DJ to put a new spin on famed Barbary

It's black inside the Barbary, the two-floor Frankford Avenue bar and lounge that closed in May. But on a Tuesday night in September, the absence of light doesn't stop John Redden.

He's used to the dark.

The music promoter and DJ, renowned for his eclectronic mash-up remixes, packed sweaty, dancing revelers into strobe-lit bacchanals at the M Room and Silk City for years.

Now Redden, 29, is looking to spin at his own club - Fishtown's venerable, red-brick Barbary, which he recently bought with a few silent-partner pals.

He's the first member of his generation in Philadelphia's indie scene to acquire a place. But right now, Redden just needs to find the light switch.

"Watch your step," he says, as he reveals two empty rooms, one painted black with a new wooden dance floor, the other more raw. That's good. They're spaciously blank - perfect for whatever music, live or not, he and others bring to the place, which will retain its familiar name.

About the only thing Redden plans to add is a powerful, custom sound system. "If we turned the volume all the way up, the Barbary would become a pile of rubble," he says, smiling.

You can tell the wiry, spiky-haired gent is really going to enjoy this place, tentatively set to open Thursday.

"It's going to get crazy here," Redden promises.

That's exactly what Philly needs. The city's glut of lounges with pricey drinks, lousy DJs and worse sound has turned the dance scene sour.

"I've known him, like, 10 years. Forever," says Sean Agnew, 30, the chief executive officer/booker of Philadelphia's R5 Productions, whose 21-plus and all-ages shows serve the same clientele that Redden courts.

Redden published a ska zine, Ska'd for Life, and hosted a student radio show at Villanova University early in Agnew's days booking shows at First Unitarian Church in Center City. Working together, Agnew recalls, they attracted big crowds to live ska events around campus.

"One of the shows had 1,000 kids at it," Agnew says.

Redden is "good-looking, a nice kid, and people like working with him," says his not entirely unbiased twin sister, Danielle, campaign coordinator for the grassroots Philadelphia Community Access Coalition.

Besides bartending and DJ-ing together at parties ("He's a serious pro; I spin records I like in succession"), the siblings have other things in common. Both are earnest, opinionated insomniacs who reject hipster nihilism and "feel strongly that dancing is an integral component in the liberation of all peoples," Danielle says.

"We're different, too," she adds. "I'm politically active, ride a bike, have dirt under my fingernails, don't shave." John has cut his own hair since he was 14 and finds guilty pleasure in crowd-surfing. But, says Danielle, he also "owns stock, drives a Porsche, and dates models."

The son of Havertown and Cardinal O'Hara High in Springfield, Delaware County, was pursuing a degree in marketing and advertising 10 years ago, when he moved out of his Villanova dorm and into a beautiful house next to a church off Girard Avenue in Fishtown. He didn't know anything about the city's gritty river wards.

"It was humongous and insanely cheap: five people, $600 in rent," Redden says of the place.

He fell in love with the neighborhood and stayed after graduation, pursuing DJ gigs as well as his marketing career - besides doing club promotion, he's a district marketing manager with the Glacéau beverage company.

Redden has that talent for finding opportunity, identifying a place or sound - like his innovative "Waters of Nazareth" remix for the French dance duo Justice - that's right on the verge.

His year-long "Socket" party with Danielle at Silk City in Northern Liberties in 2005 and his 16-month "Hands + Knees" soiree at the M Room (the first weekly party in Fishtown), with buddy Ian St. Laurent, focused on electro and pretty much started the indie crowd's rage for documenting events in real time with online Flickr photos.

"That party got really big really fast," Redden says of "Hands + Knees."

"For the kids, by the kids" became his mantra as he arranged bashes that were cheap to attend, cheap to drink at and mad fun. His insistence on handcrafting edits of nearly every tune he spun meant patrons would always hear something new.

At "Hands + Knees," Redden got carried away - with lasers, lighting, smoke machines and heart-palpitating sound. A lot of people got carried away in other ways.

"We have tons of H+K photos that will never see the light of day," he says.

Redden had hoped to have "Hands + Knees" at the Barbary, and about seven years ago he made an offer to buy it. But it was a rock club without much vision. Then the place went up for sale this spring at a price Redden considered more than fair.

"I wasn't looking for my own place in 2007," says Redden. But at $735,000, plus $75,000 for the liquor license, he says, "it was an opportunity. Especially considering the location, and there's lots of people living in that area now."

With Fishtown set to become for Center City what Williamsburg, in Brooklyn, is to Manhattan, Redden persuaded his silent partners - a married couple with no club experience whom he refers to only as Clarence and Leanna - to invest in the project.

"I'm totally stoked for John to open a club. It will fill a huge void," Agnew says.

"John's layout is great, with better sound and very reasonable drink prices. It's like that old saying, 'For the kids, by the kids.' Well, John's going to be the first kid from our 'indie world,' or whatever other people refer to it as, to open up a club."

The downstairs Barbary will be for monthly events, and Redden challenges "DJs and promoters to come up with ways to make their parties better than they've been at any other venue." Upstairs, set to open next year, will be a "dive bar" venue of a different name that will have booths, food and a jukebox.

"In my ideal world, the club would be a worker-owned syndicate where profit would go to support the abolition of the prison system and fund radical social movements," Danielle Redden says.

For now, though, brother and sister will settle for making the Barbary a dance-and-hang space "where people feel comfortable having meaningful social interactions, where people can experience joy," Danielle says.

Many have failed in the fickle club industry, but John Redden believes the odds are in his favor.

"There's no money-hungry owner behind it charging $8 for a lager," he says.

"I'm a DJ who throws parties. I want it to be cool and never lose sight of it being cool. If I put my all into it, chances of failing are slim."