Jason DeWater
Symphony principal, builder, front of houseJason grew up in Fort Worth taking phones and computers apart to see how they worked, and by his teens he was building his own rigs to record and edit audio. He chased the classical side too: a master's in French horn from SMU, then the principal horn chair of the Omaha Symphony, which is what brought him to town in 2007. He taught horn and music theory at the University of Nebraska Omaha and Iowa Western along the way.
With five kids at home and most nights spent at the symphony hall, he started fixing the iPhones everyone around him kept breaking. The moment it clicked is one he still tells: backstage at the Holland before a show, in his white dinner jacket, he swapped the battery in his horn partner's phone right there on the bandstand, and understood the most useful thing he could do for the people around him was fix their devices. He built that into iFixAmerica and became a voice in the national right-to-repair fight, work that The Economist, The Guardian, and WIRED all covered.
What carried through all of it is the ear. At your event he is the one walking the room before doors, finding the spot where the speakers fight the walls and sorting it out before anyone notices there was a problem.
Emmitt DeWater
Guitarist and bandleaderEmmitt is 14 and fronts the Emmitt DeWater Band. He has already shared stages and studio sessions with players like Kris Lager, Nick Schnebelen, and Gabe Stillman, and he reads a live room like someone who has been at it far longer.
He came up through Omaha's BluesEd program, played lead guitar in Omaha Community Playhouse's School of Rock, and is recording his debut album of originals with producer Nick Schnebelen. On a Drifter's Escape gig, he is the one who knows what the band on stage actually needs to hear.
See Emmitt's shows and book the band