Name: Eddie Fowlkes
Nationality: American
Occupation: Producer, DJ
Current release: Eddie Fowlkes's Forever EP is out via Rekids on March 24th 2023.
Recommendations: My two books are: Brain Maker by David Perlmutter and The Master Cleanser by Stanley Burroughs.

If you enjoyed this Eddie Fowlkes interview and would like to know more about the "Godfather of Techno Soul", visit him on Instagram, and Facebook.



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

Very simple, I had an epiphany that drove me to making good music. I liked jazz, Sly and the Family Stone, George Clinton, and Afrika Bambaataa.

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you’re listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

When I listen to music I think about beautiful black girls because that’s how I grew up - around beautiful black girls that loved to dance.

Because if I can get the females to dance, then I have a good record.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

How I would describe my music career with regard to interests and challenges … I like the new technology, equipment gets you new challenges each time.

If you're doing it for so long, you are kind of ahead of the curve because you’ve been in it since the beginning. It creates a very big challenge, a good challenge because of the technology.

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

My sense of identity is a cultural base of my neighborhood because so much good music was playing or coming from people’s homes. And if you didn’t know what was hot in your neighborhood you were square or you weren't cool.

That’s how I created my musical identity because everyone was playing good music and everyone wanted the latest release from the record store playing from their crib. I wanted to know the hottest music from my neighborhood.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

It has to be funky and the beat has to be on the 1. There's so much music in my head, it’s so hard to answer that question because there is no one way in my life to make and describe a hit record.

Every day I wake up to make a hit record, to make people feel good. Because if I made a hit record just for myself, I would never release it.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

I’m more interested in timeless music because it could be original and innovative but that doesn’t mean your music will be timeless. Like my record “Goodbye Kiss”.



I’m more of a traditionalist, because tradition has a history, without our past there is no future. So Techno will always be the future of music, especially in the urban neighborhoods.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

I like to keep that secret because I think that’s personal.

What keeps me special is not to divulge my god given talent with these tools.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

I get up, I make my green smoothie and look for a proper booking agent and someone to do my social media - if anybody knows one, let me know!

After that, work on some beats and then I close the night with listening to music and playing a couple records. I try not to eat two meals in a day - that one smoothie keeps me going!

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that’s particularly dear to you, please?

My very first record, “Goodbye Kiss” on Metroplex Records. I created a wave that changed the world.

When Juan made his record, there wasn’t a domino effect. After Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson found out, that put me in a position where, “woah I changed the world.”

[Read our Kevin Saunderson interview]

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

Most of your hit records are made collaborating with other people in the studio. There's very rare people on this earth that can make hit records, and I'm not referring to dance music, without being collaborative with others, like Stevie Wonder.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

Being blessed by God to come to me to make a record. I think that my music will always touch people's hearts in different ways. Music is the glue to society - it makes people feel peace, joy, connectedness.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

Music give me a lot of energy, especially when it's a really really nice track or song. When I really like a record, I become a whole different person, a certain spirituality takes over me and I can’t control it.

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?

I don’t see music and science together at all. Science doesn’t have a rhythm, science is not on the one.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn’t or wouldn’t in more mundane tasks?

Hell no, you can’t quantify, cross reference, parallel that kind of creativity. It’s totally different.

It’s really hard to get years and years of thoughts across in music. That’s why you are making tracks all the time. Your brain is like a computer, you’re trying to pull that shit out.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

The deep message I’m trying to do is to hit people’s spirits in different ways when I create a hit record.

When people come to me across the world and tell me about the track, that’s their vibration ... but it speaks in words.