(bright music) - [Narrator] Funding for "Working Capital" is provided by the Friends of KTWU and GO Topeka.

- Welcome back to "Working Capital."

Remember those perfect days in grade school, the ones where you felt like you were a singer, or musician in the morning, then an artist in the afternoon, dabbling in clay, watercolors, or maybe paper mache.

What if those inspirations never left and you followed both those dreams, bending and blending, the winding road of a mixed media Duke.

Coming up next.

(soft upbeat music) On today's show, we're talking with someone who has followed his dreams wherever they have taken him.

A native of Garden City, Kansas, Duke Oursler has made a career of his passion for art, both as a sculptor, and a singer/songwriting recording artist.

Duke is a professor of art in sculpture at Western Illinois University where he has been creating large scale public sculpture for the past several years and has exhibited his work throughout the Southeast and Midwest.

Not limiting his art to the physical form, Duke extends his artistry into the musical realm.

Inspired by the Illinois banks of the Mississippi River near his Macomb, Illinois home, Duke's unique brand of American country music speaks to the nostalgia, virtue and aspiration of Midwestern life and experience.

Duke, welcome to "Working Capital."

Thanks for joining us today.

- Thanks for having me.

I appreciate you having me here.

- Yeah, I know you kind of carved out some time for us 'cause you're actually touring right now, so.

- A little mini tour, yeah.

Heading out to Colorado and Nebraska and here in Kansas.

- So this wasn't your first foray into art, but what brought you into the country music scene?

Let's just get to that first since that's why we got you here.

- Well, I grew up in Western Kansas.

It's kind of hard not to be in the country music scene, or interested in country music it's everywhere, but as a young kid a friend of mine his dad had this guitar sitting by his door and I'd wait at his house to go to wrestling practice.

His dad, his name's Tom Waller, he taught me how to play Johnny Cash, "Folsom Prison Blues."

And so that was, like, the very first song I learned how to play.

And I was like, oh, you know, I kinda like this stuff.

I still play that song to this day, but that's kinda like how I first got into it.

And then later on in life, I really became a fan of songwriting and stories and poetry, and literature that had stories about blue-collar Midwestern life.

I just really attached to that, especially being from Kansas here, you know, blue-collar this state's a lot like that, so.

- So when you first picked up that guitar, and your friend's dad was teaching you, I mean, did you see yourself in 10 or 15 years you're just like, this is cool, or did you really think this could be something?

Or is it more of, you know, you get down the road, and you get more confidence, and kind of the determination to do it?

- Well, at first, I definitely didn't see anything like what I'm doing now.

I was just trying to make my hand work and get it to sound not like gobbledygook, you know, for lack of a better term, but after a while I realized I was having a hard time trying to play other people's songs, and I found like, oh, it's much easier for me to tell stories that I know along with the chords from another song.

So I would take songs and then kind of remake 'em into my own.

And then after that I began to just write more and more and more.

And it became what it is now, you know, where I've written hundreds and hundreds of songs.

I mean, not all of 'em are published, but I write a lot.

- So what do you get outta writing?

Is it therapeutic?

I mean, is it just kinda documenting life?

- There's a cathartic aspect to it for sure, but the main thing is is that there's so many, like, interesting people around me, and so many interesting stories, and so many, like, wonderful, like, turns of phrase that these rural communities and these blue-collar folks use in their, like, dialect.

And I really like those stories, they're romantic.

I feel like it's kind of like western, like, renaissance, or something out here where there's this whole culture that just doesn't get talked about as much as I think it ought to.

And also, too, I feel that sometimes, like, country music gets a bad rap as being sort of doltish, you know, like we're a bunch of rubes out here doing some things.

- Everything's pickup trucks and dogs everywhere.

- Yeah, but there's a lot of really deep philosophical content to country music and to a lot of modern country music.

I mean, I'm not talking about Nashville country music but these songwriters that are out here now, there's a bunch of 'em who are asking really big, thoughtful questions and I'm interested in doing that, yeah.

