Trevor Larsen should be nervous. At least a little bit. He’s not. He’s about to play the biggest gig of his career, but he’s too excited to be nervous.
It’s 8:38 p.m. and he’s bouncing through a quick soundcheck inside Vinyl at the Hard Rock Hotel just east of the Las Vegas Strip. This place reinvented Vegas cool 20 years ago and was one of the first casinos to open a real-deal dance club. Those things are not lost on this lanky 14-year-old, aka DJ TreL, even though he’s the opening act on this four-DJ bill at RVLTN’s 18-and-over Circuit show at the casino’s smaller concert venue. It’s still his biggest gig ever. He’s still playing the Hard Rock. And he’s not nervous.
TreL gets the crowd moving, opening for RVLTN's Circuit show at Vinyl at the Hard Rock on November 5.
He looks the part, skinny jeans with stylish rips in the knees and a single gold chain dangling over a slick Milk Money sweatshirt. Kids are filing into the venue, tiny girls without pants and boys with rolls of raver kandi around their arms. TreL is waiting, impatient but calm, until he can take the stage. He’s done this before, sort of.
At 9:27, with around 60 people gathered, house DJ Tony Sinatra turns it over to TreL, who grabs the mic: “Are you ready to turn this sh*t up? Let’s go, let’s go!” He grins as he unleashes the first of many drops, the crowd already intrigued. Bryan Larsen, TreL’s dad, is near the stage, shuffle-dancing a bit. Alexis Whitney, TreL’s mom, is a bit farther back, snapping phone pics.
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It might be unusual for a Vegas DJ’s parents to be up in the club during his set, but not if the DJ isn’t even old enough to get into the club. TreL’s situation is a bit different.
“My father was a musician, and we grew up around music,” Bryan Larsen says. “But the crazy thing is our family is more into sports; we’re all athletes. We put Trevor into baseball, and he hated it. We put him into soccer, and he was nowhere near the ball.”
Bryan’s father, Bruce Larsen, owns a small local recording studio, and when TreL first started spending time there, no one was sure what would happen. “I’ve always loved music and had a passion for it, and every time I went to my grandpa’s studio I wanted to get in there and make music, but I didn’t know how to play anything,” TreL says.
Everything changed when he went to his first music festival, iHeartRadio, in 2012 and saw Deadmau5. He was entranced, not just by the music but by the lights, the chaotic party exploding around him, the people who were as hypnotized as he was. But he didn’t want to be in the crowd. He wanted to be in control of the chaos.
“I get the same feeling every single time I perform, no matter what the gig is,” TreL says. “I just love the energy and people being able to vibe off my energy. It kind of feels like a superpower. Making people dance is one of the best feelings ever. I think I could do this for the rest of my life and be completely happy with it.”
TreL was 12 when he DJ’d his first real gig. He warmed up by playing his cousin’s sweet 16, then played for a couple hundred people at a Fourth of July party. “It was pretty nerve-wracking,” he admits. “I barely knew what I was doing, but it was still pretty cool.” His first experiences only reinforced what he already knew—he’d finally found his niche.
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“I remember when he was 5 years old, looking through the glass doors of the studio, listening to me and my boys jamming to Eric Clapton,” says Bruce Larsen, TreL’s granddad, standing at the bar at Vinyl during the show.
The set just moved through insanely different genres at rapid-fire pace, from Drake’s “Hotline Bling” to a few seconds of Soulja Boy’s “Crank That,” and then, inexplicably, Drowning Pool’s “Bodies” and the Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike crowd favorite “The Hum” before transitioning into the Calvin Harris/Disciples smoothie “How Deep Is Your Love.” He’s all over the sonic map, and it’s intentional.
“I feel like I’ve been changing my style every few months, or even weeks,” TreL says later. “I’m constantly changing, and just when I get stuck on something, it changes again, because I’m still developing my own style.” He loves the big-room EDM sound of Vegas, DJs like Tiësto and Hardwell—even though he can’t go see them—but he’s more influenced by genre-jumping artists like Diplo and Skrillex. “I play a lot of different stuff, trap and dubstep and big room and hardstyle and future and whatever, not the same thing over and over. I want to keep people guessing.”
It’s working. His Vinyl set is so aggressive and moves so fast, the kids can barely keep up, but they’re enjoying themselves. TreL occasionally gets on the mic to pump up the crowd, which has grown larger and rowdy, or he gets in front of the decks to take selfie-videos bouncing along with them. He finishes his hour by asking his audience to follow his social media channels, and then, clearly wishing he could stay onstage all night, says, “Love you guys,” and he’s done. He can’t stay to watch Dirty Lazrs or headliner 4B, though he’s a fan. He’s not allowed.
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When you think of a Vegas DJ’s life, images of big parties, bigger clubs, late nights and late flights to even more exotic locations spring to mind. What 14-year-old wouldn’t aspire to that lifestyle? Despite the allure, TreL is attacking his goal with a quiet maturity—and the support of his family.
Dad, who essentially serves as TreL’s manager, agent, soundman and anything and everything else, worked for years in design and construction and made connections at many Strip resorts, and mom is a team member at Wynn Las Vegas. Once TreL got serious about becoming a DJ, he scored a meeting with Wynn nightlife executives Sean Christie, Jesse Waits and Jonathan Shecter. The club bosses gave him some valuable advice.
TreL's Vinyl gig was the biggest of his young career so far.
“Producing is definitely essential to being a DJ nowadays,” TreL says. “If you look at the Top 100 list in DJ Mag, every single one of them is producing. If you don’t produce, you don’t have a sound, and people know DJs now for their songs more than their live sets.”
After his Wynn meeting, he started studying piano and composition. Though he hasn’t released his own tracks yet, they’re coming soon. “I can’t wait for this winter break. I’m just going to lock myself in the studio and write a bunch of music.”
He knows he has a long way to go before he plays a Vegas megaclub—although technically, it could happen sooner. “I believe he could do it,” says Christie, vice president of operations at Wynn. “When Madeon was 18, he was coming in and playing and leaving right after, but I don’t know if we’ve had anyone under 18 [perform].”
Christie remembers being impressed with TreL. “He is a really nice kid, and if that’s what he wants to do and he stays focused on it, I would imagine he would have success. He was very serious at age 12.
“The biggest thing we said to him was, the only way to get notoriety is you have to produce and people have to like your music.”
TreL’s next big gig is lined up for March. He’ll be part of another 18-and-over show, this one assembled by NightHowl, which promoted successful events at Hard Rock Live on the Strip in October and November. But as much as he loves performing—more than anything else he’s experienced—the focus is definitely on making his own music. That’s his pathway to sustaining this creative niche.
“I’m just trying to find that sound and that vibe that’s something different,” he says, “and hopefully other people will like it.”
