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Tucker and Bloom caught up with DJ Nick Catchdubs of Fool’s Gold Records to ask him a few questions. Nick is a nice guy with a Zen-like quality and has quite a bit of experience moving dance floors around the world. We asked him about the progression of Fool’s Gold, the powers of “Big Pimpin”, and how to keep peace in the booth.





Catch Dubs with a black North to South messenger bag.

TB: What’s in the bag?

Catchdubs: Well I’ve got my little Serato setup. I actually have one of the first small PowerBooks, the 12 inch. It’s kind of beat up, but because its small I love being able to carry it around. Now it’s at the point where people are like “Wow…you still have that?”. Knock on wood…it’s never been a problem, but now I worry that one day it’s gonna be so I’m holding off on making the switch as long as I can. So I rock with the Mac and Serato box and maybe I’ll bring a good 5 or 6 records just in case we need to switch between DJs. I actually had a really funny gig the other night opening for Tiesto. I had to play on CDJs so I burned a bunch of CDs, so now I’m burning CDs just to have on hand. Sometimes its easier to switch off with them instead of vinyl. I also carry needles, slipmats, Blackberry charger. I always bring stickers for the label Fool’s Gold, gum, just regular shit, ha ha. I know friends that roll with a mini umbrella.
I played a show 2 weeks ago in Switzerland and the club had these really awesome cups with drunk rabbits on the sides so I took two of them in my bag I didn’t realize I still had them until after I had played 4 other gigs and was wondering why my shit was all heavy. My bag had these souvenir glasses in it! Ha Ha,

TB: How’s the label going?

C: The label is going great. Fool’s Gold is me and A-TRAK and Dust La Rock the art director. We’re about to celebrate our two-year anniversary. It’s been a really good run. We’ve done a good 22 records already, more if you count the little digital releases. Everything we do is a genuine reflection of A-TRAK’s and my taste. I guess the biggest testament to what we’ve been able to accomplish is the fact that it transcends being just records that we like. It’s stuff that we like and we’re happy putting it out but it can also reach people that have never heard of these artists before and get on radio. Things that regular people and you know moms can listen to. It’s cool knowing that the potential for all of these things is kind of infinite. When we started the label it was kind of a depressing time for the record industry. Everybody was like, “we can’t sell music, we can’t do this, and we can’t sell that”. We just kind of approached it like there is so much good stuff out there that just needs a personal touch so why don’t we just fill that role? That’s still kind of the attitude we take with us. A bunch of new stuff is on deck. We are putting out Donnis’ first single. We signed a producer from Brooklyn named Kingdom who does really cool UK garage style, almost like R&B club music. I like that every artist and every release sort of has its own identity. I never want to be accused of being generic.

TB: bathroom break song?

The problem with the bathroom break song is you can’t get too hype with it. Anything that’s at least 10 min. long works. Usually its Juan Maclean ” Happy House” There is also another record on DFA, “Casual Fridays”. I just got this crazy Radio Slave remix of DJ Hell that’s like 23 mins, but it’s just this really a hypnotic techno song. It’s not really the type of thing you can just throw on and bounce. The best pee break record ever is Jay-Z “Big Pimpin”, cause that’s one of the records that I like to play all 3 verses anyway. People know the all words to it. One time I was playing a holiday party for News Corp. and it was just the most insane. This was before everybody stopped doing holiday parties because of the economy. They had rented out the whole second floor of the Hilton across the street from Radio City and it was just packed. It was filled with people who work in the mail room at Fox…shit like that. You could tell they were super psyched to have something fun to do and it was amazing. If was definitely one of the top 5 parties I’ve ever DJ’d for a corporate type of thing.. I played “Big Pimpin” thinking with this I could go to the bathroom and come back, but didn’t count on having to wade through all these people. So I literally get back just as it’s fading out, cued it right back, and played it again, but it worked. That was a great party because at one point there was this fat girl in the audience that threw both arms up in the air and had crazy pit stains. It kind of let me know I was doing my job.

TB: What record never leaves your crate?

C: It’s funny because there used to be when you used to carry records from gig to gig there would always be stuff you brought that kind of became like your record. The weird thing with Serato is that sometimes you don’t even remember to rip those records. You’ll be in your room one day looking through records and be like, “Damn, this used to be my shit! I should bring it back.” As far as tracks I always play, Missy Elliot ” Loose Control” is kind of like a perfect club record, especially for me because it’s not really a rap record and not really an electronic record, but has great elements from both and it’s just a fun song to mix with. I always end up playing that. I’m kind of a child of the 90’s rock, hip hop, and house stuff so I always try to squeeze in as much older stuff as I can whether its Jay Dee’s “Plastic Dreams”, the Beastie Boys, and really anything that can fit between a couple genres. That’s sort of my shit because it can act as a transition.

TB: Craziest Request?

