A fly on the wall

The drag queens on stage get all the attention, but in the small but strangely cavernous DJ booth above Legends Show Lounge, the relaxed and laid-back sister club to Talbott Street, Charles Reye is the secret chief of the night. He controls the horizontal. He controls the vertical. Most importantly, he controls the light and sound.

Charles Reyes is the secret chief of the night at Talbott Street.

“I have the proverbial fly on the wall advantage up here,” Reyes said. “A lot of times people don’t think to look up, so I get to see people acting uninhibited.”
Reyes has been the Legends Friday and Saturday DJ for a year and a half, operating the tech side of the drag shows and spinning his own massive music collection in between sets. On occasion he’ll spin on the other side of the door at Talbott Street.

“My specialty is heavily influenced European techno and house,” Reyes said. “It has a lot of rhythm and blues and funk and jazz mixed in with it. In between the drag shows, I play a variety of ambient, house and acid jazz music. I’ve been collecting music since 1983; I spend an average of $150 a month on new music.”

He began DJing after 15 years of music collecting and wanting to step up to another level.

“It was sort of a natural progression. I realized I wasn’t going to be content to attend these events. I wanted to have something directly to do with the music. I sort of have a knack for picking the music that can really move a dance floor,” Reyes said. “It’s been really rewarding. No matter whether I practice music as a career or a hobby, there’s an immense amount of personal satisfaction I get with it, and it’s even better when I can share it with a crowd that really gets it.”

In his day job, he’s been a communications instructor at IUPUI for four years, and often encourages his students to come check out the pub’s atmosphere.

“It gives them a taste of something they might not otherwise be exposed to in this cornfield called Indiana. And I’m proud to be part of an entity that offers that.”