We’ve started a podcast! We just dropped our first episode with JC Cota from AllSound Music. He chats with us about his DJ business and why we should always do our best.
Evermoore Wedding Vendor Show where we chat with local wedding vendors in central California about how they help couples getting married. This show is designed for engaged couples and for our fellow wedding vendors to learn about and from each other.
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Transcript:
JC: So, I noticed my bride outside, distraught, she makes her way in, and she’s in tears. And she tells me, JC, I brought you all the way up here to take care of my wedding, tell me what to do. I don’t know what to do.
Josh: Welcome to the evermore wedding vendor show where we chat with local wedding vendors I’m josh from evermore films the host of the evermore wedding vendor show Also the home of the evermore wedding vendor directory where we have over a thousand local wedding vendors listed in the central California area Let’s get into today’s show Hey, welcome to the evermore wedding vendor show where we are going to chat with local wedding vendors And today on episode number one, we’ve got jc from all sound music.
That’s an exciting DJ company here in town JC we’ve known him for a long time and he’s excellent at what he does. So we decided to have him on the show as our first episode. Welcome JC. Please introduce yourself and tell us a little more about what you
do.
JC: Oh, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
We, like you just said, right now, we’ve known each other for a number of years. We’ve been in many battles together slash the wedding game and. It’s just such a blessing and we’re super proud of what you’re doing with the directory and I’m excited to be on the first episode here. So as Josh said, my name is JC Coda and myself and my son, Anthony Coda, and believe it or not, my wife, who’s our admin queen.
She does everything as far as contracts payments, all that good stuff. Jamie Lynn Coda, we own and operate all sound music entertainment. Now, we also operate ASM Dancefloors, a completely different entity, but what we do in a nutshell is we serve families on the most important days, wedding days, anniversaries, any milestone events, anything that’s detailed in regards to needing an actual emcee to facilitate and manage the time.
Along with maybe the pizzazz of some cold sparks and, you know, some uplights here, they’re moving light show a dance floor. That’s where we live right there.
Josh: Very cool. Very cool. Why I know that, you know, we’ve worked with you over the years and we know you do excellent work. So. One of the reasons we wanted to have you on just to kind of talk about your experience.
So that’s actually the next thing I’d love to chat about. Tell us a little bit about your background, your experience. So keeping in mind that the audience for this show is going to be about half a brides who are planning their wedding and about half all our other vendor friends. We’ve had a thousand vendors on the directory and I’m sure a lot of them are tuning in to to see what’s going on here.
So tell us a little bit about your background and experience in weddings.
JC: Okay. Well, my journey started in 1985. I was a 15 year old kid. As a 13 year old kid, I begged my dad for a mixer, long story short, we got one. I showed him what he did with it. And he was collecting 45s at that point. 45s for all y’all don’t know it’s a little 45 records, the smaller records, records, Google that if you’re, if you’re that young, but we, we started to record party kits for my dad and his friends and he’d sell them and whatnot.
Yeah. And we got a call one time, and believe it or not, we planned this big oldies but goodies party. So that’s where it started, and I pulled my influences from many of my Ventura County past VJs when I was a kid. Honestly, I have to give kudos to Howard Thomas, H. T. J. Scratch, John Manzella. Even like Steve Perez, who’s still doing it back in the day.
Now he’s still doing it. Now. I, I just, I fell in love with the idea of playing music and I saw these people dancing and I was one of those people dancing on the floor and the energy just, oh my goodness. It just, it charged me very first time I touched actual turntable. No joke. I had this like thing happened to me and I was.
I was hooked, man. It was my first love, and I was already a, a, a five, from a five year old, I could remember the Paul Simon. Music and whatnot. My dad would play. I was, I was born into that house that you hear about where the dad wakes the family up on the weekends with blaring music, that was our house. So my dad was like my, my music teacher without even knowing it, but long story short, we DJ together for a, for a while, myself and my dad, they call them big Don.
