Decker Rush proves that an unwavering passion and creative vision can build something bigger than yourself: a community, a sound that is gritty and groovy, and experiences people remember.
Born and raised in Colorado, Decker Rush first found his way in electronic music in the early days of high school, building connections in the Denver scene and co-owning 128 Productions. His passion led him to Icon Collective in LA to progress his skills before returning to help fuel Denver’s growing house movement. Now with a new single “Turn Up the Bassline” out on Higher Viiibrations and his Red Rocks return locked in for this fall, Decker is full speed ahead.
Sit down with us as we follow the momentum he built from the ground up and the sound that’s taking him even further.
Catching up with Decker Rush
Megan, Electric Hawk: Is your real name Decker Rush?
Decker Rush: It is full legal name.
Megan: Stop! I feel like that’s a stage name, like you’re born to be a performer.
Decker Rush: It was either that a DJ or a race car driver. I was blessed with a really cool name from birth.
Megan: So were you like “I have to be something?”
Decker Rush: I had that inkling feeling because I was always a performer at heart. I was always doing the lead roles of the school plays when I was growing up. Then my dad was in a band so I was trying to, follow the music path.
I got into EDM back in 2011 or 2012. GRiZ, Pretty Lights, and Gramatik were all the birthplaces for my love of electronic music. Then coming up I was always looking at DJs and being like, “I want to do that,” but it looks hard because the first time you look at a CDJ, you’re like, “What the fuck is going on? It looks like a spaceship.”
Megan: What was your first rave ever, and when did you have that “ohhh yeah, this is it” moment?
Decker Rush: The first electronic show that I ever went to was Global Dub Festival at Red Rocks back in 2012.
Then my first festival ever, it’s crazy to say, but it was Tomorrowland in Belgium. It was a high school graduation gift! My cousin and two of his buddies were going, and he was like, “Yo, come to Europe.”
I’ve been to Europe on family trips before. So I was like, damn, this looks crazy. I wasn’t even into house music at the time. My favorite set of that weekend was just some dubstep that I found on the side stage, because it was all crazy, Big Room House there. The experience was very eye-opening.
Megan: That’s a really good first festival!
Decker Rush: It was crazy. I feel so bad because I didn’t even appreciate or understand the magnitude of the festival that I was at.
Years later thinking, “Shit, I was just a young 17 year old, thinking this is crazy. Walking around with a Colorado flag around my neck.”
Megan: You’re a Denver native, which makes you kind of a unicorn. How would you describe Denver’s vibe and music culture? Do you think that comes through in your sound?
Decker Rush: I’m originally from Colorado Springs, which is an hour south of Denver. It was small and didn’t really have a thriving music scene. We’d always come to Denver to go, party at Beta Nightclub, and obviously Red Rocks. Denver was always the music hub.
From the Denver music side of things, it’s such a good community. Obviously, they call it the “Bass Capital of the World.” The amount of bass music influence here is crazy. So back in the day, there wasn’t too much of the house scene. It started when I moved and went to school in Boulder. Going to all the different house shows up in Boulder at the Fox Theatre and the Boulder Theater.
When I moved to Denver, I was going out so much, from Wednesday through Saturday. There was this place called Tennyson Tap House up off Tennyson & 38th and they had “Techno, Taco, and Tequila Tuesdays. Then you would go to “Steam Wednesdays” at Bar Standard. Thursdays started the rest of the weekend shows. I was out so much trying to meet a bunch of friends in the scene. I wasn’t even trying to DJ at that time, just loved music during that 2017-2018 time frame!
When I was going to all these shows, I ended up meeting one of my good friends now, Rob West, who co-owns 128 Productions. That’s how I met AP [Alex Padgett], too. Through that, it just blossomed.
Now the Denver scene has grown so much. They still have the steam on Thursdays, and there’s “Underground Nights” that are popping up around the city too. The culture is alive and thriving in Denver. There’s so much going on all the time. You can always find something to do.
Megan: That’s really cool to hear. Speaks on how much you love music!
Decker Rush: I came back from that festival in Tomorrowland saying “house music is the truth”. All my friends were still like, no. And I was like, you’ll see. I was the house music guy of our friend group. Always sending out new music to them. Then slowly but surely I got everyone to convert into house heads.
Megan: What made you resonate with House the most? Especially since you grew up with all different types of music.
Decker Rush: From the House side of things, what got me was that old-school, Deep House, like old Taiki Nulight. Now, house music has gotten a lot faster, but back in the day, it was really slow. It’s something I connected to a lot more because I just love to dance and get down. Obviously, the whole Glitch Hop/Hip-Hop, Pretty Lights stuff is still ingrained within my blood. But I found something within house music that was so much fun – it’s more energetic and dancey.
I heard a quote “repetition soothes the mind.” Being able to put on an hour-long mix and have it evolve and grow throughout, I connected so deeply to that!
Megan: Do you feel like Denver’s culture in EDM has influenced your sound?
Decker Rush: It definitely has! That’s where a fusion of my sound and my artist project is going. I’m trying to figure out this bridge between really dark club focused tech house versus really fun and funky, inspirations from GRiZ and Pretty Lights. The Sponges do a really good job of that, in terms of blending really funky bass lines, fun house songs, with really gritty and deep grooves. It makes you put a stank face on when you hear, like ‘oh, that’s hard.’
Colorado bass music definitely influences a lot of how I want my music to sound. Trying to have that blend between house music and glitchy funk.
Megan: How would you explain your sound to someone who’s never heard it?
Decker Rush: A high-octane blend of really anthemic vocal hooks, gritty tech house grooves, with crazy drops that blend the world between funk and filth.
