DJ With Hidden Ambitions

Julia Evertsy / For The Post

At the 2017 Halloween Block Party, DJ Bobby Booshay held the “prime time” spot at 10 p.m.

A junior studying music production, Bobby “Bobby Booshay” Fleck is a co-owner of Brick Life Entertainment.

Hailing from the “underdog” city of Cleveland, Fleck said a lot has been changing in the past few years in terms of the city’s reputation. No longer is it called the “Mistake on the Lake.”

“You just really have to work for what you want. Especially in the local scene, there’s a lot of egos,” Fleck said. “I came from nowhere, and now I’m slowly starting to build myself up. … It’s worked as a motivator.”

Brick Life Entertainment was founded with the help of Fleck’s friends Scott Kutil and Chad Goldberg. Both thought the party scene of Athens was not doing “all that they could” and decided to make names for themselves. Before starting Brick Life, Fleck and Kutil met their freshman year in a media learning community.

“We really hit it off because of our shared love for music,” Kutil said in an email. “I stick to more of the business side of it while he is mainly on the creative side, but his ambitions make me focused on the beauty of the artist and the music.”

“You just really have to work for what you want. Especially in the local scene, there’s a lot of egos."– Bobby "Bobby Booshay" Fleck

Fleck, Goldberg and Kutil live in Cleveland and work for Rock The House Entertainment, where they DJ and work on the technical side of live production.

“Bobby is not only an exceptional human being, but he is also my best friend,” Kutil said in an email. “He treats people with the same love that he puts into his craft.”

When he’s not DJing, Fleck is a music producer and aspiring recording engineer. During the first part of his career, he was involved in the electronic dance music, or EDM, scene while producing on the side, which became challenging.

“To build up what I had in Cleveland … I started out in the EDM scene. I was doing that and trying to produce at the same time,” Fleck said. “As far as producing, it was kind of working, kind of not. I found it more challenging than I thought.”

Fleck’s first big achievement coming to Athens was performing his freshman year at a party hosted by Animal Cage at Palmer Place Apartments. Another achievement was Fresh Fest, an event hosted this year by Brick Life.

“People left their house parties because they heard about (Fresh Fest),” Fleck said. “We had heard that the bars were like, ‘Where is everybody?’ ”

This year, Fleck got to perform at the Athens Halloween Block Party for the first time. Before attending OU, Fleck said he was not aware of the atmosphere around Halloween, and he had avoided Court Street before this year.

“I got to DJ at 10 o’clock, which was the prime time,” Fleck said. “It was insane. Everything went how it should have went; nothing went wrong.”

Fleck said his next goal is to perform at Number Fest, which is known as the nation’s largest college music festival, according to its website. To achieve that goal, Fleck has been working to set himself apart from other DJs in Athens.

“I recently upgraded my equipment after a couple of years. I have gotten turntables, and I’m trying to learn more of that technique,” Fleck said. “There’s not many (DJs who use turntables in Athens). There’s like two or three others.”

Fleck said he provides more of a “quality experience” because he knows what people want to hear — and what they don’t want to hear. Although DJing is not his main career goal, it plays a significant part of it.

“He is definitely someone to keep your eye on,” Kutil said. “He has a lot of ambition that is hidden, and his potential is about to explode.”

Correction: A previous version of this report incorrectly stated who scheduled the performance at Palmer Place and incorrectly described the atmosphere at one of the parties he DJed at. The article has also been updated to clarify who founded Brick Life and reflect the most accurate information.

Photo by: Kevin Pan / For The Post

Development by: Taylor Johnston / Digital Production Editor