I call them pop few years. We came to Bakersfield in 95. I had to reinvent myself again. My pop was pretty much out of the game at that point. So I kind of took over. I had no idea what I was doing in regards to the actual service industry. And you know about the service industry that’s married to, you know, the music and everything else.
I can’t make an announcement if I’m not serving. But the bottom line is Anthony, once he turned 15. He started to play video games, very expensive video games. I said, okay, I’ll buy you whatever you want when we wake up, but you’re going to come to work. That turned into, Hey, this way, that way we had growing pains together.
I didn’t know how to manage. He just did. He was young, but we grew together. And through the years we, we not only sharpened our tools, but. Through the grace of God himself, we have developed a system and it just, it’s based on taking care of brides, brooms, families, events. On the day of alleviating any pressure, alleviating stress or any of that good stuff.
Everybody has the lights and everything else, but what makes us truly special is not only our faith in Jesus. But it is also what he’s blessed us with. The ability to work a microphone in most likely the most unique fashion that Bakersfield has seen maybe ever. I’m completely different. I don’t have the prototypical radio voice.
But I have a whole lot of charisma, I love what I’m doing, and you can clearly tell there’s an excellent passion. And Anthony has quietly turned into what I see as the best wedding DJ from a multiple genre perspective that I think I’ve ever seen. He’s superseded what I’ve done in the past. There’s a little story with that as well.
Josh: That’s fun. That’s fun. So I mean, for, for those that haven’t seen you in action explain to us a little bit about what sets ASM apart.
JC: So what sets us apart is it all starts when I’m walking through the crowd, believe it or not, when I’m walking through the crowd to get from here to there or check the sound or whatever the case is, I just can’t help but to talk to who is around me.
And I stay very I stay very approachable through the event and I think that that feeds off into the crowd. And so they’re very comfortable with us. So we set that family, that family environment from the beginning, and we let everybody know what our intentions are. Our whole thing is communication.
With not only the crowd, but as you well know, our vendor family, our vendor partners that day, of course, the bride, the groom, or say, the birthday girl, whatever the case is, or whatever the, the whoever the VIP is that day. And then, of course, the staff and everybody else, I always say, if it’s a spoke on the, on the moving wheel of the events last wedding day.
We’re going to be communicating. And we just, we just do that consistently. Also what really separates us is our style of music. First of all, we can go from the swing and we know our music, we know the genres. So we just don’t have a bunch of Benny Goodman songs. We know the genre. My dad was like out there as far as musically.
And up to the 50s and 60s, the oldies but goodies, the classic rock. And in the 70s, soft rock, which is one of my favorite genres of all time. And then of course, I was born in 70s, so I went through the 80s, 90s, and then at the current date. Anthony being 31 years old, he’s still connected. Fun fact about Anthony, the reason why he’s so connected, or one of the big reasons why, he’s a youth pastor at our church.
So, we have anywhere from 13 to young adults in the house every Wednesday. I help them serve that ministry, and it really helps us to stay connected. Musically, we listen to what the kids are playing, and you know, they’ll say, Hey, have you heard this or that? And it just… You pick up and so you stay connected and you stay sharp in that aspect.
So we can take you from here to there. But ultimately, what we what we strive for is just to provide excellence on your day. Nobody’s perfect outside of the one person that we know has been perfect on her. But what we do is we strive for excellence in Jesus name. We, we do everything. And that’s pretty much that right there in a nutshell.
We just have fun.
Josh: That’s awesome. Well, I know that you probably have a lot of good stories. But before we get, before we get to stories before we get to the stories so give, give us especially like potential brides and sometimes other vendors, you know, sometimes On a wedding day, it’s so busy, you know, we never get a chance to chat as vendors.
And so sometimes we don’t realize that, hey, someone started offering dance floors or they’re doing this or doing that. So just kind of give us a picture of what All Sound does, what services you guys offer and how you guys help brides on a wedding day to achieve their wedding dreams.
JC: Okay, right on. Okay. So first of all, all sound music entertainment, that’s the DJing aspect. So it’s music, DMC, the time management, which is huge with us. In most cases, we don’t really have a wedding coordinator. We may have an event coordinator, but we don’t have an actual wedding coordinator that’s going to take the timeline, itinerary, and all that good stuff like some of our friends do in the industry.