- So with telling this story, you know, going on tour you really have to tell your own story.

You know, 10, 15 years ago, I'm guessing a lot of people who traveled the circuits kinda like you're doing, hitting the bars here and there, you didn't have to worry about social media, you know, at least they're gonna pick you up.

How do you really have to brand yourself now even, you know, starting out?

How do you have to push yourself forward to get venues to take you, or get your songs out there?

It's a little different than a couple decades ago.

- It is a lot different.

I mean, back in the early 2000s as social media was beginning to grow and even before that, you know, like music largely was you toured, like that's how you got your word out there.

You had to go and get in a car and drive somewhere and play in all these little towns, and just literally sing your songs in front of people.

And by doing that it's like any kind of a muscle.

If I do 1,000 pushups I'm gonna get stronger at it.

And if you go play 1,000 shows there's just no doubt that you will grow as a writer and a performer.

I was an artist in an art school and I didn't have an ability to go and do that, but I had developed a creative practice within my art making of making sculpture.

And I just realized, like, all I have to do is apply this same practice to the songwriting.

And so instead of having 10,000 hours on the road out there touring, I have 10,000 hours in my studio at home singing and writing and singing and writing for hours a day and developing that.

The social media part of it happens to make it so that people like me can now put music out there in the world and reach a wider audience.

So social media has been a blessing, but I do think as a young man it probably would've been a curse.

- I understand that, I get that, but we'll talk some more about that.

- Yeah, yeah.

- It's time for a short break.

Stick around, we'll be right back.

♪ We got mallard and teal and all kind of ducks ♪ ♪ We got stars out here and big old bucks ♪ - Welcome back.

Okay, Duke, we're talking about social media.

Talking about kinda the influence of computers on branding yourself these days.

How has it helped you build your brand?

I know we talked about it a little bit, but how do you get your following?

How do you decide what video I'm gonna do, or what post I'm gonna do?

And really anymore, this kind of leads into that everyone can have merch now, too.

- Oh sure, yeah.

- So tell me kinda how do you find your blend of getting yourself out there?

- Well, it's difficult.

One of the things I found that I grew on pretty quickly was TikTok, actually.

I didn't expect it.

I was more interested in seeing what other artists were doing and I realized like, man, there are so many, like not only just, like, visual artists, but musicians all over TikTok and it allows you to document what you're doing.

And everybody wants to see how you make art.

Like most of the time whenever I would make something, whether it's a sculpture or a song the question I get is, how did you come up with that?

Or where did that come from?

And sometimes I don't know it's just, you know, grabbing from the ether, right?

But at the same time if I'm making content around it, like, here's what I'm thinking, and just showing folks how I'm kinda stumbling through and working through the process it's engaging content.

People want to see how to make things.

They're just, you know.

And so that's how I focus on kind of building my brand as well as talking about things that I care about.

I do have strong opinions about rural America and blue-collar folks 'cause that's where I come from, and I wanna tell that story.

And so, you know, I try to illustrate that in some type of a way through social media, yeah.

- It really sounds like, I mean, you're staying kind of on the forefront of it 'cause I don't get on TikTok much.

I'm kinda behind the scenes on a few of 'em, but you've really used these as different tools.

And you have a new song I saw and really it's a different art style.

So I really wanna talk about this 'cause it's something that's it's kind of big in the news right now.

Everyone's kind of scared of what's going on with ChatGPT and AI, but as an artist if you use it as the right tool.

- Right.

- It can become something pretty spectacular.

So tell me about this newest video.

- Well, you know, as an educator, you know, I work at the university.

I've had a lot of other faculty members, and a conversation within the university about how these departments and programs are gonna deal with AI within their areas.

And like, oh, well, I can't assign a paper to someone 'cause, in fact, all they do is take the assignment and they plop it into ChatGPT, and, you know, it produces a coherent, logical, sometimes hallucinated content or information, but if you manipulate it a little bit and work with it you can make it do some other things.

