Meet Matt Silliman | Advertising Executive, DJ and Event Producer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Matt Silliman and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Matt, how has your background shaped the person you are today?

I grew up in Decatur. Old Decatur – before all the bougie restaurants, boutiques, and McMansions. I’m talking about the old Decatur that was filled with hippies, diversity, and the lower/middle class. My father was a professor at Emory whose income allowed my mother to take care of us growing up. Mom was a lot of things, from a soloist at Glenn Memorial Church at Emory, to a social worker and a schoolteacher, but mostly she spent her time raising my sister and me. She was a second mother to many of my friends who came from single parent homes. My mom, who loved kids and frankly all people, would insist my friends come hang out at our house until their parents got home. I was lucky. I grew up in a loving family and was raised by parents who instilled some great traits and talents in me.

My father loved school and academia. He knew he was going to teach in some capacity from an early age. While growing up he would ask me what I wanted to do when I grew up and would encourage me to do things now that would benefit me later. He was quiet and kind. I have many childhood memories of him smoking his pipe with cherry smelling tobacco and working on his lectures and various studies. He always made time for my sister and me – instilling in us both a deep love of the outdoors and nature. His secondary love, besides his family and his animals, was his garden. We spent many springs and summers with him working in the backyard among the wildflowers and ferns that he collected.
My mom loves people. All people. My mom would eagerly head to the Dekalb Farmers market on a Saturday afternoon and come home many hours later. Not because she had so much shopping to do, but because she spent hours and hours meeting and talking to interesting people from various backgrounds and cultures. Mom had many friends from all over the world and we would spend time with them at their house or ours. We celebrated all kinds of holidays due to this. Mom would learn something from someone she met at the store or library or walking down the street and the next thing we knew we were making interesting foods or celebrating different holidays.

Mom was a performer. She was a singer and one of the best piano players I ever knew, although she would tell you she wasn’t very good. She was. She was great. Having a mom with such a deep musical background meant that music was as important to us growing up as schoolwork. I took piano lessons, played the trumpet and French horn, sang in the Young Singers of Callanwolde, then later played bass guitar in rock bands in high school and eventually learned to DJ. DJing is what stuck with me above all else. It’s what I am best at, and certainly the type of musical expression that is the most important to me. I love to perform. I love to move people, just like my mother, and I love house music, which is what I spin.
How did all this impact who I am today? I have based my work and hobbies around people and performance. I love people, I love solving problems, I love to hustle, and I love to perform. I also like to stay busy. I work in advertising, I DJ and I throw events designed to make people feel good. In fact, I named my events the Feelgood Sessions – ah-ha!

As a professional, I run the production department at a dynamite ad agency in the ATL called Trade School (www.tradeschool.works). Trade School is a modern creative agency and full production and post-production company. We’ve quietly become one the largest shops in Atlanta. We’re known for making high fidelity work at scale, meaning we can concept and execute many things at once and we can do it all in-house. This is unique as many agencies outsource production to 3rd parties to produce, shoot and edit their work – we do this ourselves. This ensures the people that are executing the work (production) are as passionate about our brands as the people coming up with the conceptual ideas and our clients. We keep most of the production work here in Atlanta, which is great for the production community here. All of this leads to better work, more efficiency, and we can move incredibly fast. On top of our business offering, I absolutely love the people I work with. This crew feels like family as much as colleagues. Many of my clients are people I worked with in years past at agencies or people I met along the way. We trust each other and have watched each other grow up professionally, so current and future collaborations are easy and make sense.