So we provide the timeline, the itinerary, but we also manage it on the day of, which is the most important part. Outside of that, I’ll communicate, I’ll facilitate. Referrals and whatnot at the very beginning it starts with our zoom consultation. I start with the zoom consultation and it tells the story.
In a picture sense with stills from all our wonderful photographers and Davis building, you know, probably better than I do. It’s kind of this way that way, but we have the most wonderful batch of photographers. I think in the world, we, they’re so talented. They’re just an awesome group. So, with that being said, we tell that story, we present, we don’t sell.
So, through that presentation, they see the love. They see the care that they’re going to get, and if that’s your cup of tea, then we move on. What we specifically provide, along with that, is obviously the DJing, which is clean music with every genre from the oldies, the goodies era to current date. Latin and English, we’re, we’re fluent with, with the music that way and whatnot.
We have a slew of Christian and upbeat gospel music as well. So we do a lot of church events and school events and all that good stuff. We have we have a fantastic line of uplights, which is a big thing with video and pictures. So we’ve spent a little more with our uplights so that we can provide that ambience.
Our whole thing is to accent the room or accent the event, not to take it over and overpower it. Of course, we’ve got the moving headlight show and whatnot. And if that’s applicable to your personality, let’s go. Our most popular over the last 10 years, our most popular add on has been the closed bar post.
And you know how that goes. It’s the money shot. It’s the first entrance. And it’s, if you, if you have the right setting. It’s the grand entrance, then it’s the couple’s first dance, and whatever. Spots you want to highlight right on top of that 6 years ago, my daughter got married. We bought a smaller dance floor smaller in that aspect of what we own now.
We didn’t know that that was going to birth an actual company. So now we own and operate as and dance floors, which is. A dance for a company that we rent anywhere from a 12 by 12 size, but we can go all the way up to a 40 by 40. We have 4 different colors, a little popular black and white dark maple, dark maple and white.
And of course, the all white. And that that’s taken a life onto itself, but, you know, God’s blessed us with a couple of young men that, that are stronger and, you know, they’re, they’re moving for us and man, I’m letting them at this point, bro. Yeah, there’s no ego involved. Go ahead. Pick that up, dudes. Go ahead and take care of this.
Go ahead and load the truck. Go ahead and load the van. So there’s been, there’s been a lot of things that have happened for us in regards to. Letting go, but by letting go, you can actually do more in this aspect. So it’s growth. It’s growth.
Josh: That’s awesome. So like how many dance floors do you have? How many events do you do in a day?
To tell us a little bit more about the dance side of things.
JC: We have a very specific way of, of, of handling events in a day, because that’s one of my frequently asked questions for our potential brides. How many events are you going to do a day? Because they see this and they’re like, are you going to be there?
Or is Anthony going to be there? Because you’re talking this and that’s why we only have one team. We have one rig that goes out. I have friends that I can refer out all day long and I have some awesome DJ friends. But with that being said, we take one event. Per calendar day. If it’s a massively detailed wedding with a huge dance floor, which a huge dance floor is anything from 21 to 21, 24 by 24, possibly up to a 30 by 30, that’s a big dance floor.
You’re talking two 50 up to five, 600 people. If it is something that detailed, we only take one a weekend, and that’s pretty much that right there. Now, dance floors themselves, we have a slew of dance floors. Like I said, we have four colors, so those can go out to multiple events. Sometimes we have a last minute stuff that calls me on a Friday morning when we’re actually loading to go out and set up and set up on Friday mornings, we typically will pick up Sunday a.
m. before church, believe it or not, we pick up and we’re actually able to make service. So, you know, it’s, it’s a good win win and we’re bang bang and we’re just really quick and efficient with everything we do. And we really honed that, that aspect. But just to be clear, we are not a rental company outside of the dance floors.
