“Hello, my name is Devin Atherton.
I am many things, creative, rapper, a friend. But in Ottawa specifically, I am known as a DJ, disc jockey, events man, former Centertown fellow. I lived on Kent Street, Lisgar and Arlington.
I work as a creative and advertising copywriter in Toronto. So I come up with silly ideas to get people to buy things they don’t need often, often. But even so, it’s not an important job for the world, but it’s important for me because I get to be creative every day.
I’ve been running this event in Centertown now for 10 years called A Choired Taste. It’s a night where people come together, unlike most dance parties where it’s dance first, this is song first! So that means that we can dip into and delve into various genres that aren’t the pop shit that you hear at the bar. Or just like saccharine stuff where we can kind of like touch on. You’ll have Spice Girls next to Elliot Smith, for example, or Jeff Buckley.
So you can do a range of emotions that I think is really nice and it’s a cathartic experience.
It’s one of these like, it started off mostly as friends and they still come out. But now, you know, it’s survived a pandemic. It survived two venue changes.
It survived me leaving, like from going from a weekly to now coming back in this long weekend.
So it’s like I’ve been running events for, I don’t know, 15 years.
But there’s been nothing like this one where it’s just like taking on, it’s beyond me now, where it’s just like, there’s something magic about it that just, so who comes?
Friends of friends, new faces.
People who need just to belt it out, you know, and feel connected to the community. I have all my friends at Fauna who help staff the event. I have my life partner Omar, a friend who comes and helps out.
Various DJs have come in and out over the years. Sammy from Belmont, magnificent, you know, and then Belmont has been extremely helpful in bringing it to where it’s at. And then, you know, my partner, she runs the basement bar downstairs. So shout out Amy Greenberg.
Because after hitting ten years, it’s like, OK, this thing has a life of its own. Let’s see how far it can go. And whether it’s me actively involved or somebody else, I’d love for it to keep going. I’d love to be 80 years old and still be rocking out so often.”
Devin Atherton
Creative / DJ / Copywriter
@devinatherton
