- Welcome to Kalamazoo Lively Arts.

The show that takes you inside Kalamazoo's vibrant creative community and explores the people who breathe life into the arts.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Support for Kalamazoo lively arts is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of greater Kalamazoo.

- I'm Jennifer Moss, here at Miller Auditorium, on today's show, we meet Evan "Woots" Wouters a singer songwriter based in Kalamazoo.

Hear from artists about the importance of the arts in life and in Kalamazoo and wrap up our artist in residence series with fire.

- V Wilger is a local youth poet and activist who has been a part of fire programming for over five years.

They were actually part of Kzoo Fire'’s.

First, louder than a bomb slam team.

V is an activist who fights for radical justice in Kalamazoo advocating for the defunding and disarming of police and the redistribution of funds towards infrastructure education, and housing.

Thankfully, V credits most of their growth to the support and commitment of fire staff.

And we are beyond blessed to elevate their voice today.

I present to you V Wilger.

(upbeat music) - You're definitely one of the youth that really approached fire like home, respect this space y'all and respect everybody here.

- It really was home to me because when I first came in Allison just immediately greeted me with my chosen name.

And like, I was still a little not, I was still not out completely, and I was still like figuring myself out.

And then Allison was just like, hi, are you?

I think I went by Connor by then.

Are you Connor?

I'm like yeah (laughs).

(upbeat music) - Youth Voice is important because they are truly the future.

They're able to give us older folk.

And I include myself because like I've grown way too much.

Since high school.

they give us a new perspective that we may never have that the opportunity to see before, in poetry and art especially youth are able to share their experiences and passion with new twists, techniques, rhythms.

There are a lot of people saying that nothing is original anymore but what I love the most about poetry and spoken word is that as long as it is your writing and your experiences and your life that you're writing about it's always going to be original, no matter what you say even though with thousands of people have written about it before as long as it's your writing and your story, it's original.

- Have you ever heard the sound of leaves?

Have you heard the rustling wind as the reds and greens and browns fall to the floor?

Have you seen a tree decompose?

Have you seen the life of something that's lived longer than any human fall to the ground and continue giving until there's nothing left, but bark and fungus.

Have you felt the frailty of a flower reaching for the sky hungry for the sun.

Have you ever felt the quills of a porcupine traveling miles of land to find food.

Have you tasted the sweet berries?

Have you tasted the candy fruit that grew a whole season just for you?

Have you smelled the dirt?

Have you smelled the sediment after the rain, after a fire?

When the chemicals and smoke residue had fallen have you stood in a forest and opened your senses?

- Yes see!

(fingers snapping) (upbeat music) - Something I want to say most, something that I find I'm most passionate about would be that I wouldn't be anything without the community I was growing with.

I had grown with.

Fire and Kalamazoo played such an important role in my life.

And community support is something is that not everyone is lucky enough to get, and that's not because of them that has nothing to do with them.

It is because of the world we live in today.

Where we put money in profit over people.

I want everyone to understand that we have more control over ourselves than the elite class has made us believe.

And always, always, always the first step to true revolution, to true change in the world is to imagine and idealize what freedom looks like and what freedom means to you.

(Band plays) - He's a singer songwriter, a producer Evan Wouters here with us but we'll call you Woots.

Is that okay?

- That's okay.

- So what is your music?

- My music is first and foremost.

It was for me.

I wrote it for myself and, and then I started to realize that people were listening and I started to become very conscious of the listener.

You know, I don't think that you can really truly do that until you sit down and start recording in a studio.

A lot of people, you know, especially in our world you spend so much time watching yourself on a camera and listening to yourself through headphones after you record something.

And if you don't spend your time doing that very often it can be really bizarre the first time you do it.

So I think once you start forcing yourself to do that and getting out of your comfort zone, it really starts to force you to take the perspective of the listener.

And that's kind of when I really started, I at least in in my opinion, when my songs started to get a lot better one, it's not just for me, especially when you release music into the world, it's not yours anymore.

It's everybody's.

(band playing) - Woots how much does your master's in counseling psychology bleed over into your art artistic talent?

- You know, for a long time, I always was very adamant about keeping them separate keeping my professional career separate from my music career and music was my escape.

I've always worked with at risk mandated sort of populations.

Teenagers I met, I'm currently an ER social worker, so pretty heavy work.

So music has always been my way to cope with some of the stress that comes with with that career choice.

I'm really starting to see the connection now between my songwriting and my everyday of working with people through just severe trauma and so much stress that they're going out in their life.

And I'm really starting to find that I'm writing music that I'm trying to speak through that with people it's definitely starting to bleed over in that way.

And I, and I've always dreamed of being able to find a way where I could balance the two.

♪Im tired that's how I sing ♪ ♪ Make it last, turn down the lights ♪ - Host of collaborations under your belt.

What does that mean?

- So this record, although I, it's, you know my name on the title, I in no way shape or form could have made this record without the help of just so many fantastic people.