We rent dance floors, but we stay very connected to what our expertise is. I understand that when I go set up a dance floor and they’re asking me questions, I’m an educated mind of three decades plus. So I can, you know, what your DJ wants to be connected to the dance for, and it’s very important not to say, well, I think that might be good, or, you know, maybe you kind of could, you know, you can’t speak like that in regards to helping someone plan or specifically answering questions, which is what you guaranteed to get from us.
You’re gonna get a specific yes no, and in almost every instance through 500 weddings plus and three decades in the business, three generations in the business. I most likely am going to have multiple answers for whatever questions I get.
Josh: Well, thank you for sharing that. We’re going to take a quick break.
And when we come back, we are going to hear about some of the memorable moments that Jesse has had in his career.
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Show Segment 2
Josh: all right, welcome back to the show. We’re here with JC from all sound music chatting about Everything weddings and djs and dance floors and all the good stuff that they offer So JC I’d like to ask you you’ve been doing this for a long time What are some some fun memories crazy stories fun stories?
Just some some good memories along the way something you’d like to share.
JC: So I’ve been in the business for like I said my dad and I started so we’re three generations myself my dad and Anthony our son, I should say, and through the years, man, we’ve been through the trials and tribulations, as you well know, one story in specific, it sticks out in my brain right now is we met with a couple and they were getting married in Tahoe.
So that was, that was. The first question, will you travel right out, you know, cause if you get in, you get in the car and you do this, that’s eight hours, man. So we decided, okay, let’s, let’s go, let’s, let’s, let’s hold the consultation up. We’re open. We’re open. Everybody’s, everybody’s agreed. Let’s go. I met with them.
I, I, I met with them for like three hours, which means. We ended up just chatting and visiting and just completely connecting. And back in those days, when we were meeting in person, it would frequently happen. You shoot for an hour like it is on the, on the zoom, you go one hour, but if you’re in person, it frequently went two hours.
So it was, it was impossible for my wife and I to plan something afterwards because she knew it just wasn’t going to happen. He was going to keep yapping and I never, I never looked at the watch and said, okay, hey, we got like five minutes and I gotta, I gotta bounce. That wasn’t how it happened. Long story short, we end up going to Tahoe, which is an adventure in itself.
Right. We got there, got into the room, and that was… Whoa. So that was crazy. We got settled and everything else. And we just got to bed and we got a knock on the door. It was super cool. We had this big basket of everything from Listerine strips to, you know, to snacks and water and everything else. It was a thank you for them from them for us coming up to Tahoe and taking care of business.
Who do we know? The coordinator, and that’s why I call them the coordinators. The onsite coordinators are different than actual coordinators, professional coordinators. Right. They had a timeline that was choppy and completely against what we were gonna do. Mm-Hmm. And they were driving the, the bright to literal tears.
Ah. And that, that’s, that’s when I took the ownership of it. And when God charges us with the wedding, Oh, baby, you charged us and we’ve got to deliver. So I noticed my bride outside distraught. She makes her way in and she’s in tears. Oh, man. Excuse me. We had a moment right then, right there. She’s crying. I start to cry and she tells me, JC, I brought you all the way up here.
I take care of my wedding. Tell me what to do. I don’t know what to do. She’s driving me crazy. This isn’t working. My time is being wasted. My family wants to party and we want to have a good time. She’s not giving me a good time. Tell me what to do. And she was begging me. And I just took a deep breath. And I dried my eyes.
And I said, It’s our show now. I said, God’s going to lead us through this. And we’re going to take over and we’re going to have the wedding that I promised you period. And so I grabbed my itinerary. We had to do this. We literally ran over this, not in the car, but we ran over this, this coordinator and her timeline.
We had, she wasn’t getting it. We had to completely ignore what she was doing, and I had to physically take charge of the bridal party and line them up and do this and that, and I, the only thing I did was I checked with the kitchen, because you know, that’s one thing that we cannot control. So food was ready to go.
And it was, it was, it was sitting there. No, no, no, no. We’re going to, we’re going to, she had this and this, and we’re going to cut the cake and we’re going to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Hold on. So we completely revamped everything. We went with our itinerary, which got thrown out. We brought it back in.
