The story.

By 1996 he was working at Hip House, the Chicago record store run by the people behind Strictly Hype Recordings and Underground Construction. That year a mutual friend introduced him to Bad Boy Bill, who got one of his mixes onto B96 Street Flavor, the Sunday show that gave up-and-coming DJs airtime. The Sunday it aired, he was scheduled at the shop. He never showed up. His boss, Andy Adams, heard the broadcast and told him he would have been fired if Underground Construction records hadn't made up half the mix.

The mix did more than save his job. It brought him to the label's attention and led to an offer to produce the House Blend compilations.

At Underground Construction, alongside Dance Works!, DJ Trajic and Angel Alanis, DJ Bam Bam became one of the sound's defining producers: six licensed mix compilations, appearances on more than fifty vinyl releases, and a run of records that carried Chicago's hard, jacking, unapologetically aggressive take on house into clubs across the US and Europe. With Alex Peace he formed 420, a four-turntable act people still ask for by name.

The techno side ran in parallel and travelled further. Djax-Up-Beats brought him to the Netherlands, DJ Rush called for remixes, and a long partnership with UK producer Jamie Bissmire produced the Beatjackerz series and The London Project. Those records remain his most collected — the kind of catalogue that still turns up on collectors' wantlists two decades after it left the pressing plant. In 2002 he launched Bass Heavy Music to keep releasing it on his own terms.

Fly House Records followed in 2009, built for the house, electro and bass house he was making then. Its fifth release, "Watch The Club Go" featuring Mr. Robotic, spent two weeks at number one on Beatport's Electro House chart.

In 2011 he formed Papercha$er with Marc Stout and Tony Svejda. The Chicago trio's remixes went to Rihanna's "Where Have You Been", Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)" and Enrique Iglesias's "Finally Found You", and Corey Hart brought them in on "Night Visions (Sunglasses)", his return to the 1983 hit "Sunglasses at Night".

Then came Dirty Werk. Paired with fellow Chicagoan Steve Smooth, Bam Bam has topped the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart three times: "Stand Up" in September 2018, "No Letting Go" in November 2019, and — as remixers — Janet Jackson and Daddy Yankee's "Made For Now", which handed Janet the twentieth number one of her career. Along the way the duo has remixed Ariana Grande, Mark Ronson and Camila Cabello, Enrique Iglesias again, Kygo and Galantis.

Behind all of it is the studio. Bam Bam has spent as much of his career engineering other people's records as making his own, with mixing, mastering and production credits spanning Flo Rida, Christina Aguilera, Chaka Khan, Jay Sean, Fifth Harmony, Corey Hart and Bad Boy Bill. Artists come to him for the same reason they did in the House Blend days: records that hit hard on a club system and still translate everywhere else.

He hasn't stopped. The Fort Dearborn EP with DJ Sheik arrived in 2021, "Front and Back" in 2023, "Hit The Floor" in 2025. What's changed is the shape of the life around it — these days studio sessions fit between school runs and cheer competitions, where both of his daughters compete. That turned out to be its own kind of production work.

More than three decades in, he's still in Chicago, still making records, and still the one other people send their tracks to when they need them finished right.