Meet Evan Opitz of East Nashville

Today we’d like to introduce you to Evan Opitz

Hi Evan, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
When I was 9 growing up in the southwest suburbs of Chicago, IL, I started taking guitar lessons and drum lessons simultaneously. I would get home from school, rush down to the basement and spend anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours bouncing around from guitar to drums. I was in virtually all of the various instrumental and choral ensembles in high school. My love for music became serious when I attended college at University of Illinois and studied jazz guitar. Since then I’ve been chasing my love for writing and recording creative music and performing. After attending college in Urbana, IL, having played with and socialized with a variety of different genre’d artists and creatives, I moved to Chicago and lived in the city for 4 years. During this time I was playing in a lot of bands out of the midwest scene, as well as writing recording and touring under my own band The Phantom Broadcast (which was created in high school 6 years earlier). I toured around, performing sold out shows in the city as well as hopping on festivals and bills across the midwest. When COVID dropped, I decided to move with my fiancé to Nashville in hopes to continue to grow my musical career with likeminded performers and creatives from all over the world. I was entering a new wave of musicians swarming the scene and I am grateful to have migrated in so soon after the pandemic. Currently, I play guitar for American Idol 2022 Winner, Noah Thompson, The FBR (featuring members of Tanya Tucker and Reba McEntire), OTNES, Sunshine Scott, City Mouth, Dethamphetamine, Joseph Shipp, as well as my own solo project, Ames Window, which is in the mixing stages of its debut full length LP. There are a lot of artists and details that I left out, but this is a well-rounded image of how I got here and what I am doing nowadays.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The road to where I am now has weaved its way in and out of linearity. Early on music was strictly for creative release, which became feeling the need to prove something about technicality and witty execution at university, and finally arriving somewhere in-between with the balance of creativity, knowledge, life and love. Some seasons feel as if they are scripted, others feel like I haven’t learned a single thing from my experiences (which I know of course isn’t true). You could be out consistently touring with an artist, getting your own hotel room, lounging on a bus with a TV, green room stocked with kombucha from your rider, and then all the sudden there is a halt to the shows and traveling, which brings you back to everyday life. It’s an art in and of itself to balance the novelty and adventure of the road with maintaining healthy relationships with your loved ones and friends. And on top of all that, still preserving enough space for your own creative and spiritual energy. All I know is I will keep moving forward at all cost. When you are in charge of your own story, the beginning and ending are irrelevant, the journey and progress along the way is what makes the story compelling and worth telling. Essentially stopping to see the forest for the trees.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am a composer, writer, guitar player, bass player, synth player, and vocalist. My true specialty is writing hooky parts and compelling sections that glue a song or help the song shine in its own element and cohesively with the rest of the band. I believe there is no one genre that can hold a creative musician. Each style of music evokes a different mood or emotion, By digging into as many styles as possible yields a well established pallet of emotions and colors to paint a song. I am able to take my knowledge of music theory/history/research and use it to create a new spin of authenticity over a song. In addition to helping my friends bring their songs to life in their writing, I also practice this schema on my own creative project Ames Window, where I am able to compartmentalize all of my musical and life experiences and channel them into their own story. My main objective is to lean into the intuitive, the stream of consciousness, that can flow through you into the instrument to a band and into the song. There is no one true way to tell a story, but there are plenty of compelling and realized approaches if you can listen, absorb, and respond with the variation of research and history absorbed by your bandmates.

Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
My biggest risks in my career include investing in a music degree and moving across the country to Nashville. I have been blessed with an incredible community of friends, musicians, and creatives, that all are working together and apart to do this thing. I am constantly blown away by the performances of the bands I’ve been seeing around town: Soot, Oginalii, Wily, Afrokokoroot / Sunny Da Da, Gratuitous Mr. Mayo, Jarren Blair. It’s mind-blowing to be surrounded by such talented and creative bands living 100% in their own element.

Contact Info:

• Website: @evanopitz_
• Instagram: @ameswindow_
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/evan.opitz