We took it from square one , did the grand entrance. Everybody had a blast with the grand entrance. We never passed the microphone around to the room, but on that day, we ended up passing the microphone around to the room. Everybody was crying. There were tears of joy. Because there was so much love in the room, bro.
Everybody wanted to celebrate Sherry and Manuel. They wanted to celebrate them. And the microphone literally went, and nobody cared how long it took. Because when we got to dancing, man, it was just like, everything was flawless. Everything seemed as if we went from one thing to another. But it was, it was a literal disaster turned in to God’s good and give giving God all the glory because all I said was Jesus come with me, Holy Spirit, take over and tell you what he took over and when he took over, we just put our plan that he gave us because it’s not, it’s not our planet is that got thrown out, but we brought it back in and guess what, man, we, we still to this date have the best relationship with that family, baby.
And we ended up doing her brother, Jesse’s wedding. And so it was another party and that was another platinum wedding. That was just awesome, man. But we, we developed those relationships through being in the fire. You know, we were, we were the three is the four and together we’re, we’re in that fire and we got through man.
And like, like those three, when they came out of the fire, we were unscathed. We didn’t even smell like smoke, baby. We smelled like awesome wedding. So again, to this day, we have that developed awesome relationship with all our families. And that’s, that’s the thing. I could stay here for days and talk to you about our family connections, but we just, we’re so blessed.
We’re just so blessed to have those types of stories happen frequently without now the coordinator doing this and that because in my elder states, you know, you get it. All the grays and whatnot, they listen a little more and, and I’m, I’m a little more up front with how I present what’s going to happen on the day of, you don’t need to babysit us or micromanage us.
And I say that not disrespectfully, but I say that to free you up, take care of up.
And that was, that was one of the major partnering up moments of my career. And then long story short, that same coordinator came to me that at the end of the night, she didn’t apologize because she didn’t need to apologize because she was just doing her job. And I realized that, and I told her that. And so I think I released her from that, but she said, wow, I really like, is there a way I can get a copy of this itinerary. So maybe I can … we have multiple copies. I don’t need this one. Go off of this. This is tried through, you know, I don’t know how many hundreds of times we’ve done it, but we just, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Come on. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, baby.
We know about that. That’s awesome. That is one of the stories that again, I could stay here for days, but that was one of the stories that when you said, Hey, share something that was special slash unique. And that, that popped into my head.
Josh: Yeah. Well, that, that is a fantastic story.
JC: Almost got a little emotional right there.
That’s right. That’s right. You’ll see JC crying every now and again at a wedding.
Josh: I’ll give you a Kleenex through Zoom.
JC: That’s it man . There we go. There we go.
Josh: . Well, that’s perfect. So that actually leads perfectly into my next question, which is what advice do you have? And this is kind of like a multi part question.
So we’ll step through. So, so what advice do you have for couples who are looking for a DJ just in, in general? So the three parts and then we’ll, we’ll tag each of them quickly. About 30 seconds, maybe on each advice for brides looking for a DJ.
Advice for couples who are trying to budget for DJs. And then what should brides consider when specifically booking with you guys? So, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll take the first part. Advice when you’re looking for a DJ.
JC: Advice for a DJ. Be thorough. Be 100%. People will frequently, oh, this DJ wasn’t good and they don’t use the term wasn’t good.
Who hired him? What was your process? Did you interview with them? Did you interview with them? Did you do multiples? Because once one is great, but what about the others or whatever the case is, it’ll lead you back to the greater one and ultimately, honestly, pray on it. God, God will help you guide you to the right vendors, but be thorough check reviews, et cetera, et cetera.
Do the groundwork before you lead into the actual decision.
Josh: That’s awesome. That’s good. So what advice do you have for couples when they’re budgeting for a DJ?
JC: Well, I mean, budgeting there, there’s the B word right there, right? You really got to know, okay, this is my important hotspot and to be blunt with you, if music is your hotspot.
