Joey Paulekas Hits the Road With Emancipator

Joey Paulekas of Boogieburg Soundsystem recently received the opportunity to team up with Emancipator on his East Coast Tour. Emancipator, a Portland-based producer, is enjoying a newfound popularity, pleasing audiences with his laid-back, trip hop style. Paulekas will be joining him as he makes his way up and down the eastern half of the country, supplying the visual element for the duration of the tour. I sat down with Joey at the London Underground in Blacksburg to find out just what this means.

Me: Starting off, how’s life treating you?

JP: Pretty good. Things have been pretty wild the last few weeks, but other than that, good.

Me: How are things with Boogieburg and everything else?

JP: Great.

Me: What led up to you getting this Emancipator gig?

JP: Something that I’ve been working toward for several years with Griff, and just working with him in the past at events at Awful Arthur’s. He always really liked our design and visual work. And, so, you know, it just popped up, with them going on this big, full nationwide tour, and [they were] looking for some visuals.

Me: Cool. Let’s see. When and where will you be touring?

JP: It starts tomorrow, which is the 18th of January, and it goes to the 18th of February, and it’s 23 cities. Pretty much the whole eastern side of the country. It starts in St. Louis, goes down, all the way down to Florida, and then back all the way up to Massachusetts, Vermont, and then all the way over to Minneapolis, coming back down, stopping at a lot of cities on the way.

Me: What exactly will you be doing for them?

JP: I fabricated and designed and programmed a 20 ft. by 11 ft. projection — like, mapped out — projection screen that consists of 10 separate video screens that will be controlled with one massive projector in the front of the house, where the soundboard is, basically, and it’s all individually mapped or they work together and communicate with each other, and it’s pretty wild. It looks pretty crazy.

Me: What’s up with Boogieburg while you’re away?

JP:[John] Gaskins is gonna be here; he’s coming to some of the Emancipator tour shows, but he’s gonna be here holding it down, and [Jonathan] Griff[in]’s gonna be flying in, too, for the Emancipator show and the Paper Diamond show, so he’ll be here to help out for those. We’ll still have the same thing going on, just without me for a month.

Me: So we’ll get to see your setup at the Emancipator show in Floyd?

JP: Yea, at Sun Music Hall on the 28th [of January]. I think we can fit the whole thing in there, too. We designed it so it would be scalable to different room sizes — that’s why we did the 10 separate screens — so if it’s a smaller room, we can do six screens, or whatever, but I think we’re gonna be able to fit all 10 of them into it.

Me: Well, I’m excited to see that! That’s awesome. Good luck.

JP: Thank you so much.

Joey flew out to St. Louis that night for the first stop on the tour. Since then he’s been down to Florida and back up through Virginia for the show at the Sun. I was able to attend that show, and, let me just say, everything was spectacular. Emancipator laid down the most beautiful music, as always, and that vibe was only enhanced by Joey’s visual work. Indeed, I was very impressed.

So congratulations, and good luck to you, Joey; you deserve every bit of it. For only finding out about this gig three weeks before the first show, you really stepped up and made something wonderful happen.

If all goes well, Joey will join Emancipator again for his West Coast Tour. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed for one of our own, doing it big.

To see a clip of the show in Floyd, click here.

Printed in 16 Blocks Magazine
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