Dillon Francis Wants to Sing All Night Long

When Dillon Francis returns to South Florida on Friday, November 4, it won’t be a bottle of Jäger or shots of tequila keeping him company in the booth. Instead, he’ll be dropping bangers on the crowd at Daer nightclub while sippin’ a hot cup of black or green tea.

“I love having a nice tea while I'm DJ'ing,” he says. “I've been sober now for 11 months almost. Hangovers are gnarly. Like, you think you know your hangovers when you're 25 or 29, and you're like, ‘Oh my God, they're so bad.’ No. They get so much fucking worse.”

A lot of things have changed for Francis in the 11 years since his breakthrough. Freshly 35, he’s feeling his age and the age of those around him and the "IDGAFOS" ("I Don't Give a Fuck or Shit"). Still, EDM's funny man can’t help but be a little reflective.

“Sometimes I'm like, I just want to sing for the whole night,” he says. “I want to play ‘Black Parade.’ I want to play the Rapture ['Whoo! Alright-Yeah...Uh Huh']. I want to play maybe the Shins ‘Caring Is Creepy.’ Let's get in our feels for a second. Let's get some Death Cab going — 'Transatlanticism.' I have been doing that [at] certain times where I'm playing in Vegas because if you just want to do sing-alongs for like 30 minutes, no one will care, and it makes them want to drink more.”

Just because he’s prioritizing family, learning to take better care of himself, and cueing up 2000s indie-night setlists for the crazed Las Vegas crowds doesn’t mean everything’s changed. He’s still a genre-hopping madman on the decks and in the studio, releasing everything from tech-house to electro-pop, jazzy hip-hop, ecstatic house, and a poolside-ready remix of Ed Sheeran in the past 12 months alone.

Oh, and he’s still an absolute riot. That part will never change.

“I went to this art high school, and there was this class called 'New Genres,'” he says. “You could basically do whatever you wanted. The teacher didn't care because new genres in visual arts meant any genre that you can imagine, then state your case to the class and have them understand it as art.”

Francis and his friend Will would make videos poking fun at MTV reality hit Laguna Beach and mid-aughts teen soap The O.C. They’d play every character, male and female, donning wigs and over-the-top voices, shoving entire Hot Pockets in their mouth and throwing them back up.

“I was always obsessed with Jim Carrey,” he says. “I never wanted to be the main character. I always wanted to be the second buddy guy that's really stupid. When Instagram and Vine came around, I was like, ‘This is the perfect way for me to be that character online,’ but everyone just thought that was me. Everyone thought, Oh, that guy is really not smart, and somehow he made it. I mean, I'm definitely not smart, that's for sure. I got street smarts, but not normal smarts.”

Calvin Harris was one such eyebrow-raiser until Francis had the chance to meet him in Miami.
"That was like, 'Pinch me, I'm dreaming' because I've listened to [Harris' album] I Created Disco so many times," he says. "That was when he realized that I wasn't insane. When I met him, he was like, 'Oh my God, he's like a normal human being. He speaks normally.'"

The two producers collaborated on a few tracks, including a remix of Harris' mega-hit "Feel So Close" and the wonky, bass-heavy "What's Your Name" from Francis' This Mixtape Is Fire in 2015.

Another massive check off his musical bucket list? Working with Brendon Urie of Panic! At the Disco.

"There's a song I had made with Michael Angelakos from Passion Pit," he remembers. "I went to his house for two weeks, and we were just working on music. We made this one song. I was really obsessed with Majid Jordan at that time, and I was like, 'Oh, this is really cool, but I don't know where to take it.'"

The draft sat on his laptop dormant for two years, and then he found himself in the studio with Urie.

"He's like, 'Play me some stuff that you got,' and I play him that," he says. "I was like, 'This is actually kind of cool. Here's the synth part that I made. Chopped it up with this. What do you think?' He's like, 'Give us the stems. We'll take it.' So I gave him three stems of random songs that I'd made back then, and that turned into, 'Hey Look Ma, I Made It.'"

It might surprise some fans to learn the same guy who made "Get Low" with DJ Snake has full-on writing and production credits on the Panic! At the Disco hit that reached number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent 11 weeks at number one of the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs list, but anyone who's been following his career since the moombahton days knows Francis is a chameleon who can pull off pretty much any groove.

Next on his list? Complete domination of the deep- and tech-house market with the release of the debut album from his alter-ego, DJ Hanzel.

"First of all, DJ Hanzel is not me. He is his own entity," he says. "I actually am getting sued. I just got the subpoena in the mail for [trying to release] his album. He does not want anyone to listen to his music. He's always said he wants to make a song that not even he has listened to. Like, that's when he's gone the deepest, but he's still trying to figure out how to make music without listening to it."

No telling if DJ Hanzel will try to stop Francis in the act at Daer this weekend or if Francis will let fly a few deep-cut 2000s throwbacks, but there are two things of which we can be very sure: the set will be a rockin' and rowdy good time, and Francis will be coming in prime form.

"Just watch that sugar intake because it creeps up on you," he says, "and then I'll see everybody in Miami!"

Dillon Francis. 10 p.m. Friday, November 4, at Daer Nightclub, 5700 Seminole Way, Hollywood; hardrocknightlife.com. Tickets cost $30 via tixr.com.