My whole goal is to have people dancing their ass off. And then having the drop so crazy that, their phone videos are super blurry because they can’t stand straight when they record. It’s a cathartic release; That moment when the build peaks, the tension snaps and you’re screaming with your best friends, losing your mind on the dance floor. I really love high energy stuff.
Megan: Your music has this infectious, uplifting energy. What do you do to keep your own energy high and vibrant? Were you always like that, or did you grow into it?
Decker Rush: I’ve always been a pretty high energy and vibrant person which flows through my music.
In terms of activities I do to keep my spirits high, I love snowboarding. That’s why I’m not a Summer guy, because I don’t have the snow. The summer is always a little bit of a seasonal depression for me, just because Winter is my time to shine.
On the mountains, I draw so much inspiration from the adrenaline rush of hauling my body down a mountain on a wooden plank. I try to emulate that feeling. You know when you put your AirPods in, you want a banger playlist on the mountain. I try to make songs that when I’m going down the hill, I’m like, “yo, this is fucking sick,” and compliments that feeling so well.
Then from a mindset perspective, my mom gave me a gift, which I didn’t realize until a lot later, she forced my sister and I to go to this Business Leadership Camp in Los Angeles, at UCLA, called the LEAP Foundation. They basically taught so many different strategies of goal setting, how to interview for information, network effectively, and stuff that they weren’t teaching in school. The one thing that I really took away was how to control my thoughts and thinking.
My dad always said it when I was growing up too “you can’t control what happens, but you can control how you react to it.” It wasn’t until a lot later when I realized, “Oh shit, he’s like really right.” That whole program fundamentally changed my entire brain chemistry into being able to process a lot of different things, and effectively figure out how I respond to things.
Megan: You’re about to open for Mau P at Red Rocks, are you excited?
Decker Rush: It’s gonna be insane! November 15, it’ll be my second time back at Red Rocks. I’m so incredibly honored and stoked to have that opportunity again. I’m going for a full original set this time, so all of my own music. It has been a dream of mine, to be able to do that. I feel like I’m really at the point now where I have a solid backlog of songs that I am proud of. Being able to put on a show of all my own tunes is something that I’m really looking forward to.
Megan: Okay, so that’s your first time ever doing that, right?
Decker Rush: Yeah, it’ll be my first all original set.
Megan: So this is a moment in history!
Decker Rush: It’s gonna be crazy. I’m going all out. It’ll be a full run through of my discography and probably a lot of songs that I have yet to make, because it’s in November and it’s a pretty decent time away.
Megan: Can you talk about your recent new release “Turn Up the Bassline?”
Decker Rush: I actually wrote it at Icon Collective. It features a sample from Norman Cook from a 1987 old house record. It has that old Hip-Hop break with a really catchy vocal, into a crazy stank face drop. It’s being released on Higher Viiibrations, which is the label that’s run by 9B49. I’m really excited to get it out!
There’s a lot of other tracks that are scheduled for release later this summer as well. I’m stoked to get back into a consistent release schedule after school, and start pushing out all this music that I made last year into the world.
Megan: Are there any philosophies you live by?
Decker Rush: Stop being so fucking mean to yourself.
You control what you think. If someone were to come up and say the things that you say to yourself, you would punch them in the face because they’re probably super mean. You control your thoughts on how you think about yourself and how you show up in the world. It’s important to just be nice to yourself.
Megan: People often associate passion with excitement — but the word comes from the Latin passionem, meaning to suffer or endure. In your journey as a house producer, what moments have tested your passion the most? What have you been willing to suffer for, and why do you keep showing up for it?
Decker Rush: You get through the honeymoon phase of wanting to become a DJ and music producer. You play your first couple shows like, “This is fucking awesome.” Then you realize after that, to get anywhere you have to produce your own stuff. And it’s figuring out, how do you make music?
Once you get past the honeymoon phase of trying to do this for a living, you get into that daily grind where no one is listening to your shit, your content is flopping, but you just have to keep pushing through, because it’s something inherently you want to do. The time is coming, and you never know when that song you write is going to be the one and take off. Honestly, just having a delusional amount of optimism and hope around it until it works.
Consistency plays such a big role in this industry. Just showing up every fucking day and being better. It doesn’t have to be writing a new song every day. But focusing on content, or learning more about marketing or ads. You have to do everything by yourself for so long, until it comes to a point that people can come in and take the extra over for you. But you have to get to that point yourself before people realize that you have what it takes. It’s hard, there’s no easy way about it.
It takes so long for something to potentially pop, it could even be five to ten years. It’s for the love of the game and the love of music. Not being in it for the fame and money, because a lot of people will come in, hop on the new wave, blow up, but then they’re falling off in two seconds. They can’t keep up with it, because they don’t love it, you know? Be in it for the actual music side of it. One day I want a discography of so much music that I’m like, “This is fucking sick,” that when I die, I have a massive catalogue of cool tunes that I cooked up for my own creativity. That’s what keeps me going every day!
Megan: Last question, what’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
Decker Rush: You can’t control what happens, but you can control how you react. It’s such a pinnacle piece of how I move through the day.
Also, don’t take advice from people who haven’t done what you’re looking to do. That’s another important one. There’s a lot of fluff out there from people. Try to take advice from people who have done what you’re trying to do. Obviously everyone has their own opinion, but try to filter out which ones are good to take to heart and which ones you can let pass.
Decker Rush moving forward and building something that lasts
Decker Rush is building something that lasts. His path isn’t about chasing trends, but staying consistent, building real connections, and making music that hits both physically and emotionally. From Denver basements to Red Rocks, each step is driven by community, curiosity, and energizing people. With new music dropping and Red Rocks on the horizon, Decker’s moving forward with the same intention that’s guided him from the start: keep it fun, keep it honest, and keep showing up. It’s clear he’s exactly where he’s meant to be.
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