Raised in the suburbs of Detroit, Barclay Crenshaw fell in love with the beat by listening to popular broadcasts of the Electrifying Mojo's Midnight Funk Association on local radio. After unsuccessfully trying to persuade Juan Atkins to hire him as sound engineer at age 16, Crenshaw got into the film industry, eventually relocating to San Francisco and directing a documentary on DJ culture called 'Intellect'. Putting the lessons learned to practice, Crenshaw started the dirtybird label together with Christian Martin and adopted the name Claude VonStroke - a name originally born out of joke, but which stuck after his first release, 'Deep Throat became a world-wide club hit. Crenshaw followed this up with hits like 'Who's Afraid Of Detroit?, 'The Whistler' and his debut album, 'Beware Of The Bird', successfully launching his international DJ career.