nrg in the mix

Saturday Nights 10pm.

100.9NRG is bringing the club to you every Saturday night. The show features hour-long sets by featured DJs, just as you’d hear in the clubs.

When NRG was on-air, NRG in the MIX was curated by Resident DJ Dawna Montell. Dawna was instrumental in the DJ operations of The Abbey and The Chapel in West Hollywood. She was also a resident DJ at Chill Bar Palm Springs.

100.9NRG resident dj dawna montell

Dawna Montell was interested in music right from the start; she loved the music she heard when they played ‘Musical Chairs’ as a child.  As she grew up, she started spending all her allowance buying singles at the record store and by the time she was in high school, she was supplying the music for her high school’s basketball games.  It was around this time that Dawna visited her first nightclub, Rumor Hazzit in Orange County, and she was hooked.

Dawna started hanging out in DJ booths in nightclubs, borrowing records and recording them at home.  Finally, she asked one of the DJs…they were all men…if he would teach her how to DJ.  He told her nope; it would be a waste of time since girls can’t hold a crowd.  But eventually, DJ Chuck at Robbie’s in Pomona did show Dawna the ropes and took her under his wing for her first professional DJ job in 1980.  But it didn’t last…they found out Dawna wasn’t yet 21 years old and wasn’t legal to even be in the club.

Once she turned 21 a year later, she got a second start at Que Sera Sera in Long Beach, where she played Wednesday nights in-between Melissa Ethridge sets.  She also landed a gig at a record store… all while slowly making her way to West Hollywood, or WeHo, long considered the major leagues of DJing.

In 1986, Dawna began stepping into broadcast when she invited KROQ-FM host Swedish Egil to the store and after they hit it off, Egil asked Dawna to take over his mix show duties for the 'All Night Radio Rock' mix on the world-renown Southern California radio station.

This started Dawna on a path following Swedish Egil first to Los Angeles’ MARS-FM, then Groove Radio International and finally to 103.1 Groove Radio, where she spun the ‘Lunch Groove Mix’ show and the ‘Saturday Night House Groove show.’

Today, Dawna is established as a premier DJ across the globe, having played everywhere from The Bay Area and Southern California to Tel Aviv to Puerto Villarta.  She is a 20-year resident DJ at The Abbey & The Chapel in West Hollywood as well as a resident DJ at Chill Bar Palm Springs.

 And Dawna’s broadcasting career has come full circle; she’s is back on-air once more, as resident DJ at 100.9NRG.

FEATURED DJs

SAM CHILDS

Sam Childs grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona in the 1980s listening to the radio and loving music. He began to DJ in high school at events and after high school he began as a mobile DJ doing parties and events. He studied broadcasting and began a career in radio in the mid 1990s.

Unfortunately, just as Sam was beginning his broadcasting career, the radio industry was going through sweeping changes and the talents of individual DJs were traded for corporate controlled programming that controlled what stations played on-air.

Sam relocated to Los Angeles in the late 1990s and randomly fell into producing film and television, a career that spanned the next 20 years. But Sam says he couldn’t shake his love for music and for DJing so he began spinning in the clubs in West Hollywood in the late 2010s. He has DJ’d at almost every major club in West Hollywood and many other cities as well.

In May 2019, Sam became a resident DJ at the world-famous Abbey and Chapel nightclubs alongside Dawna Montell. He’s now retired from his TV and Film career and DJs full time.