Today we’d like to introduce you to Evan Wick
Hi Evan, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I grew up in south central Texas in a town near Victoria Texas, between San Antonio and Houston. The town had a population of around 2500 people total and no real opportunities or options for success or mentorship. In the most basic way to say it, I had to figure everything out on my own. My dad worked 7 days on and 7 days off so he was gone half the year and my mom was a college dropout turned stay at home mother who was attempting to go back to school while raising myself, my two brothers Cole and Cullen, and my half sister Amanda. When my dad was home we did mainly one thing, and that was work, I can’t say that I enjoyed it at the time but I’m grateful as f*ck he made us because I gained an insane work ethic from it. We had to work…we didn’t grow up with much and my dad often worked overtime for an entire month straight sometimes in order to provide presents for Christmas and birthdays. My dad often wore old beat up, hole ridden clothing to provide us with clothes, and opportunities he never had because believe it or not, he grew up in 10x worse conditions than we did. It was no easy feat for my mother either, she had her hands full with her daughter in a new marriage coming from a broken one she needed to leave for their own well being. My first recollection of music came from my parents as my dad introduced me to rock and roll such as ACDC, Aerosmith, Kiss, and other alternative types of music like Willie Nelson just to name a few while my mom introduced me to Pop and Soul like Queen, Earth Wind and Fire, Journey, Stevie Wonder and a bunch more. I loved music from an early age and sang songs that I made up as soon as I started walking. I remember wanting to sing in a talent show when I could barely talk but I guess it’s true what they say about your balls dropping because mine hadn’t yet and I chickened out of it. Regardless, I would listen to music all the time and would let it take me to realities that I never had. I remember my brothers and I watching music videos on Fuse and MTV with the different top ten countdowns. My sister was the first one to introduce me to hip hop and rap and its stuck with me ever since. I started burning CD’s for myself and some people I worked with of local rappers like Z Ro and started listening religiously to songs by Eminem, NWA, Lil Wayne, 50 Cent, Whiz Khalifa, Kendrick Lamar, Mac Miller, Kanye, and J Cole. Those artists still to this day are some of my biggest inspirations. Things were often not easy for my family, we didn’t have much money, we didn’t have much margin for error, and we didn’t have much time to waste. My parents, especially my mom, was on our *ss constantly to be better than what people thought we were knowing that most of our cousins and close relatives were going nowhere in life and were pretty deep in drugs and other trouble. She wanted the best for us and sent us to the parochial school in town to keep us away from trouble as much as possible, although it didn’t work very well. I think my sister may have shouldered a good amount of that load, being the first child from another marriage is probably not easy, especially when your real dad was said to have committed suicide but was thought to have been murdered. She most likely was a learning experience for my parents so it couldn’t have been easy for them either. To top it off, her highschool boyfriend burned to death in a car accident and the mother blamed her. My sister finally had enough and ran away from home at 16 or 17 and I didn’t see her for a good while after that not knowing the full story since the thing to do in Texas I guess is to sweep it under the rug and forget about it. My last memory I had with her before she left was a song, that song being Rhianna’s Take a Bow, which at least for the title’s sake works perfectly for that situation. Life went on and my brother’s and I turned to sports as an outlet not only emotionally, but also as a path to a brighter future. We knew we had our work cut out for us coming from such a small town where no one really looks for talent but we had the work ethic to beat anyone out. My older brother garnered a D2 scholarship to a school that eventually turned D1AA in UIW in San Antonio Texas, and after he did that, we lost touch quite a bit. Knowing no one was going to come and save me I took it into my own hands to walk on after high school to a Junior College to play College Basketball. Unfortunately the coach and I didn’t see eye to eye and I saw the writing on the wall to move on. I remember talking to a good friend from that team about how passionate I was to make an attempt at music and acting but I had no idea how to make that work or even where to start, it seemed more like a pipe dream than a reality. We then began talking about other options to get out and then sparked the idea to attempt to walk on to play football for a different Juco called Blinn College in Brenham Texas, the same one Cam Newton attended. So I tried out with around 350 other people and was one of 2 selected from the skill tryout. I began a new chapter of my life with college football. From there I gained a scholarship to a 4 year university called East Tennessee State University, not before helping to get my younger brother on at Blinn, at ETSU I had more of my work cut out for me trying to carve a name for myself since this was the program’s 3rd year bringing football back and so they didn’t have very good coaches or funding. However, I saw it as a great opportunity and eventually the coaches changed after my first year there and Randy Sanders who coached Jameis Winston and that Florida State team with Jimbo Fisher came and took over. I had 4 different head coaches and 5 different position coaches in my 4 years of playing football so I learned