These days, booking Derrick May is a tricky business. Mostly because online sleuths at Ears To The House and elsewhere are constantly monitoring the airwaves to see whether his appearance is being promoted anywhere – as we previously explained, the first rule to understand is you can’t tell anyone you’ve actually booked him.
So when we saw that the occasional 59-year-old DJ from Detroit posted a selfie from a train over the weekend, we were suspicious…
What exactly was May doing and where was he heading? Did he have a secret gig lined up, with his name only being revealed at the last possible moment? As far as we can establish this Monday afternoon, the answer to this second question was no – our searches have not, at the time of publication, come up with anything.
Debate ensued over at Michael James’s Facebook page asking where the train was – but the only consensus was that he wasn’t in the UK. The reason? Because the train appeared to be clean and were actually running – a droll reference to recent strikes on the British rail network. Thankfully, one of our sources in Detroit helpfully told us May was actually on the continent for “social reasons”, but declined to comment further.
He is, of course, as entitled to do this as anyone else to do this, although it might be worth mentioning this isn’t May’s first appearance in Europe recently – he last visited during the summer of 2022. He still has many friends in Europe, a continent which provided him with much work during his time as a DJ. In particular, May still has a lot of promoter friends in Italy and neighbouring Switzerland – a source describes his attitude to these long-standing relationships as “almost paternal in nature”.
Another country in Europe which May is understood to like is Greece. It doesn’t provide him with a lot of work, but he’s said to be a great fan of Greek food and culture. He also has a close friend and former girlfriend living in the country called Sofia Tsagaraki, who is currently in the third trimester of her pregnancy.
More of a mystery to us, however, is who’s paying for this trip. It’s not normally a question we would ask, but as May’s own financial difficulties are increasingly a matter of record, we can’t help but suspect out theory that he was meeting promoters has at least some credence…
