WITF Music: Darrion Washington

Juggling life and music.

• Joe Ulrich/WITF
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Joe has been interested in audio and music since he was a kid. What started as a fascination with his parents’ vinyl records and cassette tapes turned into a love of both performing and recording. He grew up in Elizabethtown, Pa. and moved to Pittsburgh in 1999 where he majored in Photography at the University of Pittsburgh.
  
  In 2004, he attended the Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences in Tempe, AZ. He returned to Pittsburgh to work at a recording studio.
  
  In 2008, Joe arrived at WITF, where his skills have found a good home as an on-air host, audio engineer and producer of WITF Music. In 2016, Joe earned a National Edward R. Murrow award for Best Use of Sound.

 Joe Ulrich / WITF

Darrion Washington performs at WITF Music on February 3rd, 2025. (Joe Ulrich - WITF)

Listen to the radio feature:

Joe Ulrich: When did you start playing music?

Darrion Washington: I might’ve been like 13, 14 or something like that. My mom will probably watch this interview. She’s like number one fan. But she had a load of wash going and it was making this [sound] as it was going, and for some reason I just started singing to it. And I remember my mom coming down the stairs and she’s like, whoa.

I think it was like one of the first times where she was kind of like, oh, there’s something there. You know what I mean? Like she told me, she goes, huh, that’s pretty good. But stop singing from your nose or something. ‘Cause I was doing this Squidward thing.

Sedona. That song. I was having a rough moment in my life. And I said, if I could disappear anywhere, where would I go? I just started Googling things. I remember the Devil’s Bridge in Sedona popped up and I was like, whoa. And the first thing in my head was like, I’m dreaming about that. It might have been two years later, we were in Sedona on that bridge.

To be far away from issues, to be far away from everything you’re used to, go out here in some kind of foreign-ish place and be out there on this red rock, this terrain you’ve never stepped on before. There’s something just freeing about that.

Joe Ulrich: How has music shifted in terms of how it fits into your life?

Darrion Washington: Maybe this isn’t the best analogy, but pretend you’re juggling all these balls, right? You drop one and you realize you’re paying attention to the ones that are still in there, you’re still seeing this other one and you’re not giving that one the attention it needs. Right now, I’m just going at my own pace. And it feels like I can breathe a little bit.

See the full interview:

A collection of interviews, photos, and music videos, featuring local musicians who have stopped by the WITF performance studio to share a little discussion and sound. Produced by WITF’s Joe Ulrich.

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