Today we’d like to introduce you to Mitch Henderson.
Hi Mitch, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Hi, I’m Mitch. Owner and operator at dnbOS (Drum & Bass Operating System) in Salt Lake City, Utah. My story in music and music business goes a little something like this.
When I was in 5th or 6th grade I remember a distinct day in class where we learned to pick apart the different sounds and instruments in a song and focus solely on one at a time. I had never really listened to music like that before. I always listened to it as one complete sound without following instruments separately. I’m not sure if that makes sense to most people? I look at that memory as the turning point or start of my obsession with music. The community I grew up in was pretty sheltered back then and I was discouraged from listening to certain types of music. That fueled my interest even more.
Over the years of my early teens and adult life I’ve allowed music to define my identity. In high school I was into Rap & HipHop and I went through phases where I looked and acted the part. I even became obsessed with writing lyrics to beats and idolized rappers like Eminem, and producers like Dr Dre. It was around this time that I gave myself the rapper/producer name “Shifty Mitch”. I was also into breakdancing and took some classes at a local community center in Draper, UT where I lived at the time.
One day in high school (Alta High School), a kid who I knew through breakdancing classes gave me a copy of his FL Studio software on disk. I took it home that day, installed it, and instantly became addicted to experimenting with drum patterns and synths. I wanted to be able to create my own beats to record raps to. Later on, a friend of mine in high school convinced me that I needed to expand my musical interests and come with her to a “rave”. I look at that as another turning point in my journey with music.
From there I become obsessed with creating beats that didn’t need lyrics in order to tell a story and I spent countless hours experimenting with different styles and genres within EDM. At the same time I also became obsessed with raves and rave culture and made a lot of great friends in the local rave community here in Utah.
I’ve worked in many different areas related to music and live events at this point in my life, but one of the first music related jobs I had started in the Sales department at Guitar Center and Musician’s Friend in their call center. I moved into Customer Service from there and then into Technical Support after that pretty quickly where I learned a lot about how corporate retail systems work on the backend handling things like PayPal disputes, and tracking user activity on their websites to help find bugs in their order flow.
In my early twenties, one of my best friends Justin Burns introduced me to Jeremy Moreland, one of the co-owners of a popular rave promotion company here in Utah called V2 Events. He was looking for someone trustworthy and reliable to rent his basement apartment so Justin recommended me to him. During the first year or so living with him I was able to get a first hand experience of understanding the business side of events and artist management that you can’t learn in most schools, just by hanging out with him. That quickly influenced me to shift my focus from pursuing an artist career to pursuing a career behind the scenes instead.
Soon after that, I decided to take a full dive into the business side and made a deal with Jeremy to allow me to work for him as his assistant and in exchange, he discounted my rent for a while. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to pay for my car loan anymore, but decided it was worth it to take a hit on my credit in order to take advantage of the opportunity to get involved in that aspect. So I ended up letting my car get repossessed and dedicated all of my time and attention to learning tools that would help me succeed in this new career path.
Most of my time with Jeremy at this point was helping him with his daily activities related to managing Kill Paris, who was recently blowing up on Soundcloud. Kill Paris signed a deal with Owsla (Skrillex’s Record Label) and another deal with Warner Music. During this time I helped Jeremy organize paperwork, review and return signed contracts, keep track of income, commissions, and advance gigs.
During my time focusing on Artist Management, I also started understanding how the Events side of the business worked and became interested in helping him and his partner Brandon Fullmer with their festivals and events. I eventually got hired on officially as V2’s first full time employee.
I want to use this as an opportunity to express my appreciation to Jeremy for providing me the opportunity to get involved. While I do believe my path would have varied and that my passions would have led me in a similar direction, I wouldn’t be in the same place I am today without him sharing his knowledge and allowing me to be involved in his businesses. I would also like to express my appreciation to Brandon Fullmer, who played an integral part in where I’m at today. His leadership and talents as a business owner, boss, and mentor have been invaluable. I can’t wait to help bring his new vision for what’s next to life.
During my 12 years with V2, my position evolved from Jeremy’s assistant to Business Manager. I had a wide range of responsibilities including Graphic Design and Animation, Ticketing Management, Merch Management, Accounting, Digital Advertising, Web Design and Development, Box Office Management, and also filled in for other team members in other roles like Talent Buying and Customer Service every now and then.
In addition to that, I launched my own LLC called ShiftyFX, where I design covert art, event flyers, websites, and manage digital advertising campaigns for numerous clients as a side hustle.
