Pittsburgh-bred Greg Gilles (a.k.a. Girl Talk) had a frantic 2006. The mash-up kingpin juggled life as a biomedical engineer, remixer, and consistently touring party-crusher for the better part of the year, not to mention gave countless interviews for a mass of magazines and probably answered a heap of love letters via Myspace as well.

But 2007 is a new day and Gillis has decided to hang up his biomedical engineering hat in favor of pleasing the kids and focusing on his sample-laden tunes. The poor guy has been traveling incessantly on weekends, rocking everything from Senior proms (this actually happened last weekend in San Francisco) to the upcoming Coachella Festival in Indio, CA. He’s also turned over a remix for Beck, which means he won’t have much trouble getting requests for his controversial copyright-cracking jams in the future.

Gilles is kicking so much ass, he’s got Congressmen giving him big-ups, as is evident in the following statement from Pittsburgh-democratic Congressman Mike Doyle:

”I want to tell a little story about a local guy done good. His name is Gregg Gillis and by day he’s a biomedical engineer in Pittsburgh. At night, he DJs under the name Girl Talk. His latest mash-up record made the top of 2006 lists from Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and Spin Magazine, among others. His schtick, as the Chicago Tribune wrote about him, is quote ‘based on the notion that some sampling of copyrighted material, especially when manipulated and re-contextualized into new art, is legit and deserves to be heard.’ In one example, he blended Elton John, Notorious B.I.G. and Beyonce, all in the span of 30 seconds.”

Not only is Gillis winning the hearts of teenage girls, but he’s also getting love from the man. Is it really that serious? We don’t care as long as homeboy keeps ripping away at the night.

Tourdates
04/28 Indio, CA: Coachella
05/04 Providence, RI: The Living Room
05/11 Millvale, PA: Mr. Smalls
05/25 Denver, CO: Bluebird Theater
05/26 Salt Lake City, UT: Urban Lounge
05/31 Barcelona, ES: Primavera Sound Festival
06/09 Vancouver, BC: Richards on Richards
06/16 Manchester, TN: Bonnaroo
06/28 Winnipeg, MB: Pyramid Cabaret
06/29 Ottawa, ON: Babylon
07/15 Chicago, IL: Pitchfork Music Festival