And don’t chance that old school saying, don’t chance on your DJ, your, your tape is beautiful and all, but does it really cost much? And, you and all, but you need that, put that budget towards what’s really important to you. And, and again, it goes back to being thorough. Maybe you have a guy that’s 500 bucks less, and maybe that 500 bucks is a lot to you.
And I have brides, they talk to me and I know that Vada came down 500 bucks and might’ve broke it. But we have our standards and we charge what we charge for specific reasons. And you know about that as well as I do, but be smart when you’re budgeting, be smart. Is that really where you want to cut the corners?
Josh: Yeah, that is great advice. We always tell couples and we have a wedding budget worksheet on our website for couples. Some, some printables. And one of the things we say on our budget worksheet is your wedding budget. There’s no right numbers for anything. It’s all about your priorities. So if food is most important, if music is most important, if photo, video, the guest experience, the decor, whatever it is that’s important to you, put your money there.
If something’s important to you, put your money there. And if it’s not important, then don’t put your money there. Say, you know, food’s not important, let’s just have hors d’oeuvres. Do what’s important to you. Like there’s, at this point in the game with weddings, there’s no right or wrong answers, you know, with where you put that money. So, do what’s important to you. So…
JC: Let’s say 31 flavors, because we get 31 flavors with our brides. No bride is going to be exactly the same. Right. Everything you just said. Yeah, absolutely.
Josh: Yeah. Yeah. In 30 seconds. Can you tell me how you guys work to make sure that every bride’s experience is unique with you?
JC: We take every, every wedding uber serious, but we never forget to have fun and love on the wedding. We take the same approach of serving. We have a servant’s heart on the wedding day. So that’s where it all starts. That’s where it all, that’s where it all begins. That’s where it all ends from the first song to the last song we’re serving the panel.
So just know when you, when you trust us, when you hire us on, we’re going to serve you in whatever it takes and we’re going to do that. We don’t get arrested. We’re in.
Josh: That’s good. That’s good. We’ll keep you out of jail. Well, this has been a great conversation, JC. I appreciate you taking the time to chat.
Tell us how can couples or vendors reach out to you? How can they get ahold of you?
JC: Okay. So with, with that being said my cell phone old school, 661-549-7002 you can hit us up on our website at the three ws , all sound music, entertainment. com. It’s kind of long, but with that being said, you can also take the short way, visit us on IG, which I use most frequently.
We have two IG pages. One is our first one. Our primary one is @ASM weddings with the s at the end . The other one is @ASM dancefloors. Whatever, whatever your particular cup of tea is. If you need wedding planning, wedding advice, wedding questions, ASM weddings. If you just want to rent a dance floor, which happens every day, it seems like. Build your questions to ASM dance floors. That’s how to get ahead of us.
Josh: Perfect. Okay. What is the most important thing you want to leave couples with as they’re walking away from this conversation with you?
JC: We’re a what you see is what you get company. So when you schedule a Zoom and you go through that hour long Zoom with me, everything that you saw, all the charisma and all the, you know, the passion and everything, that’s going to translate onto your day of.
If that connects with you, please, by all means, we would love, we’d be honored to pull the trigger. Trust us with your wedding day. That’s, that’s the big thing with, they trust us with the wedding day. They don’t just hire us. So, long story short, we’re, we’re going to give you our best one way or another, whatever’s going on with us here was not translated over there, we’re, we’re going to give it all five, six hours, however long we’re there, you’re going to get our best.
Josh: Well, thank you, JC, for giving us your best today on the show. Thanks for being on the show. Oh, heck yeah. Love it. Love it. Well, everyone hope you enjoyed this episode. Stay tuned for next week’s episode where we’ll chat with another vendor and keep going on this wedding planning journey. If you liked today’s episode, be sure to like comment and subscribe on Apple iTunes, and YouTube, where we have the video version of the show.
Be sure to leave us a comment or review. Let us know what you liked, what you learned. And until next time, I’m Josh from Evermore Films. Be sure to tune in next. Next week for another episode of the Evermore Wedding Vendor Show.