Meet Gleb Tchertkov | Wormhole COO

We had the good fortune of connecting with Gleb Tchertkov and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Gleb, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
To be perfectly honest, I didn’t even think of Wormhole as a business for the first few years. The first few events were just a small group of friends listening to bass music on a tiny PA during happy hour at a beer garden so it didn’t seem like anything serious. All we wanted was to listen to dope music with our friends. A lot of the music that we were listening to wasn’t being played anywhere in the Bay Area so part of the motivation was to showcase these sounds. We didn’t realize how much of a market there was for the weirder more psychedelic side of bass music!

Over the first 6 months or so, more people got involved and our events grew in size and production value. When we relaunched the Wednesday weekly, our attendance started to double every week, and what we were doing started to take on a life of its own.

It definitely hit me that this was an actual business when I got that first massive tax bill. All revenues and expenses ran through my personal account for the first few years and I had no idea how to properly account for all that. In 2014 or 2015 I got letters telling me that I owed tens of thousands of dollars to California and the IRS and I freaked out.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I’ve always loved music. In my teenage years that love grew into something like an obsession. I started playing guitar at 17 and played in a few bands until I moved to the Bay and discovered dubstep and started experimenting with DJing. Putting on Wormhole events gave me an outlet to practice the craft of DJing. Although Wormhole has become a business, my involvement with this company has also given me so many opportunities to express myself through mixing tunes for dancefloors and I am very grateful to have this artistic outlet in my life.

I basically had to learn how to DJ live in front of people because early on it was difficult to convince more established artists to play our tiny party and so we needed residents to play music. Learning on the fly like that came with many failures, trainwrecks, and awkward/embarassing moments that forced me to learn quickly. It wasn’t easy but ultimately I am grateful for the process I went through. 10 years later I still don’t feel like I am a great DJ but I suppose i am competent enough because people keep trusting me to push tunes through their sound systems!

Dedicating myself to the bass music culture and community has brought me many incredibly beautiful moments, introduced me to so many amazing people, and has changed my life for the better but it hasn’t been an easy road. There have been too many stolen or broken laptops, many years of not knowing how I would pay the bills next month, frequently having to deal with people treating others in terrible ways and being asked to mediate because of my position as a community leader, the list goes on.

However, none of that can take away those moments of unity, joy, and transcendence when the music brings everyone on that dancefloor to a magical place full of inspiration, healing, whatever each of us needs in that moment.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Taco trucks in Oakland where none of the employees speak English, the view from the Berkeley/Oakland hills, the view from Twin Peaks overlooking San Francisco and the Bay, the view from Mt. Tamalpais, beaches like Stinson and Ocean Beach. Driving down highway 1 to Santa Cruz or up to Bodega Bay. Hanging out at Lake Merritt in Oakland. Maybe catching a sideshow?

I guess that’s a good start.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Wormhole essentially functioned as a collective for the first years. The core initial founders were myself and Morgan McCloud, with lots of help from Iggy (Boomzilla), James Hawkins (DJ Shadow Spirit, and our graphic designer), Jack Kern (our first resident VJ and projection mapping guru), Sam Lewis (resident DJ). Our friend Sevag helped with sound for a while. Pretty early on we were introduced to brilliant animator, VJ, and projection mapping wiz, Matthew Childers (Digital Introspect) who has been intimately involved ever since. When Jason Magellan Hager joined our team in that first year that was really a huge game changer because he had a sound system and a bunch of lights and truss. Around that time we recruited Trevor (Dastardly) who brought a wealth of experience to the team. Our crew all of a sudden was pretty legit, we had a venue that allowed us to grow our Wednesday weekly, and that’s when our friend Benji Hannus (Secret Recipe FKA Intellitard) approached us about joining the team. I had known Benji in passing, was a fan of his sets, and had attended a bunch of the awesome events he was putting on in Santa Cruz with the Forever Endeavour crew. He was really the final piece of the puzzle and things just took off like wildfire from there.

Our resident DJ roster started to grow around that 1 year mark and we were blessed to have talented folks like Duffrey, spacegeishA, 2birds, and Shwung (FKA Humpfree Lowgart) join our group. A huge part of our events has always been the live painter aspect. It’s honestly impossible to name everyone that’s painted live at our parties but the first folks included James Hawkins, Lindsay Marie Iris, Brian Pollet, Brian Dragonotter, Alexa Fourier, Alex Sodari, Fred No One, Irie Gilbert, Malcom Blaisdell and later on we were blessed to showcase folks like Jeremiah Allen Welch and Gabriel Welch, Seth McMahon, Brittney Sundquist, Rolando, Dylan Mertz, and so many more. Dylan eventually created the Wormhole Mural Squad, who created some incredible works with a rotating cast of local artists.

Also gotta give a shoutout to crews like Raindance, Ritual, Beat Church, Soundpieces, and the folks at 1015 and others for putting on events that allowed all of our crew to meet and inspired the confidence in us to create our own events and to follow our passions as they did.

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