how to adapt which is only one of the many beneficial life skills developed from playing football. Even though I loved and still do love football as a sport, for all it gave me, and for all the amazing people I met along the way, I always felt like it wasn’t what I was meant for. I don’t know why but I always had this feeling I was meant for something different and for more, and I had a strong feeling that it was the arts in music and acting. That being said, all the time while playing football in Tennessee I was also battling with something else I couldn’t understand, that being suicidal depression. I hid those feelings for years and years thinking that nobody wanted to hear me whine, and that I didn’t have it bad why am I being a b*tch, and that if my coach found out maybe they wouldn’t play me because they wouldn’t think I could handle it. I didn’t want to appear weak for multiple reasons and those feelings began to grow and grow. The one thing that helped me the most through it all was escaping through music, it gave me a way to calm myself and find relations through lyrics. I continued battling this for a few more years until I sought help. As my football career continued, I started to garner interest from NFL scouts as I was an NFL caliber talent along with the fact that my brother was already a 2 year vet in the league. I could taste the hope for a new life where I didn’t constantly see negatives in my bank account and have to steal from walmart for food. Unfortunately however, one week out from my pro day, I strained my left calf really badly and I saw everything slip right through my hands. This coming off a previous injury sustained from my final season where in addition to all that, I also accidentally almost killed my teammate by accidentally shattering his tibia and fibula. Draft Day came around and I still received camp invites from the Cleveland Browns and Tennessee Titans despite having no pro day. I was trying to stay optimistic despite the fact that I knew my calf wouldn’t be ready in time. Regardless, I flew to Cleveland and on the second day of Camp, I strained my calf even worse. That night, I went to the shower so my roommate wouldn’t see me and I cried for about an hour. Everything I had sacrificed, everything I had worked for, and everything that I hoped my life would lead to was all gone. I flew back to Texas defeated. My older brother offered for me to stay at the house he just bought so that I didn’t have to go back home, which I took him up on and we started to reconnect. However, he was in the NFL at the time and left shortly after I arrived to go begin training. I was in his house practically alone with his wife in and out from work. Here, I began to start to write lyrics to help cope with the unfortunate circumstances I found myself in. I began to write to youtube beats and express my emotions through lyrics and rhyming patterns. I even recorded a few through my phone. Unfortunately, the demons I was facing were stronger than I could take and when my brother’s wife left for a few days to see him, I came home from working a job I hated and was finally ready to end my life. I planned to drive into my brother’s garage and close the door until I fell asleep into death. As I was doing this, something, I still to this day don’t know what whether god or the universe or both, stopped me and brought this feeling over me that I can’t explain well. But regardless I stopped what I was doing and decided to try and figure things out for my life. From there I decided to take another shot at the NFL and began training. I trained and rehabbed myself back to full health and felt stronger and better than ever before. I spoke with the scouts from Cleveland and Tennessee and planned to go to Tennessee and attempt another pro day. I drove up to Tennessee from Texas and stayed on a friend’s couch while I finished my training for a few more weeks but this would prove to be pointless as a worldwide pandemic hit and canceled the pro day 1 week from it happening. I was again at a loss for word and for some reason felt I needed to start writing again, so I put on a youtube beat and started writing lyrics, sometimes freestyling over them. I headed back to Texas to ride out the pandemic and felt even more like a failure. Interestingly enough, there was a bullshit pro day event held in Houston that I didn’t realize was bullshit at the moment so I began training for it, all while continuing to work on my skills crafting songs. I headed to Houston and completed the event while running into a friend of my older brother who happened to be in the music world in Houston. I fell in love with the studio he showed me and over some time showed him a song I was working on. He loved the idea of it and introduced me to a friend of his who was a producer in Houston. This is where I wrote and recorded my first songs ever with the first being “At the end of the Day” and the second being “We The People”. All this time, I was forced to live back at home and work the only job I could get in my home town at Home Depot. Here I began saving money for music and began freestyling with some co-workers. Finally, I saved up enough money to buy a shure sm7b, a macbook, logic pro, a scarlett interface, and some headphones and began recording almost every day. I became addicted to music and it’s all I wanted to do. From there I decided I had to get out of my environment, so in the midst of covid, I packed everything I owned, which wasn’t a lot and with 1k in my pocket I moved out to Los Angeles to pursue a career in music and acting. I had a plan to get an apartment with someone but last minute they bailed on me so that forced me to live in and out of my car for the first couple of months in Los Angeles. I couched hopped, met girls who took me in, all while continuing to write, record, and find a job. I finally found