As a DJ, I came up in the rave scene in the mid 90’s through 2005. In those early days I went by the name Starboy (WAY before The Weeknd) and I played high energy house music in Atlanta and well beyond. I held weekend residencies here at iconic clubs like Karma, eleven50, Compound (back when they still played house music), Vision, and many more. I also had the pleasure of DJing in other cities from Miami, New York, and San Francisco. In the early 2000’s I stopped DJing to focus on my advertising career, family and a life lived during more traditional working hours. I stopped playing for 16 years. Then Covid hit. Interesting how Covid was the impetus for me returning to the stage, but it was. My friends and DJ heroes were all starting to stream during the lockdown and invited me to do the same. At first, I resisted, but eventually I started streaming sets to old and new friends online. Once the world opened back up, I began to pick up live shows here and there – mainly at friends’ houses and small venues. Then I was invited to play at the Establishment in Midtown where I started the Feelgood Sessions. Since I have a day job, I didn’t want to play every week so instead I invited my DJ friends from the 90’s and 2000’s to come play sets. If I was coming out of retirement, I was going to bring all my friends and local heroes with me. The premise – play house music that makes people smile and feel good, as that’s the brand of house that I play and love. This typically is a blend of deep, warm, soulful, vocal, jazzy house. I loved the Feelgood Session days as I was able to reconnect with friends I hadn’t seen in years. People that grew up in the house music scene like me, then went on to have families and build careers and are now at a stable place where they can go out and dance and enjoy music without getting wasted or hurting their mind, body and soul. Feelgood Sessions ended by 9PM so we could all see each other, listen to some great music and be home before my bedtime. This is also where I reconnected with one of my idols and friends from the 90’s Keiran Neely (DJ Keiran) and his partner Mike LaSage. We soon started the Captains of Revelry.

Keiran and Mike owned and operated a few restaurants together like P’Cheen and Bone Lick BBQ, but they really made their mark when they opened and ran the Music Room nightclub. The Music Room was THE place to hear great national and local house music talent in Atlanta for years. It shut down because of Covid and Keiran and Mike took their knowledge of throwing great dance parties and amazing music outside of the club. Mike and Keiran approached me initially in early 2022 to join them on their journey to produce upscale events in and around Atlanta. I love these guys and their vision and together we have been throwing some amazing parties in Atlanta. We threw Feelgood in the Park which combines wellness, music, dance and a diverse culture right in the heart of Piedmont Park during the Piedmont Art festival and again at Old Fourth Ward during the O4W art festival. This took what I started at Establishment, the best in ATL house music DJs, and we added an early morning yoga session one day and an Ecstatic Dance session the next morning provided by Scott Houston and the Sol Dance Community. Both days were full of house music, good feelings, smiles, and dance in the middle of the parks. We have also brought some top tier DJs through Atlanta like Mark Farina (my favorite DJ of all time,) Doc Martin and the best local and regional talent. In 2023 we are launching a few new concepts and we’ll be bringing more amazing national talent to Atlanta. Feelgood in the Park will also be back soon and better than ever!

So, this is what I do, but at the center of who I am is family. I have an amazing wife whom I have been in love with for 23 years, two sons whom my life is centered around and give purpose to all the hustle, and a couple of rescue dogs. I see my mother and father every week. My mom is in memory care now, but I get to sing with her, hold her hand and kiss her cheek every week. Through all of this my father and I are closer than we ever have been. Although I am incredibly busy, my family and I spend lots of quality time together – we love to hike, ski and snowboard and watch Star Wars shows and movies together. Life is busy and life is good.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.

Have a look yourself and let me know what you think:

www.mattsilliman.com

www.tradeschool.works

IG: @captainsofrevelry

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Easy! It starts with a walk down the beltline, checking out culture, food, and the amazing A/V radio mobile DJ installation along the way. We would end up at my favorite restaurant, Sotto Sotto, for dinner, then head to a Captains of Revelry event where I hope I would play some house music for my friends. The next day we’ll get up early and take a hike up Arabia Mountain with the kids and dogs and end the day eating a great meal provided by my partner and friend, Mike LaSage, all while listening to some tasty downtempo.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?

My Shoutout is dedicated to my wife – Angela Taglia. As you can see, I stay busy. I am not a stay at home and sit on the couch type of guy. My wife’s encouragement, grace and support is core to who I am today and what I have accomplished. She also sees right through my BS and calls me on it- which I need daily.

Beyond this my shouts go to my family, my work family at Trade School and Keiran and Mike. I love all of these humans deeply.

Website: www.mattsilliman.com

Instagram: @mattsilliman_DJ

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/mattsilliman

Twitter: @mattsilliman

Facebook: www.facebook.com/djstarb0y