BIO

ABOUT

Hometown: North Andover, Massachusetts

Education: Bachelor’s in Accounting, Bentley College

Language: English

What’s it like to work with Craig: Craig brings a stress-free, collaborative approach to wedding planning, working closely with couples to create a personalized experience and maximize time on the dance floor. A seasoned technical DJ with roots in vinyl, he reads the room effortlessly and blends everything from classic rock and hip hop to indie dance and house. With polished announcements and seamless mixing instead of cheesy mic hype, Craig creates a tailored, high-energy party guests remember long after the night ends.

INTERVIEW

Craig Harriman describes himself simply as a “working DJ.” For him, that means playing for different crowds, in different settings, and refusing to box himself into one particular kind of event.

“I don’t classify myself as a wedding DJ, but I’m a DJ who’s good at doing weddings,” Craig says.

Even before he began DJing in college, Craig has always been a music lover, tuning in to the legendary rock radio station WBCN with his mom for as long as he could remember.

“We’d listen to all the Boston radio stations. 70s, 80s rock, classic rock: that was my childhood,” Craig says. “A lot of that music, even as I got older and went back to it, I still really love. Fleetwood Mac and Talking Heads are still some of my favorite bands. My dad was big into Steve Winwood and other kinds of rock in the ‘80s, so I took some stuff from them too. 

Despite his parents’ influence, most of Craig’s musical journey was largely independent, as he soon discovered and embraced other genres.

“When I was first introduced to hip hop, it was my first type of music that I really thought of as mine, rather than just the stuff I listened to with my parents,” Craig says. “Eventually, I went to college and I met a kid who was doing the college radio station on campus. He was from Jersey, and around this time (late ‘80s and ‘90s), there was a huge renaissance going on in New York. Underground hip hop was huge. I didn’t know anything about it until he put me onto all that, and then from there, the rest is kind of history.”

“Tell me about your DJing journey.”

I bought my first turntables in ’98, and I just kept working and practicing, going through various phrases and trying new things. Everything started getting digital in the 2000s, so I got a laptop around 2006. That’s when I started really pursuing bars and clubs, doing more open format parties—whereas before it had been mostly house parties, working with bands, and doing musical scratching and such. Ever since then, my career has taken different paths. For instance, weddings were a kind of a natural, organic progression. 

“Aside from music, what do you bring to the table for your clients?”

I’ve done over 100 weddings, and I’ve experienced the ins and outs, the whole spectrum of traditional and non-traditional ceremonies. Couples always ask me ‘Is this right?’, and I always tell them that there is no ‘right’ way to do anything. It’s your day; do what you want. 

I’m able to help them out and see things they might not have thought about, such as pointing out if they’re starting and stopping a lot, or letting them know how quickly the dance party goes by, or trying to find ways to save them time. That’s all insight I’ve gotten from experiencing weddings and seeing how things run, and I know that moving and managing people can be overwhelming. A lot of these things are handled by the wedding planner, of course, but I just bring my experience and opinions to the table and invite the clients to take it or leave it. 

“What was the first wedding you DJed?”

The first wedding I did was for a security doorman at this bar in Dover. He knew me and knew I had speakers. And then from there, it was kind of a domino thing: do a wedding here, wedding there. 

That first time around, I had no idea what I was doing. Playing for weddings was a lot of trial and error, learning what works and what doesn’t, and what you need to leave in the club versus what you need to bring with you.

“How’d you start working with White Label Wedding DJs?”

A friend of mine got recruited by Nate, and he had no wedding experience, but knew I did, so he brought me along, and that’s how I met Nate. We had a ton of mutual friends in the music and DJ scene, and really, Boston’s a small town. That was about 13 years ago, and I’ve been working with White Label since. 

Funny enough, I hadn’t realized how long I’d been with White Label until a couple approached me recently–I’d played at their wedding back in the early days of working with White Label, and they asked me to come back and work their 40th birthday in the summer of 2026. So it was awesome to have a full circle moment like that, to realize how much time I’ve put into this.

“How long have you been a full-time DJ?”

Since 2022. When the pandemic hit, I was working from home like everybody else, and then my company at the time–my nine to five–was going through changes. I was being shuffled around even before that, and then once the world stopped, I was in limbo for a while. Looking back, I probably saw the writing on the wall, and I was eventually laid off in 2022. But then I just never went back. 

I just kind of kept DJing. It was a little bit of a time ramping back up, but the world was opening up. I got back to doing regular gigs and reestablished contact with Nate to get back up and running with weddings. As of right now, the work is here and I’m thrilled to be welcoming more weddings.

“Do you have an ideal client, or is there anything you see on a couple’s questionnaire that gets you particularly excited about a wedding?”

I think personally, my excitement is tied to how laid back the clients are. The best weddings I’ve done are when they’re a party from start to finish, and that’s rare. Those are the weddings where I’m basically running a room for four hours, which is where I excel.

I love when couples emphasize the music–parties where all the other stuff is necessary, but the dance party is prioritized. These couples want a technical DJ who knows how to run a room. Those are the couples I try to find, and who I want to find me. 

