Misson creek Festival Life on Mars

A Q&A with Mission Creek performer mars hojilla

BY ISaac haMLET

Between biomedical engineering classes at the University of Iowa, Myles Evangelista has made time for his first Mission Creek Festival. Performing under the name mars hojilla—the title of Evangelista’s recent musical project—the alt-rock artist spoke with Little Village about learning to read out of spite, falling in love with music, and what performing at MCF means to him.

mars hojilla plays at 3:15 p.m. on Sunday, April 8 at the Trumpet Blossom Cafe during the final day of Mission Creek.

Can you tell me about how you started mars hojilla? Hojilla is actually my middle name. It’s Filipino tradition for the kids to be granted their mother’s maiden name as the middle name. So that’s a part of my heritage that I’m really, very proud to center.

I started making music when I was in high school. I had an indie-rock band with some of my friends when I was a junior in high school. I’m initially from Peoria, in central Illinois, so that [band] kind of resolved when we all moved to college. As recently as this past year, June of 2022, I started playing solo music… under the name mars hojilla.

What about indie-rock music captured your interest? Another very important part of Filipino culture, I would say, is the at-home karaoke machine. It was a way that my parents were able to keep my older sister and I entertained for multiple hours on end growing up and also just really fostered my love for music at an early age.

A story my mom likes to tell is that I actually learned how to read out of spite. This karaoke machine displays the lyrics on the screen and it kind of scores you on how well you matched the words’ sound. I kept scoring lower than my older sister because I didn’t know how to read yet.

A lot of the songs that I was singing growing up on the karaoke machine were my parents’ type of music, the ’70s and ’80s pop: Elton John, ABBA and bands like Queen and Journey.

As I grew up, I started writing my own lyrics… just based off of my personal experiences. They’re very rooted in storytelling and I just set it to a style that I was familiar with which was that kind of pop. Before I started writing I didn’t really consider what the theme was, I just wanted to focus on making music where I like how it sounds.

Are you hoping to put an album together? What are you aspiring to and in terms of your musical trajectory? I would like to start recording soon. I guess the only major roadblock is that I’m still a full-time student at university here.

It’d be great to have a single or even an EP out by the end of this year, maybe even by the end of this summer if I’m being optimistic.

Even before Mission Creek Festival, you played at Refocus Film Festival. How did that happen? By then I had played my first solo set in Iowa City just a couple of weeks before at Trumpet Blossom Cafe.

I had been keeping up with FilmScene for a while and they had posted something on their social media about taking applications for local artists. They left that category kind of broad as far as what musicians or what genre they were looking for, but I just was really working on trying to get my name out and to the Iowa City scene. So I went ahead and I applied and they said, “We would love to give you a spot.”

Was Mission Creek a similar story where you sent in an application? I figured I would just apply and see what happened.

About a month after I submitted my application I got word back from Elly Hofmaier, who was a talent buyer for their local showcase, saying that they looked into what I do. Despite [the fact] I don’t have anything released yet, I had done for SCOPE Productions a very stripped down—just my voice and guitar—performance of one of my songs for

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