Story by Onaje McDowelle

Photos by Natalie Campbell

On Saturday evening the Austin City Limits Festival continued to shut down the streets of Austin with a series of late night shows. This month’s installment of the Red Bull Sound Select concert series brought out rap, R&B and pop fans alike to Empire Control Room where Mick Jenkins, Tory Lanez and Smino all lit up the stage. Orange got a chance to sit down with opening act DJ Blue, The Misfit for a few minutes before he carried the crowd through the night with great cuts and even better energy.

Your name is “Blue, The Misfit.” Can you elaborate on how you got that name and what it means?

My real name is Brandon Blue. My last name is Blue, and a lot of people don’t know that. They think I just threw a color in with some random shit. I’s really my name, and I’m trying to state the fact that I myself am  misfit. It’s nothing crazy. It’s nothing deep about it.or the longest [time] I thought I made music or did stuff that people couldn’t relate to or didn’t understand, and I wanted to make my own voice, my own lane. I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. I’m a misfit.

That’s dope. I think that a lot of people who submerge themselves in music culture are misfits in some right and everyone just relates through that same thing.

Yeah, I think now more than ever. With SoundCloud specifically, everyone has their own voice and they don’t have to cater to anything. You can go on SoundCloud and just discover different shit. You just run into a bunch of different stuff, so everybody feels that, and for people that do feel that way I’m hoping my music helps out.

You recently did a show on a casket?

On a hearse. So I have a new album coming out called “Perfect Night, For a Funeral” on October 28, and everything is kind of funeral themed. So, Bomb Factory and Red Bull allowed me to just do whatever the f*ck I wanted to and I said, “I want a hearse,” They found one, they brought one in and I performed on top of the hearse the whole set.

Who are you listening to right now?

I’ve been listening to a lot of English alternative bands— Metronomy, I like Crystal Castles a lot, Tame Impala, [and] Empress of. A lot of alternative, just border line rock and electronic stuff. Rap wise, I listen to [Kid] Cudi. I’m wearing a Cudi T-shirt right now. I listen to Cudi all the time, he’s inspirational. I like the new Travis [$cott] album and that’s pretty much it right now. Everything else is just stuff I gotta listen to for DJ purposes.

Can you describe any features on the new project?

I felt like the most organic music I could make was with my friends. The best product would come out if I was comfortable and I just worked with people I wanted to work with. This time around, there’s no really big features other than X, The Misfit. [There’s] Sara Jaffe— She’s a really good folk artist from Dallas, and she won a Grammy for being on Eminem’s album. She has a group with S1 who produces for Jay-Z and Kanye. [There’s] Kaela Sinclair who’s the keyboard player in M83. There’s a little bit for everyone on this album,. Everything is produced by me and co-produced by different people that I respect who play instruments. There’s one dude that played a lot of violin on my album who just finished doing the “Pete’s Dragon” soundtrack for Disney, so there’s really crazy elements on this album.

If you could do one dream collaboration, dead or alive, who would it be?

The only answer I really have, [is] the person who got me into producing— Timbaland. Without him I wouldn’t be doing this for a living. I’d say him straight off the legacy of him giving me an outlet, letting me know that I can be different as far as production goes. And he’s a f*cking legend.

If you had to pick three words to describe your sound right now, what would they be?

My sound right now is dark, cinematic and reckless. Definitely reckless.

Be on the lookout for Blue’s sophomore album “Perfect Night, For a Funeral” to be released on October 28. Keep up with Blue on social media @BlueTheMisfit.