Thurston -- better known in Denver as DJ Sara T -- still has no shortage of associates, acquaintances and admirers. Besides co-owning Chielle, a quirky new boutique at 26 Broadway, she drums in two buzz-generating bands, Hot House and Clotheshorse (formerly called the Little Heads). But the energetic, shyly amiable overachiever is most famous for her hip-rocking residency, Danceotron. Billed as "Denver's No Bullshit Dance Party," the popular event snared Thurston a pair of major awards last year: the Denver Post's Best Underground DJ and Westword's own Best Dance/Electronic DJ. But despite all the love, Danceotron's history has been as tumultuous as Thurston's own.
"I lived in eight different states before settling down in New Jersey for high school," she explains. "I realized early on that I wasn't like everybody else. I have really thick emotional associations with music. I remember sitting down with my friends when I was seven and talking about Madonna. I would say, 'You won't believe it -- my mom makes me listen to Willie Nelson. I'm so deprived.' They were like, 'What are you talking about?'"
But while most kids start cultivating angst like acne once they hit puberty, it was in high school that Thurston started shedding hers. "My high school was actually a pretty good environment," she admits. "There was a lot of diversity. The class vice president was a girl with a Mohawk. So I didn't feel oppressed there or anything. But as soon as I started growing up and going out and trying to be friendly, I always encountered people who really wanted me to be unhappy. It wasn't personal; they did it inadvertently. Everyone knows what I'm talking about: You walk into a room, and right away, although no words are said to you, you feel like you don't belong. But I just pushed through that. Ultimately, it's just insecurity about yourself, but I thought maybe that somebody else might feel the same way I do."
Thurston began to find those kindred spirits after graduating from high school and moving to Boulder in 1996. After dabbling in child care and video production, she got two on-air DJ gigs simultaneously: at an Internet radio station and at the fledgling Radio 1190. In addition to having unlimited access to vast libraries of music, she became acquainted with Boulder's rave scene and started going to underground dance parties. But as much as she admired the sense of unity at those events, it was always from a distance.
"Josh Ivy would deejay," she recalls, "and Psychonaut, who's now known as Widowmaker. It was community and family. I sort of fit in, but not really. But I love those guys, and I felt safe there. I was really inspired by that. But I wasn't entirely accepted, and I really wanted to create my own space."
Thurston began voraciously collecting records as soon as she got to Boulder. At first enamored of drum-and-bass, she couldn't find enough of the genre that struck a chord, so she started branching out, raiding Wax Trax and Bart's CD Cellar for all manner of vinyl. In addition to electronic music, she submerged herself in soundtracks, vintage exotica, old-school rap and post-rock, an all-consuming appetite that mirrored the aesthetic of her radio sets.
"The Internet station was called the Eclectic Radio Company," she says. "The DJ was the format. I'd go from Ali Farka Toure to Negativland to, like, Low, and have to figure out how to make it work."
After moving to Denver in 2000, Thurston got her first live DJ residency, a Wednesday-afternoon happy hour at the Snake Pit. It didn't exactly set Denver's dancing shoes on fire. "I was pretty nervous," she confesses, "even though everyone was in the other room at the bar. That was just a period of getting to know the equipment. You know, getting my chops."
Six months later, the happy hour tanked. In the meantime, though, Thurston had started exploring another musical avenue -- the rock-and-roll band. "For me, making music was always something someone else did. I always stuck in the background," she says. "My friends were always the ones with big ideas, who did big things. I had always put all my energy into other people's projects. Then I thought, 'Maybe I should just do this for myself.'"
Picking up the drums and forming an indie-rock outfit called the Little Heads, Thurston remained creatively occupied. But the wheels of steel still spun in the back of her mind, and soon a friend, Moses Montalvo, asked her to be his partner at the Skylark for a weekly shindig called Hip Fidelity. Now known as Sara T, she unleashed the sassier side of her record collection, whipping up a kaleidoscope of lounge and '60s pop tunes. And as trippy and innocent as her sets were, she once found herself serving up the sonic side dish for a round of knuckle sandwiches.
"Someone got into a huge fight right in front of the DJ booth," she recounts. "I saw it starting to happen, so I put on some Guitar Wolf, this really crazy Japanese surf music. I just really wanted to set the tone for the whole fight."
A less violent, if equally startling, night went down in April 2002, when Montalvo offered Thurston a party of her own at Hipster Youth Halfway House, his now defunct warehouse space at 26th and Walnut. With two weeks' notice, she conceived a name, a sound, and -- most important -- a philosophy. "I put &'Denver's No Bullshit Dance Party' on that first Danceotron flyer," she point out. "When I first moved here, I noticed that a lot of people didn't necessarily go to clubs to dance. There was a lot of posturing going on. I'd go into a lot of places and try to be friendly, and people just ignored me. That's a pretty clear definition of bullshit to me."
To cut the crap even more, Thurston posted a manifesto at the entrance of Danceotron to protest the rigid dogma of hipster cool. "I put up rules like 'Leave your attitude at the door' to make it clear that this night was for dancing," she proclaims. "It wasn't about perfection. It wasn't about coming in and posing and making yourself look good. It's okay if you dress up and put makeup on; it's not about that. It's about how you present yourself and interact with people. If somebody walked in and looked uncomfortable, I'd go and say hello, you know? It's really simple."
With a sporadic frequency of every one or two months, Danceotron nonetheless took off. Mixing everything from Autechre and the Postal Service to Liquid Liquid and Egyptian Lover, Thurston's sets transcended genres even as it cut them together, bringing a diverse crowd that the DJ describes as "breakdancers, club heads, indie rock kids and whatever other ridiculous name you could put on people." After a move a few months later from Hipster Youth to the Climax Lounge -- a legit venue with a real bar, sound system and advertising -- Thurston's dance riot really found its legs. By then, she had also joined the group the Hot House -- but even with two full-time bands, her deejaying skills were about to put a giant blip on the Colorado radar.
"I found out about it on my birthday," she says, speaking of her nomination last summer for Westword's Best Dance/Electronic DJ award -- which was followed quickly by the Denver Post recognizing her as Best Underground DJ. "When I won, I flipped out. It made me realize the world I'm living in is being seen, and that floored me. I try to keep my ego in check a lot, and I don't want to build myself up with compliments that people give me. I try to remember the negative things that people say."
After all of her success -- Danceotron is being upgraded to the hi-dive, where it opens its new monthly schedule on Saturday, February 5 -- mean people still get to Thurston. But instead of inciting a retreat, she uses it constructively -- as fuel, even. "It took me a long time to come out of my own shell and be who I am socially. I still have social anxiety -- not diagnosed or anything, but I know how I feel every time I'm getting ready to go to a show or a club. I don't want to go; I'd rather stay in my room. It got to a point in my life where I was like, 'I'm tired of this.' I felt like I was missing out on things.
"I think the way that I approach deejaying makes people like me feel more comfortable. At least I hope so," she adds. "I like having people come up and make requests and ask questions about what I'm playing. People have told me, 'I feel really welcome here. I don't feel like everybody's looking at my clothes.' It's all about creating a space where people feel safe. I don't want to walk into a place and feel weird, and I don't like people who make me feel like shit for liking, loving, caring, having emotion. And I'm willing to fight for it. I'll put on my own soundtrack and rumble."