a job personal training at a Crunch fitness in Reseda and worked insane hours to save for an apartment. I finally had enough and found a roommate to live with and set up shop to begin really making this work. I met a ton of great people so far in Los Angeles and a few not so great people, but all of which helped point me in the direction I have been heading all of my life. A few of which are Robert Torres who offered me a great opportunity to earn a decent living with Future Grass, Vincent Vargas, Jay Denton, Kyle Stephens, and a few others I will remember soon. Finally I ran into the perfect circumstances and met my manager Magda after working on set with Randall Batinkoff who’s a great person and a great friend. Magda has been working tirelessly to help me advance my career and saw my promise and work ethic from the beginning. I finally signed with this label and I plan to continue to make the most of every opportunity presented and create the life I love with music.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
There have been numerous setbacks in my life as with most people. Growing up with a bigger family who never had much money, in the middle of nowhere Texas, with a family that was riddled with mental health problems was just the start of what would become a beautiful struggle of a life I would grow to love. From being bullied early in school for never really fitting it, to not having a plan after high school was over, I had to consistently think on my feet and find solutions and next steps. This challenged me mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally as I worked to find out who I was. After high school, I walked on to play basketball at a small juco, after quickly feeling out the vibe, I decided to switch to football instead and walked on to Blinn College in Brenham, Texas where I earned a full scholarship for my play and hardworking on the field and classroom. Despite having a scholarship, my younger brother and I would often steal from Walmart for meals in order to gain weight since we couldn’t afford to get food or have any time to get a job. After that, I gained another scholarship to a D1 University in Tennessee called East Tennessee State University where I worked doing food delivery, security, played football, and attended classes. These along with looming mental health problems (depression) left me barely getting by often and helped develop a large chip on my shoulder along with a desire for more. I also developed a great work ethic and crazy mental toughness from my time playing college ball. I finally got my chance after my senior season to put an exclamation point on everything I worked for to that point with my pro day around the corner and the chance to play in the NFL. And of course, as my coach put it, If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. One week out from my pro day, I tore my calf muscle and couldn’t compete to give the measurables necessary to confirm my abilities on the field. I hit a bad wall in all categories that day and it almost broke me. I worked to get my calf healed before I went to camp with the Browns and Titans but it wasn’t enough and I injured myself again on the second day of camp with the Browns. I flew back to Texas defeated and completely lost. I came extremely close to taking my own life at this point after breaking down. Everything I worked for and cared about for years, disappeared in a second. All the work I put in, the patience, everything gone. I was broke, in debt from initial student loans, and living at my brother’s. I soon after, picked myself up again, trained to get back into it, determined not to give up only for a year to pass in the same situation with Cleveland and Tennessee coming to see me again for another opportunity. Then a global pandemic hit and cancelled the world for some time. It was at this point, I decided it was time for a shift and looked inwards to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. And the whole time it was there, I had been writing poems and watching movies studying artists and feeling like those things would help me get through my day. I wanted to do that same thing for others and have that same impact. So I knew what I had to do. I started over again, this time determined to work in music and entertainment. I set out for Los Angeles with only 1,000 in my pocket and decided I would figure it out, if what happened before didn’t kill me then this shit wouldn’t be anything. I brought with me the same mentality and work ethic along with a new perspective and slowly began to build from living in my car and people’s couches in LA for 2 months working as a trainer to running 2 businesses, producing a Lionsgate Movie with the cast of Yellowstone at 27, to producing and acting in a tv show and some shorts, to making music with some very gifted people and learning from some of the best in the business. This is only the beginning of what’s to come from me out here. What hasn’t killed me….. well you know the rest
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Im proud of everything ive done to this point in my life. Even more so my failures, I learn the most on how to succeed from them and from watching others as well. I now act, produce (music and tv/movies), run 2 contracting companies as a part owner, mix and master for myself and some others. I don’t necessarily specify in anything, rather, I put my best foot forward, do the work, and let the chips land where they may. The thing that sets me apart from others, I want it more., and I don’t care if I fail 100 times, as long as 101 leads to success
Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
You will die one day, everything in this life is impermanent
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/evanwick/
- Other: https://linktr.ee/evanwick
Image Credits
Jose Cortes
Kevin Lynch
