“A Job in the Business”

Vick Lavender has never taken the easy road. Born in Louisiana, and raised on Chicago's west side, he came up on dub tapes, Italo, and New Wave records before deep house had a name. DJ, producer, label owner & co-owner of Bridgeport Records, every step has been deliberate and every move a natural progression. He has never been in a rush. He has never been satisfied either.

Deep house is not easily understood. Neither is an artist who has spent thirty years crafting music that draws from jazz fusion, world music and R&B, music that calls to ancestral spirit and permeates the soul. A prolific producer with releases on West End Records, Sacred Rhythm Music, Local Talk, Ocha and his own Sophisticado Recordings, championed by the likes of Glenn Underground, Anthony Nicholson, Boo Williams and Ron Trent, while remaining largely unbothered by the spotlight. Today he’s still putting out some of the most beautiful, unhurried music in the game. All of it on vinyl.

In this conversation with host Lori Branch, recorded inside Bridgeport Records, Vick talks about the city, people and records that shaped him, the culture of Chicago's segregated club scene, what it means to always have a job inside the business and where he's going next.

Karen Gordon 'aka Dajae' grew up in West Englewood on Chicago's South Side. Music was in the house. Her father, Reginald Gordon, was a doo-wop singer who performed on the Ed Sullivan Show. She had the family gift and her mother nurtured it, but Karen's path to it was long and unsteady. She spent years practicing alone, singing background for Jive Records, earning a gold album on a Will Smith record, and auditioning for groups that turned her away. By the time she was approaching thirty, she was ready to quit.

In 1992, a last-minute introduction to producer Cajmere led to "Brighter Days”, the house music staple, a genre she hadn't sought out, but the she would define. The song reached number two on the Billboard dance charts and never stopped being played. And her career blossomed.

More than thirty years later, Dajae's voice remains one of the most recognized in house music, and Karen Gordon is largely unknown outside of it. In this conversation recorded at Bridgeport Records, with host Lori Branch, Karen shares about her family's musical lineage, her passion for singing, the high’s & low’s of her career, spirituality, what it means to be a woman vocalist in a scene that often left its female voices uncredited, and her life today on the South Side, caring for her mother.

Toni Shelton, known throughout Chicago as Disco Tony, has been throwing parties since 1979. As the city's first solo female house music promoter, she's built a legacy that spans over four decades: the flyers with her face on them, the DJ battles, the iconic all-white parties that have brought Chicago's South Side community together for twenty years running.

But behind the magnetic presence and the bright red lipstick is a story that starts much harder. Toni lost her mother at seven years old. By seventeen, her grandmother was gone too, leaving her to navigate the world on her own terms. She finished high school. She went to college. She picked up a camera at nine and never put it down. And somehow, in the midst of finding her footing, she created a place where everybody else could feel at home.

In this conversation around host Lori Branch's kitchen table, Toni opens up about grief, resilience, and what it really means to be a promoter. Not just booking venues and printing flyers, but mothering a community before she ever had children of her own. Because when you grow up with nowhere to go, you learn how to build the place yourself.