Chances are if you partied in Jasper any time between 1999 and 2007 you’ve danced to the turntable beats of DJ K-Train–or Kenny Trainor as he’s known on the street.
Back in the day, Trainor had a long running DJ residency at Pete’s Club, which is now known as 4 Peaks Nightclub.Â
After scratching vinyls and keeping the party going for eight years, Trainor decided to call it quits and moved back to his hometown in Prince Edward Island to finish his education.
However, after almost a decade long hiatus, Trainor said he’s eager to get back behind his turntables and will be spinning at 4 Peaks Nightclub starting May 20.
“After I graduated from school, I started playing around with my turntables,” Trainor said. “After a few hours I realized it was something I missed.
“I think DJing for all those years kind of burned me out, so taking a break was a good thing. I’ve rejuvenated and refreshed myself with the hobby.”
Trainor has always been one to dabble with hip-hop and funk, and says people can still expect that same style, but he said he has also stepped up his game to bring something fresh to Jasper’s club scene. He’s spent the past year honing his skills by rebuilding his music library and developing his live sets.
“I’ve put a lot of research into my music collection and my scratching techniques. I’ve also put a lot of work into being able to mix complementary keys with one another— something I wasn’t able to do before,” Trainor said. “It’s been a while, but I’m hoping to get back into the groove pretty quickly.”
While Trainor has always felt at ease behind the turntable, he said starting up again wasn’t without its challenges.
“The technology has changed so much. When I first started I was literally spinning vinyl records. A lot of the newer generation uses controllers and computers,” he said. “I still use a turntable, but I do a lot of work with the computer now.”
Back when Trainor first started DJing it was an expensive hobby to get into, but now he said the technology is so accessible that almost anyone can pick up the trade–making it harder to standout in the nightclub industry.
“I work hard on putting my playlist together— it’s not just the typical top 40 songs,” he said. “Back at Pete’s I had been there for so long that I just knew what worked for the crowd at what time, so this will be challenging to figure that out all over again.”
Trainor got his first taste of the disk jockey world when he was just a kid at a teen dance in the early 1990s. After watching a headphone wearing man charismatically pull old vinyl records out of a bin and smoothly place them onto a turntable, he said he was completely hooked.
“I’d just never heard or seen anything like that before,” Trainor said. “And this DJ was actually scratching and I just thought it was so cool. I knew right away it was something I wanted to do.”
DJ K-Train will make his return on May 20 at 4 Peaks Nightclub.
Kayla Byrne [email protected]
