Catching up With Electric Zookeeper John Beaver

The last time I spoke to John Beaver was for my first Insomniac story. He had only recently recovered from colon cancer, which had left his liver severely damaged, and he was working at the Happy Hollow Park and Zoo in San Jose while moonlighting as a prolific Bay Area DJ. He’s an awesome person to talk to and full of some of the most positive vibes I’ve seen in the scene.

So this year, I was more excited than ever when he put together an amazing mix to get us all hyped for Beyond Wonderland. I caught up with him to talk about his health, the zoo, a new documentary about his life, and of course, his killer mix and how the right mix can capture a moment forever. Read on, and make sure to catch him at the show!

How’s it going, John? It’s been a while.
Things are good, man! This mix has been crazy!

How do you mean?
I’m not one to do things half-assed, so I literally spent a month working on it every single day. I don’t know if you had a chance to see the track list, but it’s huge—like 50 songs or something—and every single one is something new that I created.

“If I’m going to do a DJ mix I want to make sure it’s something that no one else could make.”

I saw. I hadn’t seen a track list like that in a long time.
I was really excited about working with you guys again, and I wanted to make something that would stand out. I mean, there are a lot of DJs out there. So, if I’m going to do a DJ mix, I want to make sure it’s something that no one else could make. Now I just hope everyone will like it!

Having heard your other mixes, I know they will. But before we dive too deep into the mix, let’s catch up from our last interview. Last time we spoke, you were struggling with your liver after it was damaged from your chemotherapy. I’m sure readers are wondering if you got that taken care of. You sound great!
Thanks man, but well… This liver thing is up and down. Sometimes they say it’s getting better, sometimes getting worse. I don’t feel bad; I actually feel really good. But I saw my liver doctor two weeks ago, and he basically just said, “Look, I promise you that in your lifetime, you are going to need a liver transplant—no matter what.”

Thing is, my score on the donor list isn’t high enough to get one yet. He said eventually I’d have to move to either Tennessee or Georgia, because those are the two states that have a lot of donor livers. But it’s like, what am I supposed to do in the meantime? And he said, “Live your life and keep going, and then eventually one day you’re going to start to feel really sick, and we’ll worry about things then.”

Just wait until something happens?
Yup… It’s pretty scary. I’ve gotta keep pushing through and go to doctors’ appointments and have them test my blood. I don’t want it to suddenly surprise me, where one second I’m fine and the next, shit’s going down really fast. I want to be prepared for it and know when it’s coming.

Dang, man, we’ll have you in our thoughts.
Thank you, I appreciate that! But there are so many other good things going on my life. I focus on the good things and try not to worry too much. For instance, there’s this cool documentarian that approached me last year. He read your Insomniac article, and now he’s making a movie about me!

That’s really awesome!
Yeah! People still come and talk to me about the interview. I’ll be at the zoo, and parents will come up and be like, You’re that guy that they did an article about in Insomniac! I’m forever thankful, because that’s how this guy saw me. Now, he’s toured around with me just like you guys did, and he has made this beautiful professional movie that comes out in a couple weeks. It’s really cool. He did a great job.

That’s great! Did he follow you around to the zoo, too? How’s that going?
He did, and the zoo is great! We have a bunch of new animals coming, like an alligator, and we’re putting a lot of money into building up and modernizing it. We’re having awesome fundraisers and looking to bring in another superstar animal—not a panda or an elephant or a giraffe or anything, but some kind of big cat or leopard or something.

Are you DJing those fundraisers?
Yeah! But it’s different, because it’s San Jose, and we tend to bring in older dot.com people—not a lot of my clubber crowd. Because of that, it’s a mix of hipster music and throwback stuff like Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, and all that. It’s fun! The cool thing is that, thanks to my dad’s record collection, I get to spin on vinyl. I’m pumped to get back to actual records, like back in the old days. Plus, it’s mixing rock music, so it’s taking the DJing art form to a whole other level. The toughest stuff to mix is rock music, because it’s not made on a computer; it’s a band in a studio, so when you’re trying to mix two songs like that, they don’t line up. You really find out how good a DJ you are when you try to mix it.

Speaking of mixing, lets talk about your Beyond mix.
I’ve been doing mixes like this for about 11 years now for Coachella. It sort of started as a bootleg underground thing… But I got the idea to start doing them the way I do them when I went to a hip-hop show in like 2002, called Audiotistic. Outkast was headlining alongside Blackalicious and a bunch of others. So, I travelled all the way to Los Angeles, had an amazing time, and on the way out, I got handed a free CD that had all of the music that I heard all day long. So for the rest of my life, I have the memory of that day on CD. It was so special to me that I had it.

