- Jason Kitchen, co-founder of L8 Night Flights, began his DJ career in 2009.

Since then, he has created his Flight Crew, an impressive team of DJs who have had many club residencies around the Tampa Bay area.

(upbeat music) - My favorite part of DJing is that moment when you're just totally in the flow, you're not thinking about anything else, everybody in the room is vibing and smiling at each other, and it doesn't matter if there's a thousand people or 10 people.

It's just that connection between you and people that are partying in the room.

Hello, I'm Jason Kitchen.

I'm the creator and co-founder of the house music collective, L8 Night Flights.

- Hi, my name is Alex.

I'm a partner in L8 Night Flights, and I go by Taetro as a DJ.

- Hi, I am Alen, I go by Alen P, I'm a member of the L8 Night Flights Crew, and I'm originally from Croatia.

- My name's JB Nicotera, and I'm a part of the L8 Night Flights Crew here in St. Petersburg, Florida.

- My name is Curtis Viscom, AKA Curtis James, and I'm a disc jockey for L8 Night Flights.

- L8 Night Flights and our, you know, our group of DJs, it was always about, you know, people that honestly were just people we loved, were our friends.

That's most always been the most important to us is that you're good people first, and that we want to, you know, you wanna be around these people.

- The coolest part about DJing, I think is just being able to tell a story and set a vibe and connect with people without actually having to speak to them.

- For me, DJing is all about the energy exchange, the vibration between myself as a DJ, selector of the music and the dance floor, and the people on dance floor, receiving that energy.

True music.

- DJing, to me is the art of collecting and curating music for a group of people that are all like-minded and tapping into the ether and energy of those people all at once and letting them decide where the night's gonna go, and doing all of that without a single verbal exchange.

- One of my favorite stories as a DJ was out at The Edge.

Rain started, there was no cover, it's an outdoor venue, and we just throw tarps out into the crowd and these 40, 60 foot long tarps get spread out and everybody in the crowd's holding it.

It feels like you're back in middle school with the parachute.

Everybody's under it dancing all the way connected to the DJ and it was just, it was ball, it was kids at play again, it was amazing.

- Chico was definitely a special place for L8 Night Flights because it was the founding venue where we started playing.

We had a special setup.

It was very low ceiling, very small, very dark.

People get very intimate there.

DJ Booth was very close to the dance floor in a sense that you can actually touch people in front of you.

- My favorite place that we've done events at is going absolutely gonna be the St. Petersburg Pier.

The fact that it's open to all ages.

It's a free event that, you know, we community-funded and just be able to see these, my friends and people we've known for a long time, bringing their young children with them and seeing everybody dance together.

It's really special.

I met my business partner, Lyndon Uy.

It was about 2009.

I had just gotten my first public gig out in the world, and I was playing at this place called Orbit 19 in Holiday, Florida.

Lyndon had moved down here from New York City, just had a quadruple bypass, and so he came down here to live with his mother and father.

He was actually, even though he was coming down here 'cause of the quadruple bypass, he was also coming down here to take care of them.

That was something really special about Lyndon that he, all the way until when he passed, he was taking care of his mother and father.

- He was a mentor for sure, when it came to music.

He was someone who would always tell it like it is, you know, he would tell you, you know, your set sucked and this is the reason why.

He would help you get better.

- Was always a smile on his face.

I never saw him grumpy, like very rarely.

He always was very direct and transparent.

- He held all of us together.

He was a calming presence when he needed to be.

He was a chaotic energy pusher when he needed to be.

- But more than that, you know, he was a role model, he was a teacher, he was a phenomenal DJ.

- Lyndon was always the type of person that would listen to everybody.

He made people feel special and always was an ear.

- He would do things that would just blow your mind and like you would learn every time you saw him play.

- Even, you know, when he passed, that was something that everybody always said was that he was there and, you know, just a really good friend to everybody.

DJing and music really is where it started for me and the many, you know, 20 plus years that I've put into this now, you know, there's a lot of different paths that I've sacrificed, you know, going down those different roads because of the late nights, because the, the economics of being a DJ, versus having a career, you know, the just gig work versus steady career money is definitely, you know, those are the things that people don't always see or think about.

And, you know, there's, there's just tons of those kind of sacrifices, I think, to be an artist of any type.

And so, yeah, I feel any artist could relate and at the end of the day, I wouldn't take any of it back.

You know, there's definitely struggles that could come along with it, but the, the memories and the moments that we've all shared, that's it.

It makes it worth it.

♪ You make work alive ♪ ♪ I knew you'd come knocking one day ♪ ♪ Unannounced like a thief ♪ (gentle music) - [Narrator] For more information, check out L8nightflights.com.