Although I wrote all the songs and it's primarily you know, my compositions, all the instruments, besides you know I'm on every single and the structure of the song is what I wrote, but all the other parts and the intricacies and everything that was all done by the musicians that contributed and the editing and the mixing process.

So the original studio that I worked out of was third coast recording, which is in grand Haven which is a studio run by Bill Chrysler.

And then I did all my mixing and mastering here in Kalamazoo at LA Luna, recording and sound, which is ran by Ian G orman and his team, both state-of-the-art fantastic extremely professional, best equipment.

You can imagine studios in the state of Michigan in my opinion.

And they come with just really fantastic and creative people, but anybody who makes music or is in the art world in general you have to learn how to collaborate with people and take feedback and, you know, really take to heart what people have to say about what you're doing.

Because if you, if you can't collaborate with people I mean, it's just, it, it just won't be as good, I guess.

I don't know if good is the right word, but I wouldn't feel as fulfilled if I wasn't making music with my friends.

(man singing) - During COVID, how did Woots work?

And talk to me about your creative process.

- I kind of tighten up when I say this but I think that the COVID pandemic actually kind of helped me where I was at my process and making the record only because I had finished the majority of the tracking.

And for those of your viewers that don't know, tracking is the part of the process where the musicians come into the studio and we're actually recording the instruments.

And then the process after that is the mixing and editing process, where you go in and you listen to everything, you recorded it and you edit it to, to line up the way you want.

And then you mix the individual instruments to sound the way that you want to sound.

When the pandemic hit I had already finished all of my tracking.

So since I didn't really have any shows to play I didn't have to rush to get the record out and I still needed to get some financial regained from it.

It was actually an opportunity for me to do a Kickstarter to get some, some more financing, to continue moving forward with the process, which I successfully launched.

And thank you to everybody that contributed to that.

And then it really gave me an opportunity to really get to know this record in a way that I don't think I would have if I hadn't been forced to stay in my house and just put my headphones on and really listen.

I just have endless and endless pages of notes.

And then when we moved into the mixing process, I was very I felt very solid on where I wanted to go in the direction.

And you know, when I sat down in granted I got to do it with Ian Gorman, who is, if you're a musician in Kalamazoo, you know, the name, Ian Gorman.

Um he, he just did such a fantastic job, really making this record just sound the way that it's supposed to sound.

(band playing) - You got the passion.

What really makes you love what you do?

- At the end of the day?

I just want to write songs that, there's this artist that I really love named Sturgill Simpson.

He's a country artist, he's from Kentucky.

And I was listening to an interview with him and he had made a comment.

If I had known I'd be playing these songs for the rest of my life, I would have wrote some better songs which I thought was hilarious, but that really stuck with me that if I'm going to write songs and put them out there and have potential of playing them for the rest of my life, I better sure be proud of them.

Um So I guess for me the drive is just, do I like still listening to my music and if not, then I need to write more.

(Laughs) - All right, where do we find your music?

- So probably the easiest way is just to go to my website.

Wootsmusic.com, W-O-O-T-S-M-U-S-I-C.com but Woots music or Woots on all the social media platforms.

I'm constantly trying to put out content but the record can be found there and it can be downloaded directly from the website through band camp.

It'll be up on all the free streaming platforms here in a little while, but I just wanted to do if people did want to contribute and pay for it that option is there and you can go download it now at Wootsmusic.com.

- You gotta be only one Woots music.

Congratulations on your success.

- Thank you so much, I appreciate Shelley.

(band plays) - Tell me a little bit about why you think people should support the arts in Kalamazoo because you know, Kalamazoo is a is one of those cities, man, isn't it?

- You know The arts is whenever when the world's shut down.

Where did we turn to to get, to keep us going?

You know, to give us inspiration, to give us hope.

We turned to the arts, we turn to film.

We turn to, you know, books we turn to arts, we turned to music.

- I grew up in Boston.

Like I said, I went to school in Philadelphia.

I went to school in Cleveland.

I lived in Atlanta, big, big American cities but I'm amazed.

Every time I come to Kalamazoo.

And on any given night that I'm working with the Kalamazoo symphony there'll be one or two musical events that I would say, Hey if I wasn't actually busy, I would want to go see that.

And that's remarkable in, in Kalamazoo.

A town that was, you know, three times the size of Kalamazoo would be proud to have these things and you'd have them all in this amazing community.

- When I moved here, that was the first thing that I noticed I could not believe the amount of support for the arts here in such a small city.

- And sometimes it does take somebody from outside looking in to say, you don't see these things.

Cause I, I know people that grew up in Kalamazoo they didn't notice a lot of things.

Like, I didn't know.

You can go here.

I didn't know.

I know cause I... (mumbles) yeah so just the feeling of being welcomed.

- So Paulo, Can you tell me, like why should people support the arts in Kalamazoo?

- I can't think of a reason.

