We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Evan Romo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Evan, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

Without question, the most meaningful project I’ve worked on (and still am) is Emmeff Pearl Creative Studio. Emmeff, which is a spelled out version of the acronym “MF”, is a film collective that I founded in 2018. Right after I graduated from UTEP, I just wanted to have a name that I could offer social media related services under. Photos, video, flyers, you name it. At the same time, I was working on my first album as a musician, and so with the momentum of photo and video, I produced a live session for myself under the Emmeff Pearl name.

Immediately, Emmeff Pearl redirected to be a film collective focused on filming musicians that we thought were good at what they do. In El Paso, Texas, there aren’t many opportunities such as this. As a musician, you have to hope and rely on the dive bar that booked you to have a good crowd that night. Cover artists get great city-wide gigs and hats off to them, but artists composing original music just always seem to have steeper hill to climb. Above all else, they spend years mastering their craft, only to have to speed run through the learning curve of photo, video, fashion, makeup, etc, because guess what? They have to do all that themselves as well.

Emmeff Pearl, for a brief moment in time, relieves the artist of all those other responsibilities and gives them the opportunity to simply focus on the music. We didn’t always see it this way, at first it really was just us trying to film our own version of Tiny Desk Concerts. But through each season of episodes, the purpose grew. I called us a film collective for simplicity, but truly, we’ve become a bridge to the world so that the art we live amongst can thrive globally. We’re storytellers, and we care deeply about the guests and their stories that we share. Just this year, we even kickstarted our second series on the platform: LIVE! at MFHQ, a conversation-driven podcast. This new project of Emmeff allows us to not only shine light on musicians, but creative professionals of all industries.

Everything I do outside of Emmeff Pearl, is for Emmeff Pearl. My other creative services that I offer to the general client is so that I can go back and continue to build Emmeff. It’s become my life purpose, and I obsess over what the next evolution is of our platform. It will grow beyond music and span across creativity as a whole, but all those steps that need to happen along the way – it’s what drives me each and every day. I’m going to end this with the same sentence I started with:

Without question, the most meaningful project I work on is Emmeff Pearl Creative Studio.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Evan Romo in a nutshell: I’m a creative producer from the Lower Valley of El Paso, Texas, and my workload consists of music and film, website design, and real estate photography. I graduated in 2018 from The University of Texas at El Paso with a Marketing degree. At the same time I taught myself how to use a camera and photoshop, and quickly became fluent in photo, video, and graphic design. Through these two forms of education, I sharpened my understanding of going from idea to business and I nurtured my curiosity for visual expression.

My first years of adulthood were pretty rough, as I was careless and undisciplined, which led to plenty of poor choices. The entire time, however, I was building a project called Emmeff Pearl Creative Studio. My north star amongst all the chaos I was putting myself through. Emmeff is my baby, my child. It is my contribution to my community. It is a platform dedicated to showcasing emerging musicians and other creative professionals through long form videos that highlight their music and stories. I’m extremely passionate about the project, which was founded in 2018, and it truly guided me through my early career. It still remains the guide of all my choices in life. But, with it all being self funded, I’ve still had to explore my skillset as a producer in order to find other means of business.

In order to make Emmeff possible, I offer website design to entrepreneurs and small teams while also offering real estate photography to the amazing real estate agents of El Paso. Working with other professionals who have had to create their own opportunities hits my soul, if you will. I was often overlooked and misunderstood when I would share my dreams to people. It was easy to see I was creative, but it was often hard to see how I would be disciplined enough to make it happen. This stuff would really eat at me early on, and so knowing that Emmeff, websites, real estate photos, all of that is for the self starter who may also feel things such as doubt or imposter syndrome… it brings me a lot of fulfillment.

It can be hard to keep up with my workload because at a glance, these projects don’t relate to each other. But with just a bit of back and forth, it becomes clear that the work I dedicate my time to is all in harmony with each other, even if they seem like completely different fields. That early stage of being careless truly evolved into something purposeful and I now put an emphasis on perspective and mindset with everything I do. That’s what I want to translate to the audience whenever I have an opportunity to tell MY story. I want the audience to see how raw ideas and untamed ambition can become solid structured missions in life. There are many instances where all of this could have been wiped away as a consequence to my choices, and the fact I’m still here tells me that I can’t just do all this for the sake of doing it.

With that being said, while I am working on any one of these projects, I am constantly evaluating my scenario and seeing how this can be stripped down to it’s core principles so that someone who has nothing to do with my line of work can still hear my story and find ways to apply it to themselves. I could have easily been a nobody in life, so if I have the power and ability to express myself and share my knowledge… I like to think that I have helped many other potential “nobody’s” find their way in life. Because truly, nobody is a nobody.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

For me, I feel the most rewarding aspect of being an artist or creative, and ultimately an entrepreneur, is the opportunity to have your life be in complete harmony. What I mean by that, is that normally if you have a standard job with a set schedule, you sometimes find yourself compartmentalizing. For 8 hours a day, you turn off the real world and agree to tasks given to you almost like a robot. I’m not saying that’s every working person, but it’s easy to fall into that routine when a job is just a job.

Having my own professional pursuit, in this case a creative one, allows me to see my life as one whole experience. The decisions I make in my personal life are not made without considering the consequences towards my professional career. And vice versa. The people and art I come across when I’m out enjoying a “day off” bleeds into the inspiration I feel when it’s time to create. Overall, the most rewarding part of the creative journey is when you reach that alignment of personal life and career.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

The mission behind my work is to connect the world to my home here en la Frontera. I first created this project to be a bit of a gig or side job, but through time and successful efforts, it’s grown into a purposeful platform with a clear goal and thoughtful plan of action.

We’re telling the stories of our neighbors, family and friends, with the goal of pushing and pulling culture. To pull culture is to bring the world’s artists and leaders to our home, and to push culture is to introduce El Paso’s artists and leaders to the rest of the world.

Being an artist from El Paso is not for the faint of heart, and as an artist myself, it’s extremely important that I contribute to our community’s growth and resources.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://emmeffpearl.com
• Instagram: @emmeffpearl
• Facebook: Emmeff Pearl
• Twitter: @emmeffpearl
• Youtube: Emmeff Pearl
• Other: I wasn’t sure if you needed the URLs or the channel names, but I am more than happy to provide you with links through any follow up conversations.

Image Credits

1. C.P. Sule
2. Nancy Loya
3. Gaby A. Velasquez
4. Evan Romo
5. Kevin Estrada
6. Nancy Loya
7. Evan Romo