DJ Times: You?re gigging a lot outside the U.S. lately. Is there something about trance as a genre you feel has more of an international appeal, compared with other genres of dance music?
Lawrence: Yeah, trance is probably the biggest sound, worldwide. When it comes to a party that?s a single event, trance will draw the largest numbers. On any given night, there are people going to house nights, but on festivals, you can find trance on the main stage. Trance has a universal appeal. It?s got a big sound, lots of energy. When you?re in a big venue, like an outdoor stadium, it translates. It doesn?t rely on vocals, so no matter what country you?re in, everyone understands it. That?s part of the international appeal to it.

DJ Times: Your back injury was a result of prolonged stress on your spine from DJing, but was there an acute injury that pushed it over the edge?
Lawrence: I knew something was starting to go wrong, because I had pretty bad back pains. But it was, ?The show must go on!? When you?re booked to play an event and flyers are out and people are coming to see you, they don?t care how you feel or what your emotional problems are. I?ve played with food poisoning and I?ve played sick. If you travel to Sao Paolo, Brazil, you can?t just sit there and not give it a go when there?s 10,000 people there to see you! I was in pain, but my tour schedule is lined up for almost a year in advance. I would ignore the symptoms and tell myself to just go out. It?s like you?re in a car that?s accelerating and you know you?re gonna crash at some point. If I took the same six weeks off to do physical therapy, it could?ve been avoided, but I chose not to.

DJ Times: Did you feel that taking six weeks off would hurt your competitiveness?
Lawrence: Yeah, your career?s on an upswing and you don?t wanna stop and lose momentum. This industry?s very unforgiving. In the university profession, there?s something called, ?publish or perish.? In the DJ community, it?s ?tour or perish.? If you don?t tour once a year, people will forget you! It?s different from being in a band, because bands traditionally are album-driven and people buy the album, but may never see the band tour. DJ culture is more participatory. It?s about going out. It?s about the night. CDs are a souvenir of the night. You wanna capture the feeling of that night out. DJ and club culture is about going out.

DJ Times: How many shows did you have to cancel in order to recover from back surgery?
Lawrence: I took six weeks off times two or three gigs-a-week?that?s 18 gigs! It?s not like you have insurance for this. You grow into this pressure, and suddenly, you?re in the middle of it and it?s too late to do anything about it. It?s extremely stressful and it takes its toll, emotionally and physically. It takes its toll with your family. It happens around you and you don?t have a choice. You?ve got booking agents?my wife?s my manager?that?s the other thing. Every night, I think, ?I?ve gotta do my best and I need to rise to the occasion no matter what, because there?s a million people who?d love to be where I am today!? I don?t wanna let everyone down.

DJ Times: What year did you first start DJing, and where did you play?
Lawrence: I?ve been DJing since 1990. I started playing out in ?93 in San Francisco at a club called Big Heart City, doing occasional events there. I was playing raves, and it was outdoor and warehouse rave culture. The West Coast was all rave culture. It was all this industrial stuff at the head of a vacant pier. We?d go, break the chain with bolt-cutters and bring a generator and hook up the gear. We had flyers for this stuff! [Laughs] A thousand people would show up. We did it several times. There was a factory we threw parties in?but eventually, they called the cops. Until then, it was great. It was very do-it-yourself, very much a punk attitude. A lot of it was illegal, but we didn?t care. At that time, I ran a pirate radio station on Sunday evenings called ?Universal Radio? that was broadcast from a park where all the TV antennas were. I?d built a transmitter and we?d go up there and broadcast our set. We?d have someone at each entrance standing guard?

DJ Times: A necessity?
Lawrence: There was only one time the police came. [Laughs] We had everything in suitcases, and we ran everything off car batteries. The cops showed up looking for burglars, and I?m sitting there with a transmitter. [Laughs] I shut the suitcase and threw it down. We pretended to be students trying to do an experiment. [Laughs] Those were pre-Internet days. Now, you get your sound out there via Internet. It?s a double-edged sword. It?s fantastic, because anyone can do it. But from the artist?s standpoint, everyone likes to get music free now.