Hi everyone, welcome to Sudbury Interviews.

Today we have Mitch Lallone or Michelle Lallone.

He's a professional DJ, has been doing that since 2014 and the business name is Soundwave Rentals.

I actually met Mitch a few times at gigs that we were both a part of and he's just a really great guy and I'm really happy to have him on the show today.

Before we begin, you can find us on Sudstown and join the conversation.

If you would like to be a guest on the show, please reach out.

Hey, Mitch, how you doing?

I'm doing quite well.

How are you?

Well, thanks for coming on today.

What you been up to?

Well, between raising a 14 month old and a nine year old daughter tomorrow and just essentially working hard at the DJ business lately, which just kept me, I got to say, quite occupied.

Summer busy.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

I've got to say, probably this year, one of our busiest summers, we've had, oddly enough, spaced out in a strange way where our July ended up being the slowest, but our August the busiest we've ever had.

So everything finds a way to balance itself out.

But it did give me the opportunity to actually have a few Saturdays off, which is unheard of in the last decade.

So how, how did you start out with?

Did you always know you wanted to be a DJ?

Or was it, you know, a fluke?

Total fluke.

I actually hated D JS.

I always I, I isn't that great.

Isn't that fantastic?

Hilarious.

It's, it's, it's kind of a, a very strange trajectory of how I got from musician to now.

So when I was in high school, I started, well, actually I guess it would have been middle school.

I started drum lessons at about the age of 1112, joined at the Bistro at Collage Notre Dam when I was in high school.

I was part of the first group back in 2006 and that show has been running consistently ever since.

Great and met some great people while performing and then continued on with some of those people, one of them being my best friend Pat Wright after high school.

So through my call or my university years I guess you could call it, when I was 22 started feeling some aches and pains which I know way too young to start feeling that but got diagnosed with tendonitis and my my shoulders and my elbows.

So naturally as a 22 year old who's being told by his doctor, hey you should quit that repetitive motion it's only going to cause more pain.

I ignored him for a couple of more years and kept pursuing drumming with a few different groups and then also join the Dodgeball league because again, you're 22 and you're not really thinking straight about your future with that.

Then unfortunately just got to a point till I was about 2324, I realized my body is just not keeping up with this.

But I love music so much I still want to stay connected.

I thought, you know, this will go away after some time, I just need to give myself some rest.

Meanwhile, I had all this PA gear at home that I had accumulated over the years because I was the only guy in my band that apparently had a car and also had all the PA gear that we needed.

So instead of selling everything off and getting rid of it, I created sound wave rentals as a way to rent out my equipment, work as a sound guy, which I did for a couple of years.

A Cousin Vinny's and Hammer, and just wanted to stay close to the scene and close to music.

So that's how the company was created.

The DJ ING part, oddly enough, came just to fill in a need as I was renting my equipment out to a few DJs and a few different events and realizing that I felt like I could do a slightly better job than what some of these DJs were offering.

Now I've I've known some great DJs in town that that have done amazing work over the years, but some of these people were.

Imagine having YouTube commercials playing in the middle of your song, or a DJ who's so intoxicated by the end of an event he cannot find the exit to the venue and finding out they were getting paid 3 or 4 times more.

So I realized there's an opportunity here for me to maximize a little bit more money, so I aligned myself with the Canadian Professional Disc Jockey Association.

At the time, our local chapter was ran by Cheryl and Dennis Savoie, who owned and operated Red's DJ Service, which was one of the premier DJ services in town.

So I shadowed them and then got my Canadian Professional Disc Jockey Association license, started working my own weddings and events in, I guess you'd say the summer of 2015.

And then from there everything kind of ballooned and and blew up.

So consistently, year over year, I was getting busier and busier and busier.

Finally in 2023, June of 2023 in fact, I quit working any full time job and I've launched myself completely into sound wave rentals.

So over 11 years I've worked over well, actually I just finished my 232nd wedding this past Saturday.

I've deejayed over 350 events.

