The New York Times-20080127-Grammy-Winning D-J- Segues Between Careers and Home Life

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Grammy-Winning D.J. Segues Between Careers and Home Life

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ROGER SANCHEZ, 39, is to clubgoing, dance-music circles what the state's most official music celebrity, Bruce Springsteen, is to working-class devotees of classic-rock radio: a spokesman and hero.

Within the span of the next several weeks Mr. Sanchez will make D.J. stops at gossip-column-worthy clubs in Manhattan, Las Vegas, St. Maarten and points beyond -- a typical tour schedule for the Queens-bred, Grammy-winning CD spinner. He is as much at home in his modern house overlooking the Hudson River here, though, as on the Spanish island of Ibiza, where he keeps a summer home and, from June to October, draws crowds of thousands to a weekly dance party, Release Yourself, that lasts well past dawn.

New Jersey is about the family, said Mr. Sanchez, who wore tinted sunglasses and pristine Nike sneakers at an interview in his home studio recently, where a set of rhinestone-encrusted headphones dangled from the knob of a wall of imposing-looking equipment.

It was beneficial being in Manhattan in my single days, he said. But I travel so much now I like being able to be away from it, just going in when I need to get to the clubs.

I feel reclusive from the rest of my life here. I can do my daddy turns.

Mr. Sanchez, who has called Edgewater home for four years, has a 10-month-old daughter and a 12-year-old son. His wife, Cleo Sanchez, is an actress and model. That he is able to balance his home life with his many endeavors amazes even him, he said.

In addition to working as a club D.J., recording his own music, collaborating as a songwriter with artists like Seal and Boy George, running the Amsterdam-based house-music label Stealth Records, concocting the CD compilation series Release Yourself (Volume 7 came out in 2007) and serving as host of a biweekly syndicated radio program with the same name, Mr. Sanchez is taking acting classes in Manhattan with an eye toward a role in an independent film. And with a cousin who is based in London, he is launching Truth and Sacrifice, a men's clothing line scheduled to arrive in European stores this year.

My heart is with my family, though, said Mr. Sanchez, who got his start behind a turntable as a 13-year-old in Queens. What I'm trying to do right now is reclaim a little bit of my personal time. I was just having this same conversation with my wife.

It was in his fourth year of studying architecture at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in the late 1980s that he decided to make a career of music.

My dad steered me toward it, and I was really taken aback, because he's an engineer and he was always like 'Study, school, blah blah blah,' said Mr. Sanchez, who won a 2003 Grammy Award for best remix for his beat-heavy reworking of No Doubt's Hella Good.

I'll never get past that feeling I had at that first party, he said. I had this friend who was like, 'Hey, there's some hot chicks I need to talk to. You handle the music.' I got bit by that bug. That was just 50 people. But that fascination for making people dance, for making people feel a certain way, has never left me.

That holds for the Champagne-swilling V.I.P.s he's become accustomed to -- at a recent gig in Miami, Diddy and Dennis Rodman joined him in his booth as he played music into the wee hours, he said. But it also applies to suburban clubgoers. On Feb. 9, Mr. Sanchez will play at the Deko Lounge in Sayreville, where he has D.J.'d for the last several years when his schedule permits.

It'll surprise you, the kinds of people who can get into your music, said Mr. Sanchez. I give big credit to the owner of Deko, because he's one of the ones who's traveled and been in the Ibiza-type environment. He's tried to bring that back to a place like Deko.

You see it in a lot of suburbs now. People travel, they find they love dance music, and they come back and see other people do, too.

[Illustration]PHOTO: BUSY: Roger Sanchez is a D.J., songwriter, radio host and record-label head. (PHOTOGRAPH BY CHESTER HIGGINS JR./THE NEW YORK TIMES)