If one thing is consistent when you bring up the name Will Clarke it’s the response, “He’s such a nice guy.” You would think that it might have gotten to his head with all of his success, but he doesn't consider himself successful. He said he is fortunate enough to have had a level of success but that it is nowhere near he wants to be in his career. He also doesn't think the level of your success should change who you are. It is far easier to just be nice, you have to go out of your way to not be nice. Even with people you don’t necessarily care for, you can find common ground. For him, just having good people around him is really important. He feels very fortunate to have many good people in his circle
Will was born in Bristol, UK and he still has a home on the same plot of land as his parents. Once he started touring, he realized he would need a place in the U.S. to call home as well. He started in L.A.but it wasn’t a good fit, so he moved to New York. Though he loved New York, he couldn’t justify the cost of living there with being gone so much on tour. He became familiar with Detroit because of Movement and decided to rent there for a while before deciding it would be a good place for him to settle. The contrast between Bristol and Detroit is noticeable, he says Detroit is a harsh city that is very industrial and Bristol is farmland. Having both is the best of both worlds. He now splits time in Bristol and Detroit based on his touring schedule.
Will started listening to dance music when he was around nine years old. His dad took him to see Faithless when he was 11, and that was it. Faithless, Chemical Brothers, and Fatboy Slim greatly influenced him at that age.
Will had DJ’d a little bit around Bristol in those early years but decided at age 12 to enroll in a DJ Academy, where he was the youngest student by at least a decade. The Academy is where he learned to mix vinyl, record demos, make artwork, and the business aspects of becoming a DJ. A party was thrown for all the students to celebrate the end of the program, and that was Will’s first experience playing in a club. He was only 13.
Will has played house music from the beginning and took influence from those around him who mainly played very soulful house from artists like Frankie Knuckles and Larry Levan.
Will was 16 when he played his first show in Ibiza, and it was there he decided he wanted to expand his music education, so he took a music technology course at college. College in the UK is like high school here, and it consumed the next two years for him. During the summers, he continued playing in Ibiza and hustled to meet as many people as possible.
At 18, he gained his first residency in a daytime beach club where he would play 12-hour sets 7 days a week. He had a few residencies in Ibiza for the next few years and then, at 21, decided he needed to step away from that scene so he could do the work it would take to achieve his next goal of headlining shows there. Will says his career has been a super long process, starting at 16, and he is 32 now and still is nowhere near where he wants to get to.
Will learned to produce while in college and released his first track at 18 or 19. He said it was terrible and doesn’t even know if it still exists in the digital world. Looking at Beatport, it is clear that Will has been putting in the work since then. Beatport shows he has over 300 releases of original music and remixes combined! He says he is never the most talented producer or DJ in the room, but he will outwork anyone.
Will went through a long period before he was a full-time DJ, where he would wake up, go to the gym, go to work, come home, and work in the studio for 4-5 hours before he went to bed. He did that every single day until being a DJ was his full-time job.
He said anyone he knows that's successful in the music industry has had a point in their life where they have dedicated everything they had to make that happen. He did the same. He had to put the work in.
Will has continued to build his career as a DJ. Will launched his record label “All We Have Is Now” in January 2020. He has only signed two artists so far, an Austrian producer named Dubesque and a French producer named Nisim. Will listens to almost everything aspiring producers send him, but wants to keep his label small, maybe only adding one or two more artists to round it out.
He had a radio show for a short time, but it wasn’t something he wanted to continue, so he stopped it in 2019. He wanted to move on to a Podcast at that time but didn’t make the time for it. Then quarantine hit, and the time presented itself. With the blessing of his Manager, Will’s self-titled podcast launched in April of 2020. He has been doing the weekly podcast since then, even now that he's back on tour. He sets aside a day a week for several interviews and time the following day for edits. It is a lot of work, but he loves connecting with people so much that he won’t stop. He said he’s fortunate enough to reach certain people to have as guests, and he thinks it is so important to talk to people who created this genre of music, and those are conversations that need to be had. It is impossible for him to list his favorite guest because everyone that has been on has been a unique experience. He still also has a huge list of people he wants to speak with, including Pete Tong, Zane Lowe, Adam Beyer, Derrick Carter, Derrick May, and Carl Craig.
As far as touring, Will has been all over the world, so I asked him if there is a venue that feels like home. He doesn’t really want the feeling of familiarity because he never wants to feel too comfortable, but Space Miami is very special to him. He approaches every event like no one in the crowd knows who he is. Will plays about 90% of his own music in his sets because he wants the crowd to know who he is as a DJ by the end of the set. He doesn’t want to sound like anyone else, he wants to sound like Will Clarke.
I also asked where he would want to play that he hasn’t already. Again there are too many to list, but a dream of his would be to play one of the main stages at Glastonbury Festival. His UK home is about 15 minutes from the festival’s location, where he used to go with his dad as a child. It would be a full circle moment for him.
As we neared the end of the interview I asked a few fun questions. Will has a food page on Instagram called Will Makes You Hungry, where he shares his food journey around the world. He said Japan is the favorite country he has visited so far when it comes to food, but he is going to India for the first time in February, and Indian food is his favorite cuisine, so he can’t wait.
The last question I had for him was regarding something interesting he has on his rider: A pair of socks. I didn't know this was a common request, so I had hoped there was a story about hand puppets coming, but Will simply said, “Who doesn’t like a fresh pair of socks?!” He prefers nice, thick, white tennis socks. He said it is one of the things on the rider that promoters don’t usually get, and if they do, they aren't great quality.
You can see Will in his Indianapolis debut at The Patron Saint on Friday, November 25, 2022, and check out the newest remixes of his latest single, Throw Your Soul Down, with remixes by Honeyluv, Clarity, and Christian Nielsen.