The next and most recent progression of my career in music business was the creation of “dnbOS”, which stands for “Drum & Bass Operating System”. dnbOS is a company I founded after my departure from V2. I have been a Drum & Bass fan for many years and was actively trying to help push the SLC DNB brand under V2. That brand ended up getting tied up in a legal dispute between the two owners of V2 while discussing terms of their separation. I was in a sort of state of limbo, not knowing what I was going to do next after departing from V2 since Brandon did not have a clear path forward, where I was originally planning to focus my time and energy. So, I had a lot of time to think about it and eventually decided that starting my own brand was the right path forward. I had all of the skills it takes to run an events company so why not put myself to the test?
The first thing I did was come up with the name. There are a couple of European based brands that use “dnb” in their name and I personally feel a strong brand connection with them just because of my obsession with the genre. One of my main obsessions outside of music is computer programming, writing code, etc. So, I decided “dnbOS” would be a fun way to theme my company, combining two of my biggest obsessions, Drum & Bass and computer programming. The name establishes my intention for the company and that’s to create a place where Drum & Bass can live and operate. And just like other operating systems like iOS, macOS, etc, the project will continue to evolve as time goes and as I continue to learn more and advance my skills in programming and booking and organizing events.
So far this year, I’ve already brought SLC some really awesome artists in the Drum & Bass world who’ve been some of my biggest inspirations, including Delta Heavy, Grafix, Fred V, and Etherwood, and I have a bunch more confirmed throughout the remainder of 2026 that I’m really excited to announce.
Anyways, that’s my story in a nutshell. I appreciate you taking the time to read about me and hope I might have provided some insight that will inspire others to chase their own dreams and put their skills to use for themselves.
You can keep up with me and dnbOS on Instagram if you’re interested! @shiftymitch and @dnbos_
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
2020 was a big curve ball. Live events were shut down overnight. Luckily, I had an unemployment cushion that allowed me to get through a few months while I figured out what direction I would go next. I had just started a full stack developing course at the University of Utah and also used the down time I had between looking for a new job to really understand the course. After I completed my course and got my certification, I landed a job at an advertising agency in Draper called Epic Marketing where I managed all Meta and Google Ads for all of their clients.
When events were cleared to start back up again, I had my role at V2 waiting for me. We had to change some things about how events operated, including incorporating social distancing rules and temperature scanning equipment in festival entry lines and things like that. What a wild time.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I work from home, which I love. Most of my time is spent at a computer working on a large variety of things throughout each day.
Right now I am still wearing all of the hats at dnbOS. I handle every part of the flow in organizing my events, starting with booking the artists and venues, then designing the event flyers, setting up ticketing, creating and scheduling content across social media accounts, managing advertising campaigns, booking the sound, lighting and equipment rentals in venues that don’t have it built in, advancing transportation and hospitality for the artists, staffing event workers like box office and merch sellers, and finally on the day of each event I am on site helping make sure the events are set up and good to go.
I spend a lot of time trying to get creative and think outside the box with my marketing strategies. Salt Lake City has a very active music scene so standing out is really important if you want to be successful. With that in mind at all times, I spend a lot of time working on my brand image, expanding and adding functionality to my website, building games, etc. I just launched a game actually that I programmed myself. You can play it at dnbOS.net/game and there’s a public leaderboard. I created the game as a fun way to engage music fans leading up to events by offering top scores on the leaderboard free tickets to the show. If you want free tickets to my next event, go play the game and try to stay in the Top 10. There may or may not be some easter eggs in it if you pay close attention. 😉
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
In my path to where I am now, I have definitely taken a few risks.
The first one, which I mentioned earlier was quitting my construction job to focus fully on events and artist management. I did not know if I’d be able to make a career out of it at the time, but I knew I was passionate about learning it. I think as long as you’re passionate about something and there are others earning a living doing it then it’s worth attempting to make something for yourself within that passion.
The most recent risk I’ve taken was deciding to launch this new brand. The Drum & Bass genre has struggled to gain popularity in the United States in the same way other genres of EDM have for quite some time and that was something I knew before I decided to launch. However, I’ve seen how popular it is in places like Europe, traveling to festivals out there that are focused solely on Drum & Bass for the past 4 years and I believe it’s possible to create the same culture around it here in Salt Lake City.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://dnbos.net
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/dnbos_, https://instagram.com/shiftymitch
Image Credits
Jason Appel (@snap.appel)
