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Party Boy

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"How many shows have you gone to that sound like shit?" he asks. "That doesn't happen in other cities. It happens here because fuckers don't want to spend on sound. That's why I lose money, because I spend on sound or I spend on whatever."

But Diplo hooked him up with a New York promoter named Roxy Summers, a.k.a. Oxy Cottontail, who was a big fan of Rapid Ric and asked Sonzala if he could bring up the DJ for her birthday party.

No problem, he said, and thus began a beautiful friendship.

"She's connected," says Sonzala. "She can handle the groundwork and getting the venues and all that, and my role is more getting the artists together and getting some PR on it."

And unlike many in the biz, they're both willing to put in the effort, setting up clubs, booking flights, inviting journalists, passing out flyers, doing radio interviews, posting on message boards, texting everyone they know.

"A lot of people think club promoting is just fun, and it is fun, but it's a lot of work," says Summers. "Matt and I, we just have each other's backs...It's HoustonSoReal because that motherfucker is the realest."

They started hosting Texas nights in various Manhattan clubs, riding the Screwston wave generated by the surge of articles in music magazines, not to mention The New York Times and The New Yorker. And the City came out to listen.

"My goal is to bring together all kinds of people, have a mixed crowd of everybody: young, old, black, white, Spanish, Asian, whatever," says Sonzala.

He began thinking in international terms, trying to come up with more ways to push the Texas sound, looking up old connections around the world. He started booking shows in Canada, Holland, Norway and England.

You might think all that travel would've affected his home life, but you're probably not thinking outside the cubicle.

"What's nice about his job is that his time at work is so unconventional that it allows him a lot of one-on-one time with our girls," says his wife Melissa. "Even with the travel and everything else, he's around much more than most men."

Still, every show needs to be a success, 'cause otherwise the man's just on a whirlwind vacation, jet-setting the world with a bunch of rappers, neglecting his duties at home. Which is why the question kept coming up that clear Labor Day night:

What if the City decided to sleep?

"I'm a loner," Sonzala writes on his blog, HoustonSoReal, in a post dated July 21, 2006. "I prefer to work by myself, on projects I want to work and I don't generally need too much help or outside influence to make things happen. When I work by myself I can't blame anyone for anything but myself and I prefer to keep it that way. However, in this past week I have had to step outside the box a bit and work in a whole 'nother way."

What followed was a tale of life on the road, full of drugs, rap and violence. Sonzala had gotten an e-mail a few weeks before from a buddy who asked about a Devin the Dude show he'd seen advertised in Vancouver. Sonzala does all of the Dude's international booking, but he had no idea what the guy was talking about. A few phone calls later, and come to find out some some promoter in Houston had set up a show for the Dude, taken a bunch of money and not even bothered to let the Dude know.

"Thing is, this type of shit happens in the music biz every day," Sonzala writes. "Someone is always trying to get over on someone, it's nothing new. But I can't personally have promoters in Canada thinking that Devin doesn't show up to his gigs."

So Sonzala and the Dude hopped on a plane and headed up to Vancouver for the show, where they met the two money guys, a couple of "extremely rich kids who have a penchant for cocaine and steroids." After seeing some sights, Sonzala and the Dude went to the hotel to rest up, but apparently this wasn't allowed, because 15 minutes later the money guys were banging on the door, yelling that Sonzala had to wake the Dude up for an appearance at a club.

"An old man comes out of his room to see what the problem is," Sonzala writes. "One of the steroid-addled dudes runs at him in the hall and I had to literally grab him and stop him from confronting the old man. Note -- all these dudes were huge and could have probably fucked me up bad."

A couple more clubs and testosterone-fueled outbursts later, the group decided to call it a night. "Great," Sonzala writes. "So as we are walking back to the car, about eight deep, one of the steroid boys comes running through our crowd and checks one of his boys. Basically he kind of pseudo-tackled him. Well, as he did this he knocked over a totally innocent dude. A regular Canadian guy just standing on the street eating a pretzel or some shit talking to two girls.

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