Growing up a husky kid in Galesburg, Illinois, I was the mixtape king—trading hip-hop and R&B albums like baseball cards, curating tapes that became prized contraband among my Catholic school classmates (one even got me suspended when it landed in the hands of the legendary Sister Catherine). That suspension sealed my rep: if you were throwing a party, you needed Tony and his tapes. As formats evolved—tapes to CDs to vinyl—I kept adapting, and a desert rave during college at USC blew my mind, showing me that DJ-ing wasn’t just about playing music; it was about creating shared emotional experiences. There, I met Ian, my best friend and musical partner—we were broke theater majors with four turntables shoved into our dorm room, playing wherever we could: raves, art shows, Greek parties, you name it. Fourteen years later, that hustle turned into RedShoe, one of SoCal’s most respected DJ collectives. In 2015, I moved to Colorado and started commuting to California every other week to keep playing, wanting to build something new in Denver—but starting over solo felt overwhelming…