And there's some really great imagery that's being generated by ChatGPT or not ChatGPT, but by other AIs.

And so I thought, well, you know, as a professor I need to understand this technology.

I need to try to see how I can use it, what it can do.

And so this new song, I have a new song out called "On My Way."

I wanted to use AI software to create a video.

So I did some research and it took some time, but I was able to create an animated video that tries to kinda capture the spirit of this song.

And the song is a very growing kind of crescendo, I guess I'd say, and western theme kind of thing.

And yeah, there's a bunch of opportunities out there.

Do I think, though, that it's gonna take over the art world?

No, 'cause we're not gonna be able to like, hey, tell me, you know, give it the synopsis of "Avatar" and it's gonna make "Avatar."

We're not there yet, possibly.

- You have to know what you wanna prompt it to and what you're gonna do at the end 'cause you took multiple clips and then blended them regularly.

It's not like, oh, there's been some nightmare, a few ads out there on the internet.

Taco Bell had (indistinct) you know, faces are messed up and all, but this is really, it's like another brush.

- It is a tool.

- Yes.

- It is a tool.

And as an artist you have to be, like, playing with these tools and trying to figure out how you can use this to manipulate the universe to your wellbeing or to your ends, you know, right?

So whether it's your guitar, or whether it's a pencil or AI, the more you do it just take that creative process that you're building and apply it to the tool and you can have something come out of it, but the AI software, it doesn't do it as easily as you would think it should, but sometimes the visuals that come out are completely breathtaking and they inspire a new kind of divergent way to go and think about what you're doing, right?

- Yep.

- It's like, oh, here's this new idea.

I would've never thought about that had I not, you know, gone this way.

So it's a way to really flex and expand your kind of creative muscle, I guess I'd say.

- Now we've talked about it.

Let's go ahead and check out a little bit of this video right now.

(intro "On My Way") ♪ I can barely lift my head up ♪ ♪ I've been looking down for so damn long ♪ ♪ My head in my palm ♪ ♪ Wide-eyed when a breath filled my chest ♪ ♪ No more waiting if I'm put to the test ♪ ♪ I'm gonna free the rest ♪ ♪ I'm on my way ♪ ♪ I'm on my way ♪ ♪ I'm on my way ♪ ♪ I'm on my way ♪ ♪ I'm on my way ♪ ♪ I don't just sin I am the sin ♪ ♪ Come together now it's time to begin ♪ ♪ This is not our end ♪ ♪ When you are up you know I'm down ♪ ♪ You're the spark with a fire to burn it down ♪ ♪ I ain't messing around ♪ ♪ I'm on my way ♪ ♪ I'm on my way ♪ ♪ I'm on my way ♪ ♪ I'm on my way ♪ ♪ I'm on my way to save the day ♪ - What an awesome art style.

I mean, I can definitely see the benefits now.

I've been a little scared of it, but being a videographer I've never been one that's really liked vertical video.

I've seen where it's come across films and all, but that just nails it for me.

That's the first time where I've seen this just works really well with the way everything's composed in that vertical frame.

So, nice work on that.

- I appreciate that.

- Especially kind of staying ahead of the curve, you know.

- We consume a lot in that vertical format, you know what I mean?

- [Jay] Yes, I know.

- Like it's inside that.

- [Jay] It's there, it's there to stay.

- Yeah, yeah.

- So.

- Until we start using square phones, you know.

- Yeah, so we're kinda gotten to how you kinda get your marketing mix out there a little bit for yourself, but I guess I never asked.

You're a sculptor, you're a professor.

What made you grab the guitar and hit the road?

- Well, when I first began doing sculpture, I found that the way I respond to making art is through story.

And so my thesis was based on these books.

I was reading a book by Stephen Hawking called "A Brief History of Time."

It's a real common and very popular kind of physics for idiot's book, I guess I'd say, but, you know, anyway, it's a great book.

And as I'm reading it there's these wonderful stories, and, like, illustrations of what these cosmic events might look like.