So we're talking birthday parties, staff parties.

I used to DJ in between the sets of bands when I was still working, sound like Cousin Vinnie's.

And that's how I got my chops and started practicing with that.

So yeah.

And and with that has come a stellar 5 star reputation with over 205 star reviews now and the quite a number of awards from the most recent ones being the Quality Business Awards.

I've been three best rated since 2019.

I've been nominated twice, both in 2025 and in 2023 as a small enterprise finalists for the Business Excellence Awards.

And yeah, and I've won the Community Votes awards too over the years.

So all that to say, it started as, yeah, that idea of I don't really like DJs because I was a performing musician.

And you know, we, we know how hard it is out there for performing musicians to get a name for themselves and try to get the, the gigs and the bookings and trying to make a little bit of a living at it and enjoy what we're doing to basically immersing myself in that world and having it as my career now.

Did you say that somebody was using YouTube at a wedding for a DJ and there was commercials coming on?

Thankfully it wasn't a wedding.

It was, it was a university type event.

The wedding though, I, I had worked one wedding where somebody was supposed to be keeping an eye on the music and there was about 10 seconds of silence in between each song.

So you can imagine that if you have a full dance floor under dancing to, let's say, Uptown Funk, and you've got a good groove and everybody's having a good time, and then all of a sudden the song just stops.

Well, 10 seconds is forever when it when it comes to dead air.

Absolutely, and especially if you have a party atmosphere and vibe.

So it is.

So again, it's, I kind of just look at these different experiences because I was just hired on as a sound and lighting guy and, and invited to stick around because a lot of times I knew the organizers or I had friends that were there and I just wanted to keep an eye on everything to make sure everything was running well.

And I just, I kept telling myself I have a good music knowledge.

I've worked for KISS and Q 92 now since 2012, though I'm a behind the scenes guy, event coordinator, I believe is still the OR yeah, I forget the exact name of my job title.

It's changed a few times over the years, but I essentially work events for, for the for the radio station.

So you'll see me sometimes pop up in the community here and there.

And, and, and it's kind of that I, I grew up loving music, knowing music as a performer.

And I just felt, I feel like I have something good that I can give to this.

And with my business and background, having been the manager for my parents when they own Snap Fitness out in the valley, I just felt putting all those skills together, I should be able to have a nice polished finished product.

And again, when I started this, it was just, hey, this is the cash on the side.

This is just something I'm going to get to enjoy on the weekends, a little bit of extra money.

I never could have imagined it would have blown up to what I have as a company today.

Do you think the the kids of today know what DJ stands for or even what a disk is?

There might be a few of them, but again, as a father of a nine year old I I will say that most kids may not I I I feel like some will know what ACD is at this point.

VHS less a track and it starts getting rougher and rougher as you kind of go by.

But that again, being said, it's like you try to explain an iPod today to somebody who didn't, who's always grown up with an iPhone.

I don't think they necessarily will always comprehend, wait a minute, you didn't have everything at the touch of a button.

And, and I mean, I'm a child product of the of the 90s, right?

So we, we were part of that generation that went from having minimal technology to kind of everything at her fingertips as well.

Which as a DJI mean, I, I, I cannot lie and say in some ways it's gotten easier to be a DJ and in a lot of ways it's gotten high harder because everybody expects you to have everything at your fingertips.

So if you say, Hey, I don't have a song and they go, well, wait, wait a minute, how do you not have that song?

Our song banks are about 60,000 plus songs constantly adding new music.

But there's 1,000,000 new songs released in North America a year alone.

So if you multiply that over 70 years of music and then add everywhere else in the world, 60,000 songs seems like a drop in the bucket.

Yeah.

And then if you're in the middle of the Bush, like I've been at sometimes weddings on Manitoulin Island with a single is very, very weak.

You sometimes find your climbing a a tree with your cell phone and the laptop.

On the other hand, just trying to get that single.

So you could try to get a couple of songs you need for the event coming on.

But again, you learn over the years to make sure you're pre prepared for everything before you even have to to get to that point.