Why not?

I mean, art is an expression of who we are.

We need to express ourselves.

And when we express ourselves often through art and so it's important to be able to connect Kalamazoo to the world.

And part of that is to express arts in Kalamazoo and to support the arts in Kalamazoo is essential to make those cultural connections and to promote global engagement.

- It's something of beauty.

It's something that just connects everyone and it creates friendships no matter where you are in the world, it brings people together.

And so I think the arts are vital to any community.

- And there's really great people that are behind the arts as well.

The people that are making these products, being able to to support them as well is huge.

You're directly supporting another person's livelihood which is a lot different than maybe if you're shopping at a big box store or something like that.

And you don't see that really direct impact that you're having.

- We support each other.

So deeply, everything that we do in Kalamazoo, we rely on our neighbors, our friends.

It's a really wonderful rich environment for creating art.

- If my family hadn't moved to Kalamazoo.

I don't know if I would have taken up a degree in performance violin.

And I think it's because Kalamazoo does foster a great deal of community around the performing arts.

I think without that, I wouldn't be playing the violin.

- I wouldn't be anything without the community I was growing with.

I had grown, fire and Kalamazoo played such an important role in my life.

And community support is something that not everyone is lucky enough to get.

- Art is expression, and even if it's through music, if it's through, you know, the fine arts through dance, through, business barbering, Judy shops, I mean that those are the arts.

- Art is emotion, art is Something that we can hold on to when we're feeling down or when we just need a moment to breathe.

- Art is really the bedrock where the conveners, the healers, the folks that basically make our communities worth getting up, going to work each day.

- Why support the arts in Kalamazoo?

- Well, now we see why, because without the arts we feel emptiness.

We don't feel complete.

The arts are so important to our daily lives.

And now that most of the arts have been either taken away or reduced.

I think we all see how much they mean to us and what they mean to every person.

- We noted that that one song, can calm us down.

We know that that book, or sometimes it's looking at that picture, somebody pouring out something artistically it has an effect.

- The arts can make kids and people feel good about themselves.

There's no language there.

You could be on the other side of the moon or on the other side of the world.

- And just taking that away, I can see how depleted the lives of people are that count on this, that require art and require music to feed themselves.

- When those artists stop it's because they weren't able to financially support what it is that they were trying to do.

Things costs, materials cost money.

- It's important to support here.

Otherwise you would find yourself having to go to different locations, basically everything you you leave is here.

You don't have to go into Chicago or Detroit or Indianapolis.

- We are very very aware of how this has affected us emotionally as, as a culture.

And I think that so many people are looking for a light at the end of the tunnel.

Something that they can celebrate when people start to get vaccinated and more people get vaccinated.

And we're able to start to go back to what we used to be doing.

I'm really looking forward personally to being able to take part in live music again.

- If you know an artist or a musician the best thing you can do for them is hire them right now.

And if that means a zoom concert or a little intro lesson at their instrument or buying one of their pieces of one of their massive pieces that maybe you wouldn't have shelled out a thousand dollars for before that's going to be really meaningful for them to continue doing what they're doing.

So yes, the yeah the arts got many of us through it, but in an important remember.

A reminder for everybody is that there's a person behind that art that you love.

So if you were an arts lover, then you are an artist lover and that's a really integral part of that gathering and that community that I would just want it to highlight.

- Thank you for joining us on this week's episode of Kalamazoo, lively arts, check out today's show and other content at wgu.org.

We leave you tonight with another spectacular performance.

I'm Jennifer Moss have a great night.

(band playing) ♪ It's easy to wake in the morning ♪ ♪ Something to look forward to, even though it's a big ♪ ♪ Bad world, I make do ♪ ♪ Some days you feel lost ♪ ♪ Oh the days you find what's gone ♪ ♪ Maybe you should ask yourself ♪ ♪ What keeps you strong ♪ ♪ Keep up ♪ ♪ Keep up ♪ ♪ Keep up ♪ ♪ I'm running circles around you ♪ ♪ Keep up ♪ ♪ Miles ahead ♪ ♪ Don't break your back, doing something you hate ♪ ♪ Be proud out loud, create ♪ ♪ All eyes to the horizon ♪ ♪ A day into night ♪ ♪ If you love all the things you do ♪ ♪ You never work a day in your life ♪ ♪ Oh Keep up ♪ ♪ And keep up ♪ ♪ And keep up ♪ ♪ You can't catch me, keep up ♪ ♪ I'm miles ahead ♪ ♪ Patience, what you seek will take time ♪ ♪ Remember, to breathe and be alive ♪ ♪ Hardships past future into now ♪ ♪ One day, you take your final bow ♪ ♪ And Keep up ♪ - [Narrator] Support for Kalamazoo Lively Arts is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of greater Kalamazoo.

♪ Keep up ♪ ♪ Keep up ♪ ♪ You can't catch me ♪ ♪ Keep up ♪