DJS SERVE AS THE BIG DAY’S MAESTRO

from LNT_BCR_Illinois Valley Dream Weddings_012922

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

By Brandon LaChance

There are a lot of puzzle pieces to work with when planning a wedding. But the major components of a wedding include the bride, the groom, the wedding party, the venue, and, of course, the DJ. DJs help pull together the whole reception, ensuring everyone has a great, memorable time.

“We have a lot of passion for weddings. We do a few corporate events and school dances, but primarily weddings are our business,” said JC Heerdt, owner of Guys On The Radio, an Illinois Valley business. “When you look at a wedding, especially with having our other services now, they look at it as an event and not just music. Music is a huge part of what we do and making sure a dance floor works. I can’t say it is not. I believe there is a science to a dance floor, so asking the right questions and helping them with timelines is a huge part of what we do.

“There are a lot of moving parts to a wedding, and when you’re the DJ and the entertainment, you have to make sure that all of those things are going to flow throughout the day. Planning and working with the couple to prepare for their big day and being part of that process helps us be very successful and makes sure a wedding goes extremely smooth,” he said.

Heerdt, 43, is originally from Rock Falls but has lived in Spring Valley so long it has become the town he tells people he is from. He was a co-owner of Guys on the Radio with John Shapiro when the duo played their first wedding in 2001.

After Shapiro stepped down in 2020, Heerdt took over as the sole overseer of not only the music part of Guys on the Radio but of coordinating with Sisters Stress Free Planning and capturing special moments with Flash Photo Booth. As Heerdt will tell you, it’s not only the music, it’s about making every moment magical for the couple and their guests.

“We’ve kind of expanded. We started primarily as a DJ business, but over the years, we found there is a need for different services besides just DJs services,” said Heerdt. “About four or five years ago, we created Sisters Stress Free Planning where we offer a day of coordinating with fantastic people who will handle all the little details of your day.

“We found there wasn’t a whole lot of day-of coordinators in the area. Especially during Covid-19, we were doing a lot of background, smaller, private events that when we would go to people’s houses, it helped out tremendously to have almost a venue coordinator who could take care of all the little details from running rehearsals to making sure there was enough toilet paper in the Porta Potties to making sure the caterers knew where to set up,” he said.

Guys On The Radio has a full staff. Peggy Pappas runs the coordinating, local musician Kevin Kramer is the live music director, and Tyler and Amelia Kern are contracted for videography services.

With the help of his team, Heerdt is able to spend more time focusing on checking the online portal, which puts wedding day timelines together and has Spotify integration to load playlists. Welcome emails are sent when brides and grooms sign up for Guys On The Radio services. They’ll also get reminders of the planning process as well as guides and videos to help with the proceedings and scheduling sit-downs, whether virtually or in-person, to make sure everyone involved is on the same page.

“Connecting with the client and the guests is it – that’s the biggest part. Music in itself provides an emotion,” Heerdt said. “We all have connections to music one way or another. If you’ve ever watched a movie without the sound

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO/LEANNE PALMIERI Cody Guynn, 32, who resides in LaSalle, has averaged eight weddings a year and currently has more than eight booked for 2022. Guynn has been a DJ since he was 13 but didn’t take on a wedding until 2015.

FROM PAGE 21 on or just the dialogue and stripped all of the music out, that movie would play so much different than with sound. If you go back and watch it with the sound, with the music the orchestra has provided, that music in the background creates emotion.

“When you’re DJing a wedding, you’re creating a soundtrack for the wedding, and it needs to convey emotion,” he continued. “When we’re guiding clients through their day, we’re also asking, ‘Is this the right song to convey the emotion that you want at that particular moment of your day?’”

With 20 years of experience, Heerdt has learned how to predict what type of crowd he will have at a wedding by talking to the soon-to-be-married couple, the first 30 to 45 minutes of an open dance floor, and by song requests.

According to him, there are three types of reception goers: sitters, dancers, and skeptics.