C: My favorite requests are the ones that are written down, because I can scan them and show everybody that this is a crazy job sometimes. The best is when people ask for what’s playing. You’re playing a Biggie song and they come up to ask you to play some “east coast”.  There is always some girl who wants to hear Brittany Spears at 9 o’clock. My favorite requests are for stuff that I would like to play, but it’s rare that you get those. One time this girl came up and gave me a paper napkin that said, “HELL NAW…Do You have some Foxy Brown?“and I’m like, “As a matter of fact I do”. I was playing really fast stuff one night and this girl asked for Outkast “Bombs Over Bagdad”, and I thought that is a perfect request. I love things like that because I’m not an anti request dude. I’ll hear you out because its possible that your going to ask for something I was going to play anyways. You never say no to requests, always say yes and keep it moving because more than likely they will be drunk and forget about it. Or if they come back to ask about it you can be like, “I just played it, where were you?” Life’s too short to argue with somebody about pop music at a nightclub.

TB: I know you travel a lot, do you have any travel horror stories?

I’ve been pretty lucky. The biggest thing for me is getting to the airport and realizing that you either went to the wrong airport, forgot your passport, or forgot your passport at the wrong airport. That sucks because there have been times when I’ve been able to go and come back to make the same flight, but odds are you’re getting on another flight, and you hope they don’t charge you. My travel tales have been pretty copacetic, its always crazy to go to other countries because you have no idea what to expect. I’m a pretty glass half-full kind of dude so I always go in with the, “whatever happens…happens” attitude. If there is a stressful moment, something will make it unstressful. Other countries always have good candy, weird gummies that aren’t approved for import into America. It’s always funny going over to other countries and seeing…wait they put meat in this?? There is a story in everything.

Check out Fool’s Gold Records here
Get the North to South messenger bag here

Design is contextual, relevant in a specific time and setting. The I Pod wasn’t
the first MP3 player, perhaps the best designed and most certainly the best marketed.
The bag business can be said to be in a continual cycle of repurposing existing shapes
, flapped, zippered etc.  Men not just women are now in need of carrying smaller bags than briefcases / messengers to organize the technology that have been filling their pockets and being strapped to their belts.  The collective conscientiousness of our male image has expanded to see the value in a man-bag (our mini messenger, transit pass or sling). 

get the transit pass here

Tucker & Bloom on Handbags 101

Tucker and Bloom was recently featured on Handbag Designer 101.

Here’s what David had to say about being in the bag business.
“I have been designing, and producing bags since the early 1970’s. My first company, Bloom Fine Leather’s, based in Boston, Mass, found success through much publicity brought about by national news publications. The “roll top” bag was featured in the New York Times fashion section, and the bags were sold in national retailers, Macy’s, Jordan Marsh, Henri Bendel, Saks 5th Ave. Neiman Marcus, as well as other specialty stores across the country. Our small “mom and pop” bag company produced bags by hand, and consisted of me, my wife Dru, and one hired hand. After the birth of our son, Case it was apparent that we could not keep up with the demands following the birth of our daughter Maddie. We eventually closed the company and our family moved to Brooklyn, NY.  I began working for mainstream handbag companies including Etra, Sirco International, L.J. Simone shoes and accessories, and Ishihara Industries.(a Japanese company with the License. for Courege and Valentino).

After that, our family moved from New York to Nashville in the 1990’s, when I started working for Hartmann Luggage. After working for Hartmann as a senior designer for five years, I left to begin freelance work. On my own, I designed for some of the biggest names in the industry including: Perry Ellis, Atlantic Luggage, and others. In 2006, my son and I decideed to start a line on our own, Tucker & Bloom. The focus of this new line would be to cut out the middle man and give the designer the chance to work directly with the customer. My design skills and craftsmanship with my son Case’s business savvy personality and entrepreneurial attitude makes for a good partnership.  As our desire is to create our products in the US with a focus on direct selling through our website, we have just redone the site to provide a simple to use site with many layers to explore. It is my contention that it is possible to provide great design, service and flexibility with a made to order company based on US manufacturing and still provide a competitively priced product.

Our products have been designed around three lifestyle categories, transitions, work and leisure. Our target consumer is unisex 25 + , with a need to organize their electronic tools and create a professional image that is still hip but not too young. Our materials follow the lifestyle category for which they were designed, with minor diversions.
a. Transitions: This category is mainly Neoprene with ballistic nylon trim, though our sub-category of Impress is a collection of soft leather sleeves for computers and cord management zippered bags.
b. Work: This category of products is mainly ballistic nylon or Ballistic nylon & hair-on cow hide, all lined in Taslan nylon
c. Leisure: This category is made of 100% cotton with striped cotton ticking.

Our products are a combination of fresh interpretations of classic bag shapes, as well as new shapes designed for certain generic functions (traveling light). Our hardware is both metal and rubber. We use an aluminum side release buckle in a matte nickel finish with our logo laser engraved on it, a small micro-injection rubber logo detail and metal double bar rings for shoulder strap adjustment.

I have been in the bag business a long time and feel the time is right to re-think the way business has been done in the past. Small is beautiful, family business is great and the internet represents the future.  Tucker & Bloom is based in Nashville, TN, an iconic city for America, though our designs don’t really reflect Nashville (except for the hair-on cow hide). We like to think of ourselves as quintessentially American.

Last summer we were provided a wonderful press opportunity in Nashville Lifestyles magazine but our website was not completed at the time the article came out. Though this was a tough break, it was a lesson for us to be patient, until we are ready for exposure. The process of getting our website designed, developed and launched has been by far the hardest part of this project. However, the bigger picture is what we focus on. Working with all of the people surrounding this project continues to be a joy and makes me realize what I love about my profession.”