DJ Profiles: Tom Proctor

Tom Proctor is a DJ hailing from Manchester, England, and has remained state-side for five plus years in pursuit of a career in radio. Before radio, he held jobs where it was “incredibly important to be chatty:” door to door salesmen, IT recruiter, etc; until he found a use for such a skill at Big Heavy World, conversing on the radio with Burlington’s local music talent.

In his show, Rocket Shop, Tom’s goal is to give the “audience listening a really good sense of who this person (or band) is”—to “have a conversation” with them. He engages  with the artist in a back-and-forth, rather than just playing narrator to a point by point interview. He doesn’t set out strict questions for the artist to answer, preferring to come up with broader ideas on relevant topics to then ask the artist about. Thanks to this, Tom gets artists to share both their music and themselves in a way that can’t be heard elsewhere. When he’s not at Big Heavy World, Tom fills his time listening to indie-rock, volunteering, cycling, and trying to get involved in the community at large.

Text by Thomas Himmield.

Photo by James Lockridge.