Like a physical representation of your experience.
Exactly. So, since Coachella is one of my favorite festivals, I wanted to give people that same experience. I started mixing the sets every year and distributing them myself. Then finally, about four years later, one of the Coachella bigwigs got ahold of it and loved it. So I started sending it to them every year. Two years ago, after sending the mix every year, they booked me to play at the festival. First it was small things, but for the last two years, I’ve been on the main lineup. After working with you guys on that article, I wanted to do the same thing for Insomniac and get people excited about Beyond.

How did you approach this mix?
My rule for making a mix CDs is to feature all the artists. But with so many artists on this awesome lineup, this one was hard. I looked for collaborations so I could hit two birds with one stone. I actually use sticky notes to organize it all. On my bed right now, I have 100 sticky notes with possible track combinations; for the last month, I’ve been sitting with them like it’s a puzzle. So there are two tracks: My mashups and a cappellas are the blue ones, so then I move the blue ones around to add layers on top of the pink ones. It becomes the most awesome game of Connect Four ever.

On top of that, I was listening to it on really good, high-end studio monitors. But I want it to sound right to the average person listening to it in the car. So I take a drive and am like, okay, this connection is a little lost, this isn’t as sharp, etc. It’s a little tedious, because every time I listen to it from start to finish, an hour and a half, if there’s one little thing I messed up on, start again.

That’s dedication. Must have been hard to represent all of the genres, too.
Definitely. Most mixes are just one genre, but I’m jumping all over the place with this mix. A good example is in the beginning: I wanted my drum & bass section to come in strong, so I found a drum & bass song mixed with a Tiësto song that had some weird pitch-blends in it. So, right when the song starts pitch-blending, it kind of tricks the listener into thinking the tempo is changing. It flows very smoothly, and then all of a sudden you’re listening to drum & bass. I think clever transitions like that, as well as my mashups, will keep listeners on their toes.

Plus, it truly fits with the diversity of the show.
Exactly. I wanted to highlight some specific artists in this show as well. For one, I love Calvin Harris, and I’m not afraid to say it. I know a lot of people think he’s too mainstream, but all in all, I think he makes great music. I used a lot of his a cappellas on the CD. Other than that, I also wanted to feature my fellow Bay Area DJs that are playing on the lineup, so SNR, Dyloot and I are on here.

Also, I started this CD with a track from an old Insomniac mix made for EDC 2000 by this trance DJ named Doran. It’s hands-down my favorite mix CD of all time. So, because this is my inaugural mix for Insomniac, I wanted to honor that mix.

What about that mix touched you so much?
I just remember travelling to EDC 2000 with this mix CD. It was a long drive, all night long, and I had this trance mix that kind of set the perfect mood for the drive and the experience. It’s something that I’ll always remember. I think a mix CD really has the power to move and inspire someone. It captures the moment. Later on, it became a really big trance CD, and now for me, it represents right when I got into trance music and one of the first big events I ever attended.

Is that what you want this mix to be for Beyond attendees?
I want this mix CD to go along with the great time they had at the fest. I want people to be able to look back when they listen and be like, “That was an amazing time. That was my night.” That was what I was going for—to capture that feeling on a CD, so they can remember it forever.

