Few international DJs have taken as unusual a route through clubland as that of Montreal-based Max Graham. From his early days in Ottawa in the ‘90s where he built the city’s underground dance community from nothing – a task the rest of the town said was impossible – to his storm up the mainstream radio Top 10 charts of the world in 2005, to his present-day status as one of the most sought-after big-room underground club DJs on the planet, almost nothing about Max’s career has been predictable.

“I think I could have gone down the trance road in 2002,” explains Max. “And, I probably could have made a lot more money, and been a lot more famous. But it’s not where I feel I’ll get that real inside satisfaction musically. That’s the kind of DJ I want to be. I want to be able to look back and have enjoyed every gig I played. I’m not a money guy. I’m more of an artist.”

I ask Max if, as a result of his musical diversity, he sees himself as something of an outsider. “It’s interesting you ask that,” he replies. “It works against me that I don’t fit in with a set sound. You know, you have that Armada sound, Armin, Markus, Blake Jarrell, you know, and then you have where Dubfire’s gone with Loco Dice and Ritchie Hawtin, and these guys are sort of a whole big crew that hangs out together and parties together and they book each other at each other’s clubs. I’ve kind of followed a Sander Kleinenberg model, where Sander doesn’t really fit in with any one crowd per se. He’s championed his own sound, he’s doing his own thing with his DVJ and video, and he’s very successful at it.”

Max’s diverse selection of tunes has given him an equally diverse fan base. “I think I draw from different markets,” he explains. “I have some people who listen to trance, and some people who don’t. I have some close friends that come to my shows in Toronto that don’t like my three-to-four AM stuff, but they love my midnight-to-two AM stuff. But they’ll deal with it, because they know it’s not four hours of the same music, and it kind of fits together to them. Then you’ve got the people who love the later stuff, and it’s cool to educate them with the earlier-evening stuff, because they’re giving me some faith and trusting me to take them in that direction. And of course I’m throwing in some of the earlier stuff with the later stuff, mixing it up, and I think it gives the set a bit more flavour.”

But to Max, his diversity means that he can’t be easily identified or categorized. “I do think I’ve suffered in the sense that, in the DJ Top 100, you have the trance kids that vote for Paul Van Dyk, Armin Van Buuren, Ferry Corsten, and then you have the Swedish House Mafia, and they’re all in one clique, and they would never play a Kyau and Albert record, for example, but they’ll play a lot of other things that I play,” he acknowledges. “So perhaps I’ve suffered from that perspective, but it really comes to the satisfaction that I get from what I play.”

For Max, his music has always been an outlet for his creativity, rather than a business pursuit designed to put maximum cash in his pocket. “I think John Acquaviva said it best,” he offers. “Referring to himself he said to me, ‘a lot of people don’t know who I am, but I’m touring all the time.’ And it’s true. He’s got a good draw, he’s got parties all over the place, probably six or eight residencies all over the world. He’s not a flashy, Top 100 type guy, but he’s making money, he’s touring and he’s having a blast playing for a crowd that understands his music, and appreciates his music, and they’re not just riding some trend, getting sucked into some marketing scheme. They’re there to hear him cook his plate of food and serve it to them.”

Max’s desire to play a wide range of music has led to more than one promoter being unable to accurately typecast him. “Gatecrasher was a good spot,” Max recalls. “But what happened was this: Timo Maas missed a gig at Gatecrasher, so I got the call to go in, but I was more of a progressive DJ. So I went in, and I’ve never really been booed, but I did feel like the promoters were expecting me to play big 140BPM hands in the air trance. I played a bit more proggy, and what it did, was that it gave the illusion to a lot of people that ‘ok, Max Graham is a Gatecrasher resident. He’s playing at Slinky next weekend, and he’s playing at all these trance parties’, but the problem was that the trance clubs that booked me, I would show up and play what I thought was a bit more thoughtful music, maybe a little more progressive, maybe a little slower, and they were kind of like ‘ok, he was good, we were into it, but it’s not really what we’re looking for, we want full-on trance’. I’m thinking ok, I’ll go play for the clubs that play my kind of music, who are then in turn thinking I’m a Gatecrasher DJ, so clearly a trance guy, and so then they’re not going to book me, while the trance guys say I’m not their style either. ”

As Max sees it, this led to more than a little bit of confusion on the part of booking agents and management. “Now I’m the first to say I’m not a trance DJ, so I understand their turn-off initially,” Max concedes. “But it turns out that my management at the time was intent on putting me into the clubs with the largest advertising, rather than the clubs that were the best fit for me musically. It did damage to my career that I still feel here and there, because I still bump into people who think I’m a 140BPM Ferry Corsten trance DJ. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not who I am. I trusted my management, and I wanted to be placed in the right place to grow properly. But when it came time for me to play in the places that I thought I should fit with me musically – Space in Ibiza, or Pacha – they’d tell my agents ‘he’s a Gatecrasher resident, we can’t have a Gatecrasher resident playing for us’. It took me a couple of years to figure all of this out. I took a big step back, and asking myself some tough questions: What’s going on? How am I perceived? What clubs and I playing? How is this affecting my overall profile? I realized, unfortunately too late, that it really affected me.”

