Today we’d like to introduce you to Emily Youmans
Hi Emily, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I first fell in love with electronic music after attending a music festival during my sophomore year of college in Arizona. I came from a small town on the East Coast and had never heard music like that before and I got hooked. After attending more shows I kept having the thought “I really want to hear my own playlist of songs”. I knew some people who were starting their DJ career in Phoenix and I started asking technical questions, watched how they transitioned tracks, and started doing my own experimentation with music production and DJing. That summer I worked a retail job to save up enough money to buy my own DJ controller, and once I purchased my first piece of equipment I couldn’t stop. I practiced in my bedroom for a little over a year before I got my first paid gig in Phoenix. I have been DJing for just about nine years now.
In 2022, I moved from Phoenix, Arizona to Duluth, Minnesota with my partner. I never would have thought I would live in Minnesota. I didn’t even know Duluth existed before I found out that we were moving here. I moved my big city, warm desert climate life to a small city, in northern Minnesota with some of the coldest winters in the country. It was a big adjustment at first but it has been one of the best things to have happened in my life. Since moving here, I have been teaching art full-time and still keeping up my DJ career. I also have helped curate a budding electronic music scene here, helping to throw shows and events and work to lift up other DJs that were in the same position as me nine years ago.
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?
It has been a roller coaster. Being a woman in an over-saturated, male-dominated field has posed a lot of challenges. I started as a 21 year old playing opening slots at club shows and I was very shy. It seemed like a boys club and I was on the outside. I was overlooked by many of the people who were in the same position as me. I had to work twice as hard to be taken seriously, to be booked on shows, and my sets had to be perfect. Once I started making a name for myself in the Phoenix music scene, there were a lot of people who had my back and really vouched for me.
I was also doing all of this while maintaining a full-time job as an Art Teacher out of college. There were some nights I worked a ten hour day, played a mid-week show with a midnight time slot for $50, and got up at 5:00 am the next day to work another ten hour day teaching. There were many days were I was running on fumes. Even with all of these struggles, it has helped me become who I am today and I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I am very proud to say I am an Art Teacher by day and DJ by night. I feel very fortunate to have two creative careers that I am so passionate about. I think most people would know what an art education career might entail but not everyone would be as knowledgable about a DJ career.
When I tell people I DJ, what they normally picture is a radio DJ or a wedding DJ. It is fun to explain what electronic music shows are like and I get to tell them about the amazing community that comes with it. When I first started, while I loved almost all realms of electronic music, bass music was what I loved to play. Music with a heavy bass line, rhythmic drum sequences, sometimes with or without vocals completely. Now, every set I play whether I am playing for 30 minutes or two hours, you will most likely hear a wide range of sound. One thing I love to experiment with is how songs flow together. The ultimate goal is to mix two songs together with a seamless transition so there is no clear distinction where one song starts and another ends. In the middle of that transition, you create a new version of both songs together that may or may not be able to be re-created. There is a moment in time where you are sharing the same energy with the crowd, you are experiencing the euphoria of hearing the music you love, and there is this amazing connection between a group of people in this community space. I don’t think anything sets me apart from others, what I love about what I do is bringing people together.
How do you think about luck?
Bad luck seems to have played more of a role in my timeline than good luck. Very rarely can you rely on luck to help you succeed in any industry. I think perseverance, hard work, and sacrifices trump a lot of luck, though there are times when luck can certainly help. There is bad luck such as gigs being canceled, artists pulling out of shows, and gear malfunctioning mid-set all of which happened plenty of times. At the end of the day, life will throw all sorts of things at you and you just have to learn to roll with it.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: em_youms
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/officialyoums/
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/youmsmusic
