cozymason pt. I

cozymason (Cody to friends) is raring to go. The passionate, Austin-based DJ brings his own brand of selection and mixing to dancefloors around the city. His recent 2009-2013-EDM styled warehouse party with creative group Self Loathing Factory evidenced his unique presence and growing appeal. Now, cozymason is already raring for 2020 with shows to play and shit to say. We asked him what was on his mind ahead of his Saturday opening set at The Parish with Lefty, Cofresi & Megan Hamilton. Luckily for us, he had more than one article’s worth of words to share. We’ll bring you the interview serial style, in three parts. Check out part one below and don’t miss cozymason’s set this Saturday

cozymason in the mix x Tiffany Hunter

Culture Capital: Cozy, Cody, what’s good?

cozymason: Cody Wayne Mason for the government, cozymason all lowercase for you. 

CC: You are a local austin DJ who is starting to shed that local moniker and play other places. Talk about what you like about the Austin scene and what you’re doing moving forward.

cozymason: Can I make that a three part answer? What I do like, what I don’t like, and what I’m doing moving forward?

CC: I like that format.

cozymason: What I do like about the Austin scene is that it’s extremely co-centric. What i mean by that is everything is very close together in terms of events that happen. There aren’t very many pockets or realms and there’s a dark and a light side to that. The light side is this community that’s always bumping elbows with each other. What I like about that is that you see a lot of diversity in certain crowds.

CC: In terms of music being played?

cozymason: Exactly. Diversity in the sense that you can bounce around any given weekend and find about ten different things to do with completely different guises or themes. 

cozymason lighting up the room x Tiffany Hunter

And then I also do really like the youth of the scene. While there is a certain level of respect paid to the people that have been doing this for a minute, I also think theres a respect to be had for the younger generation that’s refreshing things and alway defining new boundaries and new ways of doing things. Those are the things I like about the scene. 

What I don’t like about the scene is literally everything I just mentioned. 

There’s a yin and yang between all of that. When you have the youth of the city acting like they know what’s going on and not respecting the way things are done and not respecting the way you go about throwing a show or being an entity or being an artist. There’s an etiquette that’s kinda lost in some realms. 

I also don’t like how everything is really narrow-minded in a way. There’s a lot of competition which in a city this small doesn’t make sense. I’ve been watching a lot of lost lately and if there’s anything I’ve learned from that show it’s that you can’t really move forward if everyone in such a small space is fighting with each other all the time. You’re just gonna go backwards or stay in the same place. That’s what thing I’ve noticed in my entry into the Austin music scene. I’ve been DJing ten years but being involved in a music scene didn’t happen for me til I was 18. I’ve been able to see it from the outside looking in and infiltrated and gotten to know people. I’m still very young and it’s a relatively short time frame you know? I’ve been here 6-7 years and a few things I’ve noticed is those who collaborate are always more successful than those who compete, yet those who compete feel like they’re doing the cooler thing, and they’re doing better, and their events are better. 

cozymason with Charles Mxxn x Tiffany Hunter

There’s huge entities in this city who make 100s of 1000s of dollars a year who have that mentality. While that may work for them on the ledger, when it comes to the bottom line, that’s not building a community of people and giving them the opportunity to flourish. 

At the end of the day, I don’t think anybody should be glamorizing what they do. Your work should speak for itself. 100 %. And that’s a tough thing for artists to learn because..we do have a seperate life that’s created in a digital space. We don’t really get the opportunity to separate those two. 

It’s weird to think about that we have two separate lives and one of them takes maintaining if you want to be like that I’ll go through weird periods where I get sick of it and realize im in the scroll hole. I’m just on the couch on instagram for 30 minutes. Then I have a thought like, “Dude, fuck this I’m just gonna delete this app.” Then something stops me. What is that weird feeling that stops me from deleting this stupid app? 

I think that has a lot to do with it too. Everyone’s event has to look the coolest and it’s this whole dick-sucking contest that involves inviting people to your facebook event and its a bunch of bullshit man. I hate it, I really do. 

Catch the next episode of Cody’s interview next week. Catch ya later, campers.