As many Max Graham fans have already noticed, Max's new double CD compilation, Cycles, has been signed to and released by Armin Van Buuren's Armada Music. So why is it that Max – after having spent so much time and effort understanding and working to break from his association as a ‘trance’ DJ and the stigma of big trance brands would choose to affiliate his new label – the appropriately named Re*brand Records – with the biggest trance label family of the new millennium?

“It’s a lot like the arrangement Markus Schulz has with Coldharbour,” Max explains. “I’m a DJ, I’m a producer, a bit of a business man, but I don’t have the whole business together the way Armada does. They’ve just nailed it, they have the distribution, the iTunes connection, they’re solid all around.”

“When I started making records, the music that I was making was very much on the Armada tip. When I had this reassessment of my career and my place in the industry, I realized that I needed to shake the perception of being a trance DJ, so I really pushed in the opposite direction. I had Armin Van Buuren playing my stuff, but I was like ‘Tiësto, Armin these guys aren’t cool, they’re trance”, and while it wasn’t conscious, I chose to go in the other direction, more housey. But it’s not my strength. My strength is melody, strings and layers. About six or seven months ago, Markus Schulz came up to me and he said ‘where have you been these past few years? We haven’t really heard anything from you. You did Crank, but it was a bit trendy, and kind of electro, and didn’t really fit with what we know you for. You’re so talented, but you’re not focusing on what is your sound.” I was told to follow my heart, to stop trying to fit in, and to stop trying to fight perceptions by fitting into a scene that wasn’t really my bread and butter. So I was confused all around. I even had Dubfire – who’s a really good friend of mine – tell me that he always associated me with big melodies, and big, building main room progressive tracks, big records. I just had this total epiphany in December, a realization that I really had to get back to doing what I do best.”

The catalyst for all of the soul-searching? Max’s remix of Yes’ Owner of a Lonely Heart – a superlatively smashing remix of an old 80s classic that landed squarely (and rather unexpectedly) in the Top 10 in the UK and around the world – proving to the world that Max knows how to make a nightclub go boom, but further muddying the waters of just who Max Graham is as a DJ and musician. “From there,” he recalls, “management was all over me, saying I needed to do another Top 10, I needed another UK hit, I needed to work with so-and-so to do vocals, and look at what David Guetta’s doing, and what Erick Morillo’s doing, and Bob Sinclar, and on and on. And so I was succumbing to this pressure, rather than saying f this, I’m going to make what I want to make. Owner of a Lonely Heart was a bit of a gag that ended up blowing up. The people in the know knew it wasn’t my thing, but to a lot of people, they’re thinking now I’m an 80s bootleg guy. The week after I had this epiphany in December, I did like five things in a week, it just all came out of me. It was like I’d had an intervention, gone in to rehab, and come out ready to make music again.”

Max’s newly rekindled passion for making big room records caught the attention of dance music’s movers and shakers immediately. “Tiësto’s Black Hole offered me an album deal, Paul Van Dyk wanted to sign two of my new tracks, Turkish Delight and Carbine, right away, and then Armin Van Buuren contacted me and said ‘why don’t you come on board with Armada?’ and I thought about it. I thought ‘who have been my biggest fans over the last few years? Has it been the Sasha, Nic Fanciulli guys? No. My biggest fans have been Armin, Tiësto and Markus. They’ve played everything I’ve made, they really supported “I Know You’re Gone”, heck Tiësto still plays Airtight from 2001, and it’s on Youtube him playing it at gigs. So I thought ‘why am I fighting what I do best, why not just follow my heart and get rid of the misconceptions about what’s cool or trendy, and just make what I want to make?’ Markus Schulz told me, ‘the day I started making good records was the day I stopped making records for other DJs and started making them for myself. So I signed with Armada, and here we are.”

For Max, it’s been a long road, but a journey that he’s enjoyed, and one that’s allowed him, as of 2008, to return to his roots and make the music that he wants. “I can’t bother myself with it too much,” he says. “As long as I have enough fans that support me for me to keep doing what I’m doing, I’m ok.”

Max Graham plays The Whiskey in Calgary, Canada on Sunday, August 31st. His new double CD compilation, Cycles, is on Armada Music, and is out now via iTunes and in finer record shops everywhere.  Like Max? Vote for him for the DJ Magazine Top 100 here.

TOUR DATES:

July 31 - K'os Panama City Panama
August 1 - Nocturnal Miami FL USA
August 08, 2008 - Rich's Houston TX USA
August 14, 2008 - The Church, Denver CO USA
August 15, 2008 - Celebrities Vancouver BC Canada
August 27 - Body English Las Vegas NV USA
August 29, 2008 - Heaven Seattle WA USA
August 30, 2008 - Ruby Skye San Francisco CA USA
August 31, 2008 - The Whiskey Calgary AB Canada
September 5 - Crobar Buenos Aires Argentina
September 6 - Cha Cha Club Bogota Colombia
September 13 - Gryphon Ft Lauderdale FL USA
October 4 - Rumrunners London ON Canada