Country music DJ Rattlesnake Johnny: ‘Britain wasn’t quite ready for this - now it’s taken off’
Hailing from Summerville, South Carolina, top country music DJ Rattlesnake Johnny is definitely the ‘real deal’ when it comes to in-depth knowledge of, and a passion for, the genre – and he will be showcasing his dancefloor-filling skills at this year’s Shelford Festival and Feast.
A few years ago, there may not quite have been the appetite for country music in the UK – though that has all changed, according to Rattlesnake Johnny, who divides his time between his home state and the UK.
“I love the nightlife scene in the UK, and as a DJ that was very exciting to me,” explains Johnny, speaking to the Cambridge Independent from his home “just outside of Newcastle”.
“The way British people do nightclubs and bars is just so much more crazy and intense than a lot of what you get in the US…
“I actually tried doing country music [in the UK] quite a few times and it didn’t really take off; I didn’t feel like the British fans were quite ready for that yet.
“And then maybe three and a half, four years ago, I started playing it out and it was like there was just this swell and everybody was listening to it.
“Everybody was interested in Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen and all this kind of stuff – and from there it just kind of exploded.”
He adds: “Originally, I just ran one event here in the UK, and I thought it would be like ‘one and done’ and it sold out right away.
“Then other people from other cities started seeing that and they were saying, ‘Oh, when are you going to do one in Bristol?’, ‘When are you going to do one in London?’ Manchester, Glasgow… so I think it was May 2022 I did my first British tour.
“And it just kept on going up and up and up. I ended up doing the Highways Festival at the Royal Albert Hall, I ended up doing The Long Road Festival…
“Last year, we did 90 events in total, so we were averaging about an event every three days.”
This year, Johnny played the C2C Festival at the O2 in March, and when we spoke, he was getting ready to perform in Paris for the first time, as part of a European tour supporting American country singer, Dasha.
Johnny has also played in Malta, Stockholm, Amsterdam and Germany – the latter “four or five times”.
“It’s crazy, I still have to stop sometimes and catch my breath,” he notes, “but it’s so amazing to see the British people and the European people enjoying country music so much.”
Johnny, who was actually born in Northumberland – he emigrated to the US at a young age, returning to visit at the age of 26 and then staying – also runs Yeehaw Events, which, as the name suggests, puts on country music events and shows.
“We’ll have dancers, we’ll have special acts, we’ll have singers, we’ll have myself playing some good ol’ country music all evening long,” says the hardworking DJ of the Shelford gig, which is taking place next Wednesday (9 July).
“We just try to bring the party and have us a hoedown, like we would do back in the Carolinas.”
Johnny continues: “My motto is always ‘entertain and educate’, so if you can be playing an accessible set that people can get into and have fun on the dancefloor, and then you drop something like Callin’ Baton Rouge by Garth Brooks, or even older stuff…
“Sometimes I’ll throw in some Waylon [Jennings], or something like old school Johnny Cash…
“It’s all about trying to give people the full experience of being in a southern bar or club and they’ve got the country playlist on the jukebox.
“You’ll get some of the new stuff, you’ll get some of the old stuff. Even the old stuff, you can present it in new and modern ways. As a DJ, I can mix things with all kind of other things.
“That’s what I like to do, and mainly just have a lot of fun – it’s got to be fun for everyone.”
How did ‘Rattlesnake Johnny’ come about?
“I’ve been a DJ for a long time,” recalls Johnny, who lists Eric Church, Hank Jr, Alan Jackson, George Strait, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, David Allan Coe, Johnny Paycheck, and Alabama (“probably the best country band of all time”) among his favourite acts.
“When I was at college – as you guys would say, university – I was at the University of South Carolina and I got a radio show, because I was already playing other styles of music out in clubs.
“I played hip-hop and all kinds in bars and clubs all around the Carolinas, Georgia, that kind of thing.
“And when I was in college, I got the opportunity to have a radio show, on WUSC [a student-run radio station at the University of South Carolina], so I decided to start playing country music.
“I got the idea of mixing up country music the same way the hip-hop DJs were mixing songs together and layering beats on things.
“It was almost like a passion project, and then people started to really seem to enjoy it and more and more people kept asking for it.
“That’s kind of how the whole thing came around, based out of that old college radio show.”
Catch Rattlesnake Johnny and the Yeehaw Crew at the Great Shelford Recreation Ground on Wednesday, 9 July.
Tickets, priced £15 for adults, £10 for children and £40 for a family ticket (two adults and two children), are available from shelfordfestival.org. For more on Rattlesnake Johnny, go to rattlesnakejohnny.com.
