Daily Inspiration: Meet Winterfresh

Today we’d like to introduce you to Winterfresh

Hi Winterfresh, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I was born and raised in LA, where I was first exposed to DJing as a 12-year old. I was always crate digging for obscure music on all the blogs (shoutout fresh on campus) and showing my friends. One of my friends was getting started as a DJ and liked the songs I would show him, so he started showing me the ropes. We’d DJ together where I’d curate the songs from my collection and he would DJ/transition, and we got started doing house parties for free for about a year and a half. My friend started losing interest and I started getting better at the DJing, so after a little while he stopped DJing and I branched off on my own.

The problem was that he had all the equipment. I was still pretty young so I had to ask my dad for $400 so I could go to downtown LA to buy DJ equipment. He saw how into it I was, so he lent me the $400 and I got a broken b-52 CDJ controller, one working speaker, one broken speaker, and a swarm light. I set it all up to look like I had the full set-up while using VirtualDJ to DJ off my computer. I started throwing parties with my friends in the back house of their parents’ houses, which lead me to start booking more house parties in the LA scene. I just wanted to perform as much as I could so I didn’t charge anybody, but people were nice enough to leave me tips. Six months of getting better and stacking up the tips brought me back to my dad with $2,000 – enough to pay off the loan and go buy legit equipment. My dad was so proud of me he let me keep the $400, and he came with me to Guitar Center to get my first real set-up together

Once I had my working equipment, I started DJing three times a week. I built up my DJing to the point where I was consistently performing at house parties, weddings, charity events, and more legit paid gigs around LA while I was studying in community college. Two years of performing consistently lead me to start wanting to make my own intros, so I downloaded Ableton and Sylenth1. This sparked my love for actually creating music, and by the time I got the hang of it I managed to get accepted to UC Davis as a transfer student.

I moved to Northern California in 2015 and I immediately started booking gigs around campus. I got to know more people in the UC Davis community, which led to booking some of my biggest and most memorable performances. DJing took me all over Northern California – I performed in San Francisco, Sacramento, Lake Tahoe, and all over Davis. Davis had unreal energy – tens of thousands of students in this little college town looking to have the time of their lives and dance, and I got to be a part of that. The crowds were so electric that people were literally jumping on tables and collapsing floors if I dropped too fire of a remix of Love Sosa. My favorite memory was on these two-thousand-people yacht parties we’d do in this island up in the Northern California mountain lakes, where one time I was building up to such a high-energy transition to drop “Bailar” by Deorro and R3hab that everybody’s dancing almost capsized the boat. Everyone was jumping so hard that my DJ controller slid off my table mid-transition, and I had to catch it and keep changing the song without anything unplugging while this boat was rocking like an earthquake.

I really grew as a performer in this time, but I had to take a break from music once I graduated college and came back to LA. This start-up I co-founded before leaving north was growing rapidly, and I had to put all my focus on it so it could reach profitability. My goal was to be able to fund my music endeavors when the time came to get back in it. In a weird way, that time came when COVID-19 hit, because it gave me the chance to sit at home and produce music again. I was working on music production for 12 hours a day, and by the time February 2021 rolled around I started releasing music officially as Winterfresh with my first track “See the Sun”.

I chose the name Winterfresh because of my last name, Winter. My family has been my biggest believers throughout this entire journey, and I’m at this point as a producer and performer where this is how I express myself. I started releasing more and more music as Winterfresh with local artists as well as artists from New York, Atlanta, and Miami. This lead to a placement in a big TV show, a radio show on Insomniac Radio, and some features on edm.com and dancingastronaut.com.

The harder I work on Winterfresh and the more I see it out on the world, the more I know I’m making my mark by putting the family name on the map. It’s super motivating to see Winterfresh chart in UK, Thailand, Finland, and a few other places across the world, but I’m not satisfied. I’ve never been satisfied, at any part of my journey, because it means too much to me, my family, and everyone in Wintercamp that I want to keep making proud. I’m excited to share more Winterfresh with the world – I have another 15+ EDM songs and a ton of rap tracks dropping in the queue very soon. I can’t wait for y’all to hear it.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The opposite, and I’m grateful for it because that’s how you learn. Whether it’s borrowing money to get started with broken equipment or taking out loans to start businesses to fund my music or driving out 4 hours each way for a gig just for half the arrangements to be not what they’ve were supposed to be…. the punches never stop coming, but you get better at rolling with them.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My music is all interconnected. I take this wide variety of genres and I try to use every one of them to bring the best out of each other.

I played basketball growing up. I feel like with my music, I’m trying to play point guard between all these different genres and sounds. I want the rap vocals to play off the future rave track in a way you’d never expect. I want the melodic techno beats to throw up some alley-oops for the metal vocalist. I’ll make progressive house and hip hop beats in the same studio session.

I love letting my mind run free when I’m creating music, and when I’m performing, I know what the crowd wants before they realize they want it. Beyond just the music, though, I’m always looking to add tricks up my sleeve to take things to the next level. Champagne guns and foam pits and random photo booths in the mosh pits… anything to make a Winterfresh night as memorable as possible.

How do you think about happiness?
My family and friends make me happy. Their loyalty and support pushes me to make them proud. They encourage me to not limit myself when I make music.

That’s when I’ve found myself to be my absolute happiest: when I feel like I’m pushing the boundaries on what I previously thought was possible with my music. I feel like I’m always improving and learning new things, and there’s no greater happiness to me than feeling like I’m on that path to becoming my best self.

Beyond that, I enjoy playing basketball, watching football, playing video games, traveling, collecting shoes and trading cards, and meeting cool people from different backgrounds.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/winterfreshmusic/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/DJ_WinterFresh
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/dj-winter-fresh
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5CEQDOtEb9UftqMWwoJXrL?si=k1coG7p7T9SeWLucuyZP2w