“What is the coolest wedding you’ve ever DJed?”

It was at this bookstore right in the South End. The couple cleared out that whole thing. They got married in a church, and then when people started coming over, I was already playing music. They had a couple of things they wanted announced–entry, first dance–but then, it was right back to the program. 

What happens with something like that is that over the course of the night, it organically ramps up, and at the end, you have that last hour or two where the energy is really high, because I’ve been working and warming them up. By the end of the night, the place looked like a frat party–plastic cups all over the concrete floors. That was the most fun I’ve had, but then again, I have a lot of fun at most weddings.

“How would you describe your Emcee style?”

I don’t think I even have a style. I kind of let the music speak for itself, and I do everything that they need to get done. So if I need to move people, get their attention, do intros or any announcements, whatever they need–you’ve got it. 

I have what’s called my “assistant principal voice”, but I let the couple tell me when I need to use it. I’m not on the mic at all if I don’t need to be, and I find that for couples, it’s a relief to hear that. More than speaking, I’m interested in the couple and the music.

“What is the coolest experience you’ve had as a DJ?”

I don’t think there’s one specific night or crowd I played for that comes to mind. What I think of instead is a time frame—the 2010s were a really fun time, and it was around when things really started happening in Boston for me. I started meeting people, getting residencies, and there was something outstanding about music at that time. The crowds were pre-social media and smartphones weren’t yet everywhere to the same extent. It was my favorite time to DJ. 

I can still find places where I can enjoy that same vibe and really get locked in with the crowd. My coolest experiences come more from being in that state of mind, rather than from a specific event or night I’ve DJed.

“What gets you excited to do this work?”

It’s the flow state. But adding on to that answer, it’s anytime I’m able to put some of my true self—what I feel, how I am, my own personality—into a set, and have it not only be accepted, but to have people react positively. That’s the best. 

When it’s appropriate, I like to surprise people, to play something that no one expects the DJ to play. Over time, DJing can become color-by-numbers, in my opinion. Everyone plays the same things, the same hits. Anytime I get to find a new song and share it with others and have it truly resonate—that’s my favorite part. 

“What kind of music do you gravitate towards?”

It depends on the mood and the time frame. Hip hop was the foundation for so much of my stuff, and I still love all that music, but I see myself now gravitating more towards dance music. I always say dance music as an umbrella term because for me that includes everything from house techno to disco to indie dance, and I see a lot of the 2010s stuff now coming back in new artists, and just the music itself. A lot of that is now very popular, and resonates with a lot of the audiences that I’ve been playing for. I really want to get back to playing dance music because I find it opens itself to more genres and is just fun to play. 

But that’s for DJing—as far as personal taste, it all depends on my mood. I really like a lot of stuff, but if you were to ask what music pops into my head with that question, I’d say I’m a big Bob Dylan fan. I went through that phrase in college where I just absorbed the entire catalog, and it really helped me get through some things on a personal level. I’m also into electronic music and movie soundtracks. But I just love music in general, and I’ll embrace anything. 

“Is there any sort of particular genre or film that you find really inspiring?”

I like all genres, but the big ones for me are sci-fi and horror. The Thing is one of my favorite movies of all time. There’s nothing like a good show or movie to inspire me to get back to DJing, get back to work. I have this endless list and cache of stuff that I gotta organize and get through. That’s the blessing and the curse of digital. You have all this media, but you’re forever going to be organizing and discovering because there’s so much out there.

“There’s so much content out there–how do you expose yourself to new media?”

I think training the algorithm has been the best thing for me. I don’t like Spotify as a company, but as a tool, it’s been really great at helping me discover new and indie artists. My release radar, monthly mixes, and daily lists keep on feeding me, and through those mixes, I can discover all this new music that I don’t know how I would have discovered any other way.

That’s also what I mainly use social media for, is following record labels and artists because I don’t want to miss anything. That’s the anxiety, is missing a track that everybody knows and that you don’t know about because it just flew under your radar. 

Of course, the old school way of just digging. Bandcamp is huge, and I use that a lot. Plenty of times, I just hear new music on the radio or out in the wild as well. 

“Were you ever into collecting physical records?”

When I started off, I started DJing on turntables, so I had about 10 years worth of using records before I ever went digital. A lot of that time was being a scratch DJ and taking a stab at learning how to produce, which all helped me understand music better as a whole.

The first tape I ever collected was around 1988. My friend, who introduced me to a lot of music, had made a tape with Public Enemy, EPMD, and a lot of 80s hip hop. I still have the tape to this day. I think my mom bought me Fat Boys on tape before that, but a lot of my collection was made by friends, which was and still is very cool to me. 

“Can you tell me about your life outside of DJing?”

Honestly, a lot of stuff revolves around just DJing and music in general. I still play guitar, and really, I like anything artistic or creative. Films especially inspire me to go to work. I used to go to more clubs for music and dancing, but I’m there mostly for work now. More often than not, I have a job to do, which I don’t mind at all, but it’s just how it is. What I’ve found is that for any age, you’ve got to throw your own party and find your people.