So do you think that we're we're, we're lucky that the word DJ was invented when it was?

Because what do you think would be the name of what you do if we didn't have the word DJ?

Spotify, I think is is kind of the way that it would probably replace it at this point.

No, I, I guess, yeah, it's, it's a very intriguing question because I don't know what would replace it really at this, at this point.

It might just be music person.

It might just be, it might be something so very, very generic that it would just be like, hey, that guy who plays music on his computer on his on, on his laptop or on, on his controller.

At this point.

I, I, I guess, yeah, the term DJ coming at the time it did was, was a good thing.

But to say I I can't really fathom what would replace that term at this point.

How about sound waiver?

Oh.

That'd be nice.

Yeah.

I mean, then that would just help with my business name even more so, right?

Because I still get a lot of being sound wave rentals being written with a dot WAV, which is supposed to represent a WAV file.

I often will get calls saying I'm looking for sound WAV rentals, which has always given me a bit of a chuckle over the years and a lot of people saying I don't quite understand what it stands for.

And it's really, the idea came from Patrick Wright as I was trying to come up with business names and saying, well, wave file, that sounds pretty cool.

And I'm like, awesome, I like that.

That's why the logo looks like a wave file, that that's why everything's kind of composed around it.

And the rentals part, oddly enough, although I primarily offer DJ services these days, and conference and event services and fundraiser and community event services, the the rentals part of my business is actually quite diminished over the years compared to what it used to be before.

You're a really great communicator, I have to say thank you.

So tell us about your political journey, because did you not run for office at one point a few years ago?

I did so in 2018.

I ran as councillor for Ward 5 which compromises of Blizzard Valley, Valkaran, McRae Heights and there's a small section of New Sudbury.

I guess you could call it the North End, which I'm trying to remember if it went right to Edido Street and I'm going to include that Cambrian Heights.

So it was a fairly large area that election there.

Gee, I would have been 22 years old.

And considering a 22 year old running into a political election is, is something of an accomplishment itself because a lot of people would think, OK, you're, you're fairly young to be doing this, which, which I was.

And with having a 2 year old at the time at home and we were in the process of moving and renovating house, it was, it was quite the ordeal to do it.

But with doing that, I, I did, I would say extremely well.

I, I walked away with 12143 votes, which was 34.53% of the votes.

Unfortunately not enough to win.

Robert Kerwin, who was the incumbent, continued to be the counsellor at that time.

But I kind of felt like I had some unfinished business after that election and, and felt like, well, maybe there's a few things I could have done better and maybe I could have done something a little bit more.

I with the second run, I actually ran in Ward 6, which is Hammer and Valtteris, and that time I ran against it.

I knew that Piata and we were five people vying for that seat.

I still came in second place, 11113 votes, 25.24% of the votes on that time, again losing to the incumbent.

But that being said, I learned so much during that time with the second run, I really felt like I gave everything I got.

We literally knocked on every single house in the ward vying for votes.

I was up at the Joe Lake area and that and I still remember this last house I knocked at.

They answered the door and they said hello and I said, hi, my name is Bishet.

And home presented myself for for City Council and he went, you drove all the way up here and I said, well, Sir, do you vote?

He said, yes, I do.

And I said, well, that's the reason I'm here.

I'm trying to get every single vote.

And just because you live at the furthest northeast part of Hanmer and of the ward, I'm still vying for everybody's vote.

And your vote says as everybody else.

So, yeah, so it was, it was definitely a very humbling experience because you know, you're going in and of course you want to win.

But the whole part of the trajectory is, is being, it's such an amazing part of being part of democracy and just seeing how people will vote and, and hoping that your message will resonate with people.

But you don't take it to heart too much when you don't win.

The biggest lesson I took was I put myself out there.

The people made their choice, you back the winner.

After that, you try again another day and, and I know well now as we get closer to the 2026 election, I often get asked, well, hey, are you going to run again?

And, and I get that from constituents.