And in reading those events they become like metaphors for things that were kind of happening in my life.

So I used them as a way to kind of illustrate things.

So I would basically hear the story, come up with the metaphor, and then make a sculpture that illustrated the metaphor.

So the music was very much similar.

I was hearing these stories, and there would be a metaphor in there usually.

And then it just seemed in my nature to begin to do that.

It just happened, you know.

Hitting the road, that didn't happen until I wrote a song called "Doing It Right" and I played it, and I remember I got a response out of a person in the audience.

I sang a little line there about my wife and she really, ah, she liked, and I had never had a response like that.

I was like, oh, okay, I can get- - [Jay] You touched somebody.

- Right, I can get someone to emote from this, you know?

So I really got into it, and I got better and better and better at it.

And, you know, here I am, you know, able to go and play music for some people, and I enjoy it, you know.

- I see the storytelling side of that, but I like how you talk about in your sculpture that that's storytelling, also, 'cause a lot of people don't think about the story behind that, or even probably some artist though, they're probably really good, but, okay, I made a sculpture of a dog.

- Yeah, sure.

- But I'm done, you know, but there's not an emotion.

There's not a story behind it.

So tell me a little bit about how you get stories involved in your sculptures, and really how you pass that on to maybe your students?

- Well, okay, I'm gonna use a prop on your desk to talk for a second if that's okay?

If you look at the little sculpture of Ichabod sitting on your desk right there, when I talk to students about something like this, or whenever you're in general looking at a piece of art one of the best things to do is to define the qualities of the object because these qualities, we have these, like, kind of emotional responses that are instinctual in us that we can't help.

They're like the laws of gravity, right?

Balance is one of those things.

And when we look at Ichabod here he's walking, right?

And we know that he's walking because the way he's standing there he has his foot in the air and he is off balance.

If he was standing up straight he's telling a different story.

Here he's moving forward.

There's this idea of progress, and then as soon as you see something moving, your emotions change.

If he's standing there very stern and straight he's telling you a different story.

And that's simply by making him stand up straight vertically where he's perfectly balanced, or he's precariously balanced like he is now.

So we don't necessarily even imply that there's a big story there, but there is a story there based on just something simple as balance.

So a lot of the teaching that I do is talking about these things, and really understanding these principles of design.

If you can grasp those very well, whether it's in music, or it's in dimensional art or two-dimensional art, anything it is, that those things are true to all of them.

Whether it's, you know, if you look at a country song if it is not balanced well, or if it doesn't have some certain pattern or rhythm to it it doesn't move you through right.

So we don't even have a choice to respond to 'em.

We just do innately, you know, so that's where it comes from, just trying to understand the qualities of the object, or the thing.

- That's awesome.

Well, we're gonna get ready for another break.

When we come back I think you're gonna have a little special song for us you're gonna play?

- Yeah.

- So you guys are in for a treat.

Stick around, we'll be right back.

(soft music) Welcome back, you're in for a treat.

We have Duke Oursler performing "He Shot More Than Birds."

- This song is about Southwest Kansas.

