Justin Jay had DJed three times at high-school parties before he was asked to get on a plane, fly to DJ Mag’s Top 100 launch event at a premier London club, and open for global superstar Afrojack.

“I submitted one demo to DJ Mag,” Jay tells the Straight on the line from his parents’ home in L.A. “It would have been an absolutely huge platform to launch my career.”

It sounds like a Disney movie. But unfortunately for Jay, there was one small problem.

“I lied about my age,” he says with a laugh. “I was 17 at the time, and you had to be 18 to enter the contest. The guys from DJ Mag called me when I was at the school cafeteria. I was like, ‘Hi—I can’t hear you, I’m in the lunchroom right now. Can I call you back?’ They said, ‘Dude, how old are you?’ And I told them. They disqualified me on the spot.

“It probably worked out for the best, though,” Jay continues, with a characteristically positive outlook. “I didn’t have anywhere near enough experience to be on that stage.”

Using his thwarted celebrity appearance as motivation, Jay threw himself into L.A.’s club scene. No stranger to playing parties underage, the blossoming DJ built up a wealth of experience by spinning his eclectic blend of funk, techno, and house music outside of the law.

“I was performing all over the U.S. before I was 21,” he recalls. “The first gig I ever did, I was 18. The event I was playing was 19+. The bouncers took away my fake ID, and I had to call the promoter to be like, ‘Hey, I’m stuck outside.’ Thankfully, I got to play the show, and we had a good laugh about it. I never got that ID back, though.”

Now old enough to whip out some real government credentials, the understandably in-demand DJ has just finished a back-to-back global tour with his frat buddies Benny Bridges and Josh Taylor. Promoting their album The Fantastic Voyage—an innovative collaboration between Jay’s soulful deep house, Bridges’s masterful guitar-playing, and Taylor’s quirky ukulele—Jay demonstrates how his unique talent can turn even the most unlikely of projects into a success.

“We didn’t know what we were doing with Voyage,” Jay admits. “But it just worked. We wrote our first track in the car on the way to the show. Josh was driving while the aux cord was coming out of my computer. My laptop died three-quarters of the way to San Fran, so we had to stop at In-N-Out Burger. The only power outlets were in the ceiling, so as my friends are finishing their burgers, I’m frantically finishing the track. I bounced down the final mix 10 minutes before the doors opened, we played it at peak time at this party, and it was magical. That’s when we knew we were onto something really special.”

Now that he has more than a half-decade of DJing under his belt, Jay’s talent behind the decks allows him to seamlessly blend Bridges and Taylor’s live guitar and ukulele with his electronic sound—and the three friends have been lighting up stages all over the world.

So would Jay finally feel comfortable opening for Afrojack in London?

“Absolutely,” he says. “I’m awaiting the next invitation.”

Justin Jay plays at FVDED in the Park at Surrey’s Holland Park on Sunday (July 3).