I get that from Ward 5, from Ward 6.

I get it from other areas in town as well.

I get it from a few counsellors that will remain nameless for the time being.

And you know, we'll see what the future has to hold.

Of course, having a 14 month old at home, my wife will be returning to work shortly.

You know, so priorities have shifted a little bit and are a little different than what they were in my younger years.

But I, I look forward to still continuing to engage in the political process in our community, giving back in any way that I can.

And you know, maybe one day or not in in in the so distant future, you might see my name pop up to run for mayor as well.

So in in our beginning conversation before we hit record, you mentioned being an extrovert.

So can you tell us a little bit about that and the difference between an extrovert and an introvert?

Yeah, well, basically an extrovert to me would would be somebody that's just always outgoing, kind of always on, always looking to to communicate, to always look and have engaging conversations with people, always wanting to be out there and in the community out and about.

And kind of those people at the party that you know that will make you laugh and never seem to really quiet down too much and and tend to gravitate around a lot of people.

That's that way I would say was more towards me.

The introvert people usually in, in my experience are people that are great, but smaller groups and one-on-one.

They like their time at home.

They like their time away from the big crowds and, and the people as well.

And, and I mean, in the career path that I've chosen, being a DJ and, and, and seeing a lot of the events I'm, I'm at as well.

But you have to be an extrovert.

You have to put yourself out there.

You have to be kind of an open book.

You have to be able to adapt to different circumstances with different people and engage with them as well.

So I think that's kind of attributed a bit to my successes in business and personal life as well.

Just I've, I've been out there so much in the community, but I enjoy it.

I enjoy people, I enjoy interactions.

I I love learning, I love engaging and love conversing with as many people as I possibly can.

Do you think it aligns somewhat with the yin and Yang like the two halves of the whole?

100% see my wife I would say is more of an introvert and she would she would agree with me.

It's kind of a if you send her out to the grocery store to Costco and she says I'm going out to do this task and I'll be done in an hour.

She gets it done in an hour.

Myself on the other hand, I tell her I'll be back in an hour.

4 hours later I come back.

I still brought the milk home, but I kind of disappeared off the face of the planet.

And that's because I've run into past clients, friends, family, other people I've engaged with in the community.

And sometimes it's just I'm having a random conversation with the person at the checkout line that's behind me and we're sharing a moment and or sharing a joke or something along those lines.

That's the one thing that she actually enjoyed about the COVID time because, you know, being in the entertainment industry and, and at the time I was in working at the gym as well.

I found myself at home laid off from three jobs at 30 years old, 'cause I just celebrated my birthday 2 days before that first lockdown.

And, but my wife loves sending me to the grocery store because she knew, OK, well, you're going to go there, you're going to do everything you need to do and you're going to come right back home.

And you can't stop the talking to anybody because everybody's wearing masks and you don't recognize anybody and they don't recognize you.

So she, she enjoyed more of that time, I could say then, you know, now we're back as, as the world has normalized itself again.

Yeah, now I I find myself being stopped a little bit more in public and, and, and that's perfectly fine by me too, though like I said, I enjoy engaging with people and, and conversing and, and putting myself out there as well.

So what do you think would happen if you married a person like yourself rather than an introvert?

Oh, that is good question.

I don't think it would balance out too well.

I, I, I find, I, I find for myself, it's, it's, it's nice being with an introvert because it find it, it finds a way to ground you.

So instead of always being on and go, go, go and, and doing this and doing that, it's nice to just come home and relax and enjoy family time and, and enjoy those moments together.

So I find in, you know, to the yin and Yang analogy, it's made us more complete.

And I've been with my wife for a while.

We've been married for eight years, together for 11 at this point.

And we actually met when we were in first grade when we were kids.

So, you know, it's been a long trajectory to be at the point of where we are now.

And I, I can't imagine being with anybody else than her.

But I can also imagine if it was 2 introverts or two extroverts, I should say, together, it probably wouldn't drive too much because you just, you'd constantly be on.

And I feel like that might be tiring.