♪ Southern Finney County it's been some years without me ♪ ♪ Sublette is where I bore my name ♪ ♪ The wind blows all directions ♪ ♪ Jetmore to Protection ♪ ♪ Dodge and Garden ♪ ♪ Gonna bury the hatchet someday ♪ ♪ But I came home for Shyla ♪ ♪ That barrel racing gal ♪ ♪ I can't believe that I would find her ♪ ♪ And we'd work it out somehow ♪ ♪ Build a home out on the range ♪ ♪ But it's really mighty strange ♪ ♪ In these West Kansas plains ♪ ♪ Ain't nothing but wheat and cotton ♪ ♪ Some folks teeth been rotten ♪ ♪ It's where Comanches they dance for rain ♪ ♪ The prairies all oil and gas land ♪ ♪ Ogallala made her last stand ♪ ♪ The Arkansas ain't run in 10,000 days ♪ ♪ And when I came home to Shyla ♪ ♪ My barrel racing gal ♪ ♪ I can't believe that I would find her ♪ ♪ In another man's corral ♪ ♪ His buckle hanging from the gate ♪ ♪ Oh it's really mighty strange ♪ ♪ In these West Kansas plains ♪ ♪ 54 I'm south of Guymon ♪ ♪ Amarillo is where I'm driving ♪ ♪ I need some help from my good friend Jose ♪ ♪ 'Cause in Kansas they'll hang you high ♪ ♪ Watch you burn in that western sky ♪ ♪ And this old cowboy ♪ ♪ Shot more than them birds yesterday ♪ ♪ I said goodbye to Shyla ♪ ♪ My barrel racing gal ♪ ♪ In a water tank is where you'll find them ♪ ♪ In that Hugoton patch down south ♪ ♪ Their new home out on the range ♪ ♪ Oh it's really mighty strange ♪ ♪ In these West Kansas plains ♪ (Jay applauding) - Fantastic, Duke.

- Thank you.

- I mean, all the mentions of all the places in Kansas.

I mean, just being a Kansas boy and traveling around that hits a lot of spots.

- Hey, well good I hope so.

There's some good places out there.

You know, if you've ever driven through Jetmore it's long and desolate, you know?

- Yes, oh yeah, and Protection, I mean, yeah.

- My mother is from Protection, so.

- Oh, really?

- Yep, yeah.

- I have some good friends that are from there.

- Yeah.

- So, they're Austins, but anyways.

- Yeah, yeah.

- So, you got some great songs.

How long does it take you to audit a tune like this?

- You know, I do it immediately.

I got, you know.

- No, I do appreciate when singer/songwriters, especially, they can go out and perform, you know.

A lot of younger singers these days, they're using a lot of extra help, you know, which is fine 'cause maybe it's about the song they're writing.

- It's a tool, you do it taste tastefully.

- Yes, yeah, yes, but really appreciate your style and all, so.

- Yeah, I appreciate it, I appreciate it.

- So tell us about the little tour you're on now.

- So right now I'm heading out to Englewood, Colorado.

I gotta play a show out there.

I'm heading back to Hays, Kansas.

I'm getting really excited.

I'm opening for a guy named Aaron Watson, a real big Texas country Red Dirt musician.

I'm gonna open for him.

Then I head out to Kearney, Nebraska.

Play at a place called Joe's Honky Tonk in Kearney, Nebraska, a good touring spot.

And then to Omaha where I'm playing the Testicle Festival, which is about as Midwest as it gets.

- [Jay] Yes, yes.

- Up there at Round the Bend Steakhouse.

It's a big festival they've been putting on, 30th annual one, so, play there.

And then back to old Black Dirt Illinois where I play a couple shows there, and then a little week-long hiatus with the family, so.

- Well, just in case you're watching this after the fact go to dukeoursler.com and you can see all the upcoming venues and events he'll be at later on.

- Yeah, they're all there.

- Don't have much time left, but sculpture wise anything in the works?

What's the next project?

- I actually have a project, I told you a little bit about my graduate work where I was responding to the stories and making sculpture.

Well, instead of the stories from "A Brief History of Time" I'm writing a bunch of music, and the sculptures will respond to the music, so that's the idea.

- [Jay] I look forward to seeing that.

- Yeah, I appreciate it.

- You telling stories.

- Thank you so much having me.

- You've been fantastic, so it's nice meeting you.

- Jay, my pleasure, brother.

- That's all the time we have.

I'd like to thank singer, sculptor and teacher, Duke Oursler, for joining us today.

As always, if you know of any interesting businesses, or business topics we wanna hear from you.

So give us a call, drop us an email, or send us a letter.

See you next time and thanks for watching.

It's all about business, and you've been watching "Working Capital."

(soft music) - [Narrator] Funding for "Working Capital" is provided by the Friends of KTWU and GO Topeka.

(soft music)