DJ Dan

Daniel Wherrett grew up in Washington state before moving to Los Angeles in 1991, where he played early events with DJ Ron D Core. He relocated to San Francisco in 1993 and co-founded the Funky Tekno Tribe there, becoming one of the architects of what came to be called the West Coast house sound, a fast-moving blend of house, breakbeat, and techno that set him apart from more genre-locked DJs of the era.

In 1996 he partnered with Jim Hopkins as the Electroliners on the track "Loose Caboose," which was picked up by Carl Cox, Sasha, John Digweed, and Lee Burridge. Pete Tong gave him his first BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix in 1998, a second in 1999, and a third in 2007 alongside Frankie Knuckles at the Winter Music Conference. Carl Cox invited him on tour in 2000, the same year his track "That Zipper Track" was pressed on four labels worldwide and sold more than 100,000 copies on vinyl. He launched his own label, InStereo Recordings, in 2001, and by the mid-2000s the recognition had caught up with the work: DJ Mag named him its No. 1 House DJ in 2006, and URB called him both "America's Favorite DJ" and "America's Hardest Working DJ."

Wherrett died in March 2026, at 57, after missing a scheduled performance in Reno, Nevada. He had been DJing as DJ Dan for 35 years.