But again, that's for myself.

Everybody's a little different.

If you found your person, you find a way to make it work.

What's one thing that you feel would make Sudbury greater?

Oh, that is a That is a loaded and deep question.

I got to reflect on that actually a little bit.

This.

This might be the quietest somebody's ever gotten me to be.

We've got some dead air.

Got some, got some.

It's it's got some dead air, Yeah.

But it's OK in this case, Mitch, Yeah.

Like it's yeah, no, no, it's, it's a definitely, it's an interesting question.

I, I think it, you know, it kind of would go, I have to say sometimes it's a reality that we're all fighting the same battles and we're all kind of going through life in our own ways, but we all have kind of the same end goal in a, in a time where politics has really divided people.

You know, we often hear, especially in the States, the left against the right, just sitting there and, and had conversing like like just normal conversations between one another, more discussions between one another, more understanding that, hey, wait a minute, we're all facing the same thing.

We just might have a slightly different ways of addressing and tackling the problem and think that the solutions might be found in a different way, but it's kind of coming back together in ways that we used to do.

But, you know, even just a few years ago and, and just remembering that, you know, on this, this big sphere known as Earth, we're all fighting the same battles each day.

And instead of fighting and individualistically we're we're so much better if we come together as a people and tackle it head on.

Good answer.

It's something I, I, I've reflected a lot upon because especially, and again, right when you, you're asked, you know, what do you feel like running again?

Do you think you're going to run again?

There's so much hostility in the world today that my message, and that's a message that I've had in the last two elections as well, has been we need to come together as a people.

It doesn't matter if you support the NDP, that Liberals, Conservatives, the Black Quebecois or the Green Party, Everybody has their own opinions and ideas.

But unless we sit there and we discuss it, unless we actually take time to understand one another, our viewpoints and discuss what we're going through, we're never going to find solutions.

And if we can never find solutions, we're never going to be able to advance and move forward from the situations that we're in now.

And we know Sudbury, like other cities across Canada, there's a lot of struggling.

There's a lot of there's a lot of hurt.

Homelessness has been a big issue.

We have an opioid epidemic that's still affecting us.

There's a mental health crisis.

There's a housing crisis.

People are struggling.

We're seeing unemployment at its highest rates.

But in those times of what might seem like despair and sorrow, we need to look at that light.

We need to look to one another and we'll be able to find solutions and we'll be able to find a greener path going forward.

How do you feel about the cost of living, the high rents and food prices and gas and all of that?

It's, it's quite terrifying because I, I think of myself, you know, I'm 35 years old.

I'm one of those very fortunate people where, you know, we're, we're driving older vehicles, but they're paid off.

And you know, I happen to be mortgage free, work my butt off to get to this point.

But we, we've locked and said, oh, well, maybe one day, you know, it'd be nice to move.

Maybe we'd get a, a slightly different place in the different area of town.

And even though we've spent this time establishing ourselves, it is still so very difficult to get to the next step.

So I think of all my friends, I think of family members, I think of other members in the community where I go, well, if you didn't have that leg up, if you don't have, you know, that that cushion to fall back on, I don't know how people are able to do it.

And I think of single mothers, single fathers and that as well, if you're trying to do that with kids, your car breaks down.

There's so much pressure put on on everybody right now to survive that if it, it does feel like something needs to break.

You know, we, the housing bubble that we've been living in the last few years where houses that would have been 200 and $250,000 prior to COVID have now doubled in rates.

And but the fact that we're not building enough new homes at a fast enough rate.

But even if we do build those new homes, there are prices that are quite unaffordable for most people.

So it's, it's, I find it's a cumulative of years of unfortunately not proper planning to ensure that we'd be able to keep up with demand of what we have that's kind of led to this.

But now that we're in the middle of the problem has to give and our leaders are both, you know, locally, federally, provincially need to step up and find solutions that are going to help resolve some of these problems because there is a division of, of, of policies and, and practices, right?