Track List

Sleepwalker “Face to Face” (John Beaver’s Insomniac EDC 2000 Mix Tribute Intro)
Calvin Harris & Disciples “How Deep Is Your Love”
Firebeatz ft. Tiësto vs. Calvin Harris & Disciples “How Sky High Is Your Love”
Mord Fustang vs. Sandro Silva & Quintino vs. Calvin Harris ft. Ne-Yo “Let’s Go Lick the Epic” (John Beaver’s Twisted SNR Mashup)
Laidback Luke & Shelco Garcia & Teenwolf vs. Maroon 5 “XXX This Summer’s Gonna Hurt Like a XXX” (John Beaver Mashup)
Daft Punk “Aerodynamic” (D.O.D Bootleg)
Armin van Buuren ft. Simon Patterson vs. Capital Cities “One More Ping Pong Minute” (John Beaver Mashup)
Capital Cities “One Minute More” (Markus Schulz vs. Grube & Hovsepian Remix)
Tommy Trash & Burns vs. Tiësto ft. Ummet Ozcan & Matthew Koma “About You Wasted” (John Beaver Mashup)
Tiësto & the Chainsmokers “Split” (Only You)
Wretch 32 “6 Words” (Friction Rmx)
Loadstar “Once Again”
Friction vs. Dimension “Kinetic”
Knife Party “Give It Up”
Showtek ft. We Are Loud & Sonny Wilson “Booyah”
Simon Patterson vs. Mr. Sam ft. Claud9 vs. Calvin Harris ft. Florence Welch “Sweet Different Cygnus Nothing” (John Beaver Mashup)
Arty ft. Angel Taylor “Up All Night”
Audien ft. Lady Antebellum “Something Better”
Billon “Slave to the Vibe”
The Magician ft. Years & Years “Sunlight”
Markus Schulz & Ferry Corsten vs. Showtek & Justin Prime ft. Matthew Koma “Cannonball Loops N Earthquake Tings” (John Beaver Mashup)
Knife Party vs. Fatboy Slim vs. Daft Punk vs. Afrojack “Start Again Right Here, Right Now One More Time (John Beaver & Nick Robinson Mashup)
Laidback Luke & Tujamo vs. Martin Solveig & GTA “Intoxicated S.A.X.” (John Beaver Mashup)
Calvin Harris ft. Firebeatz vs. Tiësto “It Was Redlights” (John Beaver Mashup)
Dyloot ft. Deep Voices vs. Markus Schulz & Gabriel & Dresden Presents Departure “Without De-Tune Near” (John Beaver Mashup)
Showtek & Justin Prime vs. Calvin Harris ft. Ellie Goulding, Ayah Marar & John Newman “Blame Cannonball for Thinking About Your Love” (John Beaver Loves Calvin Triple Mashup)
Calvin Harris ft. Ummet Ozcan vs. John Newman “Blame Overdrive” (John Beaver Mashup)
Tiësto & Firebeatz vs. Gavin Degraw “Not Over the Last Train” (John Beaver Mashup)
Alex Gaudino ft. Firebeatz vs. Dev “Destination Calabria in the Dark 2014” (John Beaver Mashup)
Arty vs. Calvin Harris “Trio Flashback” (John Beaver Mashup)
Carnage ft. Timmy Trumpet & KSHMR vs. Quintino vs. Calvin Harris “Toca Gonna Rock the Summer” (John Beaver Mashup)
Major Lazer & DJ Snake ft. MØ “Lean On” (Tiësto & MOTi Rmx)
DJ Snake & AlunaGeorge vs. Major Lazer & DJ Snake ft. MØ “You Know You Like Lean On” (John Beaver Mashup)
G Jones “Apollo”
Calvin Harris & Dillon Francis “What’s Your Name”
DJ Snake ft. Lil Jon & Dillon Francis “Get Low Turn Down for What” (John Beaver Mashup)
DJ Snake & Dillon Francis vs. Moby & Lucky Date “Get Low & Delay” (Disco Fries Bootleg)
Snails & Antiserum “Wild” (MUST DIE! Rmx)
Flux Pavilion ft. Example “Daydreamer”
MUST DIE! ft. Sue Cho “Live It Up”
Flux Pavilion “I Can’t Stop”
Yellow Claw ft. Ayden “Till It Hurts”
DeafMind & Lil Clark vs. Lil Boosie ft. Brillz & Snails “Crazy Surrender” (John Beaver Mashup)
Dmitri Vegas & Like Mike vs. Ummet Ozcan ft. Andres Fresko & Skellism vs. Tove Lo vs. Calvin Harris ft. Example “Hum Talking Back” (John Beaver Mashup)
Showtek vs. Calvin Harris “Slow Down Used to Hold Me” (John Beaver Mashup)
Bingo Players vs. TJR vs. VINAI “Lethal Bounce Generation Industry” (John Beaver Mashup)
Tiësto & KSHMR ft. Vassy “Secrets Take Me With You” (John Beaver Mashup)
Tiësto & Calvin Harris ft. Moska & Hardwell “Century Zero 76 Feels so Close” (John Beaver Mashup)
Sacara & John Beaver vs. Sebastian Ingrosso & Tommy Trash ft. John Martin “Reload Our Night” (John Beaver Mashup)
Tiësto “Suburban Train” (Jordan Suckly Rmx)

Cop a free download of John Beaver’s Beyond Wonderland Bay Area 2015 Mix here.

Check out more, and tell John what you thought of the mix via Facebook, Instagram and [email protected]. For more of John’s music and his future mixes, check out his record label Libra Rising, which he runs with his label partner J Scott G from Summer Channel and formerly Deepsky!

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