Meet the local DJ who keeps Death Valley rocking for Clemson football games

Maybe you’re a grandparent who loves throwbacks.

Maybe you’re a player who needs a pregame boost.

Maybe you’re a kid who wants to feel included in the fun.

No matter your age, no matter your musical taste and no matter your role in Memorial Stadium, Donsha Butler has the same goal each and every time he clocks in for a shift as Clemson football’s in-house DJ.

“My goal is for people to enjoy themselves and have a good time,” Butler told The State. “When you come to a game and it’s my time to play, I may not hit it (perfectly) every timeout or going into every kickoff … but for the most part, I want to be able to give you an experience.”

Butler — better known by his stage name, DJ Sha — has manufactured plenty of those across nearly a decade of perfect attendance as Death Valley’s resident remixer.

Saturday’s Clemson-Miami game will be the 53rd consecutive football home game that Butler has worked as a DJ, dating back to the team’s 2015 home opener against Wofford.

That’s a lot of time, a lot of work and a lot of tunes emanating from Butler’s custom DJ booth nestled in the stadium’s West End Zone area, everything from Kendrick Lamar to Jack Harlow and “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” to “Zombie Nation.”

DJ Sha (pronounced Shay) wouldn’t have it any other way. Neither would No. 10 Clemson, which is currently riding an ACC-record 39-game home winning streak.

“I think the biggest thing that stands out to me from my role is the amount of care and dedication he has,” said Jaclyn Roh, Clemson’s assistant athletic director of marketing and fan experience. “He truly feels like he’s part of our team.”

“I just think he’s a great guy,” football coach Dabo Swinney added.

‘Find us a DJ’

Swinney’s relationship with Butler goes “way back,” he said. Back to the early years of his Clemson tenure, when the Tigers were a rising ACC power but not yet the national brand they are today and Swinney, seeking a boost, wanted to create a “different energy” at practice.

“I’m like, ‘OK, let’s find us a DJ,’” he said.

Clemson didn’t have to look far. Butler, who grew up in the town of Ninety Six, South Carolina — near Greenwood — was already well-established as a DJ in the Upstate. He worked, among other events, weddings, proms, fraternity and sorority parties and events for the city of Clemson.

Given his extensive experience, spinning some tunes at Clemson football recruiting events was par for the course. What wasn’t par for the course was Swinney later approaching Butler during the team’s annual All In Cookout, which he was DJ’ing at the Madren Center, with a new idea.

“What do you think about coming out to some practices?” Swinney said.

“You just let me know, and I’m there,” Butler said.

He waited patiently. The call came a few months later on a Monday: Clemson wanted to meet with Butler about DJ’ing a few football practices — and, if those went well, perhaps a few football games, too.

Butler agreed to a Tuesday meeting without hesitation, knowing full well it conflicted with a Tuesday shift at his second job, at a local drug screening lab.

“Lucky enough, my boss was a Clemson fan,” he said, laughing.

Butler took off work and took the meeting.

“And here we are in Year 8,” he said.

Inside a game day

Early on, there was some trial and error.

Butler worked his inaugural 2015 season from the stadium’s game operations booth — so far back that he couldn’t see the actual field and had to rely on cues from Clemson personnel or an often-delayed TV broadcast to do his job.

At that point, Butler “didn’t care where I was,” he said. “I was just happy to have the opportunity.”

But the best DJs are reactionary DJs, those who make musical decisions off crowd vibes as opposed to rigid set lists, and Butler couldn’t do that from afar.

Another issue: Despite a camera broadcasting his performances onto the video board, people weren’t sure he was actually in the stadium. Still, Butler’s rookie year was a clear success. The following season, 2016, Clemson built Butler his current DJ booth in the west end zone.

“I call it my apartment,” he said.

Now a veteran of Death Valley DJ’ing, football Saturdays are like clockwork for Butler, who lives in Greenville with his wife.

He’s a “hurry-up-and-wait guy,” he joked, so he gets to the stadium four or five hours before kickoff. Then he sets up his equipment, which is surrounded by a plastic glass shield in case of inclement weather.

Butler’s gear of choice is the RANE ONE, a professional DJ controller set that weighs about 24 pounds and connects to his laptop through the music production software Serato. From there, he checks in with Roh’s marketing team and gets ready for pregame warmups.

Butler starts DJ’ing about two and a half hours before kickoff, and that’s overwhelmingly player-requested music. Since he has to manually censor any curse words and/or suggestive phrases from songs before playing them (“We have little kids at these games!”), Butler builds out his playlists well in advance. He takes song recommendations throughout fall camp and also exchanges contact info with a few team leaders who, if needed, can communicate midseason requests.

“They’ve been all over the place this season,” Butler said, and he rattled off a list of younger rappers he’s often requested to play. “It’s been quite a lot of Lil Baby. A lot of NBA YoungBoy. A lot of EST Gee. Those guys, they keep me on my toes with stuff. I’m like, ‘What??’”

During games, Butler pivots from player requests to a wider variety of music. He’ll still dial up a hip-hop song ahead of, say, a big third down for an opposing offense. But he’ll also play pop songs, old songs and participation songs. “Swag Surfin’” is always a student section hit.

Roh, the associate AD for marketing and fan experience, communicates with Butler and other marketing department staffers throughout the game via headset. It’s a collaborative process, she said. Her Clemson team chips in, but Butler usually plays 75% to 80% of all the music.

“It’s the people behind the scenes that help me look great,” Butler said.

Relationships that last

Over eight years, it’s become a consistent — and fulfilling — endeavor. Outside of football, which Butler continued to DJ during the 2020 and 2021 seasons amid COVID-19, he is also working every Clemson men’s basketball, women’s basketball and volleyball home game this season.

Every team, he said, gets the same treatment. Case in point: Weeks before basketball season, he’d already connected with Brevin Galloway and Chase Hunter on the men’s team and Amari Robinson on the women’s team to get their pregame requests squared away.

“If they want to put in the work behind the scenes in the offseason, I have to do the same thing,” Butler said. “From a DJ standpoint, it’s not just going in there an hour before. … I really like to try to do my homework beforehand to go out there and be as successful as possible.”

Butler, who works his full slate of Clemson events each year on a contract basis alongside various local weddings, proms, concerts and other gigs, also values the lasting relationships he’s built at the university.

Former Tigers receiver Charone Peake had Butler DJ one of his youth football camps years after he graduated. Former Tigers running back Darien Rencher and current running backs coach C.J. Spiller each had Butler DJ their weddings. He’s worked fundraising events for Kathleen Swinney, Dabo’s wife.

“He does a great job but, again, he’s a really good guy on top of that,” Swinney said. “He’s a great Clemson man.”

Coincidentally, he’s also attached at the hip to one of the more impressive streaks in Clemson football history. Put it this way: Clemson is not only 58-1 at home in the College Football Playoff era (since 2014) but 51-1 at home in the DJ Sha era (since 2015). The lone blemish on either record is a 2016 loss to Pittsburgh — the Tigers haven’t lost in the seven seasons since.

Presented with that statistic, Butler laughed. It’s great to be a small part of 39 straight home wins, he said, but it’s not really about him.

Come Saturday, when Clemson goes for consecutive home win No. 40, Butler will simply be in his usual booth, playing his usual music and shooting for his usual goal: entertaining the players. And the kids. And grandma.

“And that’s my goal,” he said. “I know I can’t make 80,000 people in that stadium happy … but if I can make a majority of those people happy, then I feel like my goal as a DJ is accomplished.”