The sitters are going to sit but are important to the energy of the crowd. Dancers are going to dance no matter what is coming through the speakers. A DJ can tell if the night is going to be slow because there are only a few dancers or amazing because ants can’t even find room on the dance floor.

The skeptic may dance or may not, but the defining elements of whether they dance is the number of others dancing and if alcohol is consumed.

Cody Guynn of LaSalle, known as DJ Famous, also knows how to read a crowd.

“For me, music started when I was 13 and about to go into high school,” said Guynn, who is now 32. “I’ve always had a passion to DJ at parties and be the guy who supplies the music. I was always kind of shy, so I felt like music was my outlet. When I was around my friends or other people, I used music as my getaway.

“I remember buying some CD turntables back in the day. I would DJ for my friends at their houses,” he continued. “Then my best friend’s older brother, who was a senior when I was in eighth grade, would ask me to DJ house parties. So, I was DJing for seniors when I was 13 and in junior high. I thought it was so cool. When I got into high school, people knew me because I was the DJ at these high school parties. It became something I fell in love with.”

Guynn didn’t DJ a wedding until 2015 when he was in his mid-20s. After a few weddings, he wondered why he didn’t start expanding from bars, clubs, and parties a little sooner.

With motivation from his father, Rick Guynn, he took out a loan to start Good Vibe Music Productions.

“My dad has always supported me being a singer/songwriter,” said Guynn, who has averaged eight weddings a year, but already has more than eight booked for 2022. “DJing kind of goes hand in hand with it. When I got a little older, probably about 20, he said, ‘You can make a business out of this or you can do it as a hobby, but I think you should take it to the next level because you’re talented.’ After I DJed my first gig, the word got out, and I started DJing in Mendota, Peru, and LaSalle. Every time I did a gig, I took that money and invested it into the business.”

He realized early on how lucrative weddings could be for his business.

“I made my first real payday DJing a wedding. I thought, ‘I could DJ a wedding and make triple of what I made at a bar gig.’ Then I started taking weddings more seriously. I made a lot of mistakes at my first wedding and learned a lot from it. I didn’t really understand how the routines of weddings went, and I butchered people’s names.

“I learned the routine, and now I can be the organizer for a wedding (reception). A lot of people have to hire a coordinator to organize from step to step of a wedding. I’m starting to take over that part. Now I can be the DJ, the guy that runs the sound and the lighting, and the coordinator because now I know how a wedding should run from the beginning to the end. I feel the DJ plays a huge role in a wedding because we create the atmosphere from the beginning of the day all the way until the end.”

Music Machine owner Jay Roach has said for the last few years that he is winding down.

A DJ with a 20-year resume who has served as the Music Machine’s main man for the last 15 after taking over for Mike Sabatini, Roach still did seven or eight weddings in 2021 and will probably do the same amount in 2022.

Roach will DJ any kind of event and knows the difference between each one.

“When you do bars, you want to be the focus and have the focus on you,” Roach said. “When I’m doing a wedding, I don’t want them to remember me. I want people to go to the bride or the groom and ask, ‘Hey, who was your DJ?’ To me, when you do a wedding, the bride is the star.

It’s my job to cast the shine on her. The groom is nice, but he doesn’t care. It’s pretty rare when the groom is the one who is into it.”

Roach learned about weddings by working from the ground up. Before actually DJing a wedding, he was paid by his buddy Dustin Siekierka to load and unload his equipment. While being the muscle, Roach picked up on the importance of a wedding and how a DJ truly sets the scene.

He’s been around long enough to remember when the first hour of a reception cranked out popular tunes from the 1960s. Now, classics from the 1980s own the first hour while the ‘60s hits are not played.

“I’m pretty much playing my high school prom for the first hour now. Everyone evolves, and we get older,” said Roach.

There are different styles and various DJ companies you can hire in the Illinois Valley. The similarity is that each DJ wants your wedding reception to depict your childhood, your future, and your relationship in the best way possible.