me thumbs up. When you roll down the front and back windows, there’s no border, just a clean opening. The car’s name is Katinka, named after the villain from Zoolander, the Russian fashion spy that always wears black. My Katinka wears black, but she’s German. Hagi has a newer GLC that she drives around. We got the Benz fam over here.

Tell us about something memorable or crazy that happened to you in a car.

It’s great to not be flying. At the peak, I was doing every weekend. From Detroit I would leave Wednesday , do Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday gigs, fly back on Monday, and then fly back again the next Wednesday. My transatlantic trips were 40 weeks out of the year. That’s not including the inter European or inter Australian or inter Asian flights that I was taking as well. It was a lot. For someone to fly to Europe forty times a year is a lot. I say forty times as a conservative number. Probably one year it was more than that. 

It’s not like where you’re roller skating and you take the roller skates off. It feels like something got lost. I realized after a month being home that I had been traveling since 1991, traveling close to 30 years, transatlantic all the time. I could get sleep, but I wasn’t getting the kind of sleep I got the first month of the pandemic. There’s a lot of worrying that goes on, but you can sleep through the night. You get on a flight for five hours and then you’re awake for an hour. They wake you up a half hour before you land. You check into the hotel, entertain promoters, talk to the drivers, have dinner, maybe get some rest, go out and play and entertain, and have drinks with fans and then get a little more sleep, and then go out and get on another flight.  It can be really grueling, and twenty-four hours goes so fast when you’re traveling like that. It feels like you have the luxury of digging up scraps of sleep or picking up time for yourself.

What are you listening to in the car?

I’ve been listening to a lot of dub and reggae. I like listening to it, because it sounds like it has otherworldly fantasy to it. Their exploration with sound effects doesn’t happen in a lot of music these days as what those guys were doing. They were creating a style in the seventies. I hear it as something that is spiritual that you can meditate to it, but it is body music as well, muscular and big and spacey. 

Do you think we should give up our cars?

No. In a city like Detroit you can’t do it. I think it’ll be easier inside of a city like Barcelon. They have an amazing train system.

What is your dream car?

If I was going to buy a car right now, I would get the Ferrari Roma.  I don’t know how fast it is. It’s so beautiful, the design, the lines of it are phenomenal to me. I haven’t seen it in person, but that’s one of those cars I would buy on Amazon. It’s a sophisticated car. It’s a sophisticated design. It looks like they are trying to sell it to both men and women, which is cool.  The Ferrari Roma I really like it a lot right now. I believe it’s going to be a serious classic design for Ferrari. 

What is your dream destination?

I want to go to outer space. I just want to see Earth from outside of our atmosphere. I want to look back at Earth. Also, I would love to be able to see what the other planets look like. Maybe I would be able to see the rings of Saturn from space, but that would be amazing.

What is your favorite road?

Autobahn. The part that hasn’t been patched that’s actually smooth. There are parts in the former Eastern Bloc, the area near Dresden. I did the Autobahn a few times. Hertz, they rent 911s. So I took out a 911 and I drove from Frankfurt to somewhere in the East. I did a six hour drive. I was driving about 350 kilometers per hour. It felt fast. I try to be a cautious driver. I try to predict everything. I’m not cautious where I won’t take risk, so I try to calculate when I do. It was a clear day, it was a two lane. I’m blazing down the road and I could see this little blip going slow in the right lane and then merging in the left lane.  It was Volkswagen Polo just switching lanes for some reason.  It went from a blip to a freaking car in a fraction of a blink of an eye. I really had to jam on the brakes, because I thought I was going to be right in his ass. Then he merged into the right lane. The autobahn is an adventure but there’s a lot of risk. There was one corner I took to fast  and I thought I was a goner.  It pretty much held on to the road. I didn’t hit anything. I slowed down and let my heart slow down and kept going. 

What is the best color for a car?

Pearl. Interior, black. 

Do you see yourself in an electric vehicle some day? Why or why not?

Yeah, I kind of like that little Nissan Leaf. The design on it for a little city car is great. In Barcelona, it’s the perfect city car. In Detroit, I don’t know if it has enough juice to do the driving it needs to do, but in Barcelona it’s great. 

Finally, when we can all move freely again, where do you want to go?

I think we’ll go back to Spain, Ibiza and Barcelona, definitely.