14 March 19 - 25, 2026 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Lucky Number 7 Much to our delight, the longtime Dallas DJ would rather soundtrack your night on the dance floor with 7-inch vinyl. BY JASON JANIK T here’s something special about spinning real vinyl in a sea of DJs using laptops and thumb drives. People take no- tice. They’ll stop and stare, take pictures and video, and they’ll appreciate the skill required to keep the beat going without the aid of a sync button. Antonio Huntington, better known in the club world as Tone Hunts, knows this all too well. It’s challenging enough when he’s spin- ning 12” remixes with long intros, breaks and outros, but Huntington decided to step it up a notch, becoming one of the city’s premier 7” DJs. Despite the added skill level needed to keep a 7-inch party going (the songs are usu- ally shorter with truncated intros and breaks, and there’s less surface area to con- trol for cueing and scratching while the shallow, tight grooves accentuate any scratches or skips), Huntington was at- tracted to the unique nature of the format. “I didn’t start playing 7” records until I joined Fresh45s crew four years ago,” Hun- tington tells us. “There’s a lot of great songs on 7-inch records. Sometimes the 7-inch version is different from the album version.” Still, the format comes with its own added challenges of spinning — Huntington jokes that the lightweight nature of the smaller records actually makes it easier. Starting ’em Young Huntington first started buying vinyl during the golden age of hip-hop, saving up his lunch money and hitting up the local Sound Warehouse on the way home from high school. But he fell in love with records at an even earlier age. “Growing up watching my father buying records from the local record store, he taught me how to put a record on the turnta- ble,” he says. “I was only five years old.” Eventually, his collection grew big enough that he and his friends would get to- gether to spin and swap records, playing the newest tracks every weekend. These get-to- gethers led him to transition from playing records at home to spinning in public. “I got into DJing when I saw a friend of mine had a setup at his house back in 1993,” he says. “It felt great to just learn those ba- sics from him, applying those ideas that I learned from observing him play.” After his friend helped him get started, Huntington eventually got his first gig. “The hardest part when first starting out is learning how to transition from one genre to another,” Huntington says. “The first time I tried DJing, I was hella nervous.” Now, with more than 30 years under his belt, Huntington has picked up a lot of tips to share with younger DJs. He even tutors a cou- ple aspiring DJs in his spare time between his regular gigs. When asked where to start, he says, “Make sure you find the genres that you’re into, set up a playlist, and practice every day. Bring something that’s gonna get people dancing and have a night to remember.” He also knows that each venue is differ- ent and requires different needs, so it’s im- portant to cover the essentials. “Make sure you get there early for sound- check,” he suggests. “Bring your own head- phones and needles.” Ear to the Streets With North Texas having such a tight DJ community, Huntington easily names off area regulars like Luke Sardello, DJ Sober, Willie Dutch, Tony Schwa, DJ Dogstyle and Gabe Mendoza as some of his favorites to watch spin. But he admits that nearly any vinyl set can make for a euphonious ex- perience. “People enjoy seeing that vinyl DJs still exist and are able to hold the party down with just playing vinyl,” Huntington says. Despite dedicating himself to the cult of the 7-inch and even buying custom 7-inch Reloop turntables made specifically for spinning the smaller format, he still shows plenty of love to the bigger discs. “I still play 12-inch records. ... I play them both equally,” he says. Above all, he boils his philosophy down to the belief that it is ultimately not about the for- mat or the equipment used, as long as the DJ can connect with the crowd. For his part, Huntington says the clubs have always put faith in him. “They trusted me enough to know I’ll bring the vibes,” he says. ▼ CONCERTS REBILLET RETURNS JAMBALOO MUSIC PRIZE ANNOUNCES MARC REBILLET AS HEADLINER FOR JUNE BENEFIT CONCERT. BY ALYSSA FIELDS M arc Rebillet, AKA Loop Daddy, AKA a viral sensation many times over, is returning to Dallas for one night in June. The artist, who gained fame for post- ing wild, improvised songs and then solidi- fied his career as a legitimately respectable electronic musician, is coming back to per- form at the Jambaloo Music Prize celebra- tion at the Longhorn Ballroom on June 6. The show is part of the free music festi- val’s fan-vote competition that awards a $20,000 cash prize and a recording deal to a local artist who has released an album in the last year. The three finalists will perform as open- ers, with the winner announced right before Rebillet’s set begins. “This is exactly the kind of full-circle mo- ment JAMBALOO was built to create,” said Joe Morrison, co-founder of Jambaloo, in a press release. “When a community invests in its music ecosystem — its schools, its ven- ues, its artists — that investment compounds over time. Marc’s return to headline and re- invest in Dallas is a powerful example of that cycle in action.” All proceeds from the show will go to Amplified Minds, a non-profit dedicated to providing mental health resources for local musicians, and the advisory board for the Booker T. Washington School for the Per- forming and Visual Arts. Rebillet himself is an alum of the premier school for the artisti- cally inclined. Since performing his first live stage show in Deep Ellum in 2017, Rebillet has launched a successful international touring career. But his return to Dallas is as much for pleasure as it is purpose, and is less about his show as it is about giving back to the local music scene. The festival, produced by the Mullen and Mullen Music Project, a limb of a local in- jury law firm, has grown in size in only its second year. After wrapping in mid-Febru- ary, Jambaloo drew 8,200 attendees across 15 venues, generating an estimated $5 mil- lion in economic impact and raising more than $30,000 for local partners. This is the first year the music prize is being awarded — a testament to the growing footprint the fes- tival has embedded in North Texas. ▼ Music Jason Janik Antonio Huntington, also known as DJ Tone Hunts, keeps it analog with a preference for spinning 7’ records. Andrew Sherman Marc Rebillet poses for the crowd at Erykah Badu’s annual Birthday Bash show.