The municipal level can only do so much where the province has to step in and the federal government therefore as well, we need to step in and, and take some of those responsibilities.

The city can't run the deficit.

We are not allowed to run the deficit as a municipality, but the province and federal government can run deficits.

So that's why we're seeing some of the struggles that we see on the local level where it would be nice if the municipality could throw more money at the problem.

Lack of a better word or fun solutions, but that money needs to come from somewhere and with tax, our tax base not exactly expanding in the way that they wanted to and losing the tax revenue.

Like for example, some of the mines because they've shut down their operations, because they've vacated or cleared out some of their above ground buildings, they're not having to pay as much taxes as what they did before.

So the city is stuck trying to find either cutting in services or, or what they're offering or bringing up taxes, as we've noticed in the last few years to be able to make up for that lost revenue.

So it's, it's unfortunately, it's not the greatest of situations.

Again, cost of living.

We've seen it in the grocery stores and that as well.

Things keep climbing higher and higher.

I mean, hamburger meat last I checked was about 17 bucks a kilo for medium ground beef at local independent grocers, which is a huge increase from the 990 that I still have in my freezer at the moment from the last sale I picked up about four months ago.

So I can just imagine how difficult that's making it for for a lot of people to get by with.

Wow, it really.

Went up that much, it went there, yeah.

And I mean, I, I, I'm, I'm very much one of those very savvy shoppers and constantly checking Flyers and stuff.

And, and don't get me wrong, it's, there are places you can go and still get some deals.

If you, if you happen to have the Costco membership, there's some options that you can get there that are a little bit cheaper.

But it, it is quite significant that the cost of living has gone up.

I think of what my wife and I make as an income is comparative to what my parents made as an income.

But the quality of living, our buying power is so much lower than what theirs was.

And I mean, my parents retired in 2019.

And in retirement, I mean, just to help them survive because they, they were lucky enough to retire at a young age.

My parents now work for me.

So I mean, it's a bonus for me because I get to expand my business and my operations.

But it's also a testament that even with proper planning, with a pension, with saving up for RSPS, it's still difficult for people to get by, which which is not something that I think anybody would have anticipated as they were planning towards that too.

Wow.

Yeah, that's, that's a really good point.

A lot of good points.

I feel that you would be a really effective politician.

Thank you.

Yeah, I mean, it's not.

My world, right?

I don't understand it at all.

But you're a good communicator.

You seem to have common sense and everything.

And yeah, again.

Right, it's a it's a big thing and it's thankfully because I worked at the city as well for three years.

So after I left Snap Fitness after my parents had sold and retired in 2019, I stayed on until about the end of 2020.

And then I I was employed for the city for a little under three years, took a leave of absence, though, during my election run, I feel like it's important to note.

So there was no funny business happening in the background.

I did everything by the book, but it was something that a very eye opening as to what city policies were like procedures, why we do certain things the way that we do.

Because I've worked in library services, I've worked at the citizen service center at Tom Davis Square, I worked at in children's services, I worked at the clerk's department, which are the people that work the City Council meetings among other tasks.

And then, yeah, so it was kind of A and then in my last year I was working with 311.

So which is a job I can compare to all the complaints and the inquiries that you would have from the general public like a counselor would get, but none of the glory of being a city counselor and having your name attached to it.

But it was very eye opening and trying to understand everything with the city and how different departments work and operate because we would filter all those calls as they came through through the city.

Sudbury interviews everyone.

That's our episode for today.

This was Michelle Lalone, Mitch Lalone.

He's a professional DJ.

And I want to thank you for your your time, first of all, and your great perspective and point of view.

And this this half hour flew by for me super fast, very interesting and thanks for your time.

Is there anything else you'd like to add before we end it, if anybody is?

Needing ADJMC services.

Salmon Lighting for any kind of events from weddings, school dances, Proms, conferences, birthday parties, and I.

I've even done a celebration of life or two.

Just visit nitadj.ca.

Sounds good.

Thanks, Mitch.

Take care.

Thank you.

Bye.