By Konnor Newton, Student Journalist
Every Fall and Winter semester Kappa Delta Phi hosts the Husson’s got Talent, talent show. Which brings students together and allows them to showcase their various skills and showmanship. Magicians, Guitarist, Electronic Beat Makers and many more step into the spotlight and light and open themselves up in front of their peers. Students then vote on the acts and those with the most votes move on to the next round held in the Gracie Theatre. Wednesday night the first round of this year’s spring Husson’s Got Talent was held. The second act to take the stage was introduced under the name “Big Moxie”, but for anyone that’s attended Husson’s Got Talent over the past couple years would recognize him as Zach Hooghamp a senior from NESCom. He grabbed the mic and offered up a heartfelt reflection on the past 8 semesters he’d been performing; before belting out an upbeat rendition of Green Day’s Basket Case.
On the surface of Hoogkamp’s vocal performances, he appears to be a confident and enthusiastic singer. All of his acts have been done solo with backing track played underneath. Hoogkamp says he’s tried to perform with bands in the past but he never had luck finding the right chemistry. He explained that just going up there and doing his thing allowed him the right amount of freedom to, not only perform the songs that he wanted to sing. It allowed him to fully express himself without worrying about over shadowing potential band mates.
Hoogkamp first sang in front of Husson’s student body in the Fall of 2012, he was a fresh out of highschool at the time and was big into Musicals. Because of that he says his song choice was a bit regrettable. The song was Who I’d Be from Shrek the musical and it turned out to be a bit too niche for the audience. No one was necessarily off put by the show tune, rather just confused about where the song came from.
“Picking that song may not have been the best idea, especially because it’s one of the more serious songs from an overall silly show. But I picked that song because it represented me and what I was doing.”
Hoogkamp says Who I’d Be is all about being the person you feel you could be if you didn’t base your actions on what everyone else might think of you. Which is exactly what he was doing getting in front of everyone and being himself. Not letting nerves or fear of judgement dictate whether or not he did what he enjoys doing. Spring semester came and Hoogkamp says he found a happy medium between a song that would have meaning to him and would also be recognizable. A year later Hoogkamp had taken his stage presents to a new level appearing in head to toe Gene Simmons regalia, including the signature face paint. This became his identity for a total of 3 semesters before Hoogkamp realized he’d turned his performance into something that wasn’t quite as genuine as he had originally set out to make it.
“All this time I was going for something big when I realized I just wanted the audience to see me. So I lost the paint and went back to just being Zach.”
Spring semester of his Junior year, Hoogkamp was in the most hectic time of his life balancing school, a relationship and his amateur wrestling careerer as “Big Moxie”. All of which inspired him to give his most heartfelt performance to date, singing Home by Daughtry (as seen below). Hoogkamp felt like he was back to truly singing from the heart. In the Fall of 2015 he followed suit singing Darius Rucker’s This, a song about not wanting to change the experience you’ve had despite the ups and downs. He explains the song reflected his time here at Husson and the fact that it’s made him the man he is today.
Wednesday night was the cumulation of 4 years of learning how to be a relatable performer for Hoogkamp. He says he chose the upbeat song Basket Case because if this was going to be his last performance, he wanted to go out on a fun and upbeat note rather than one that was overly introspective. Hoogkamp did not advance to the next round, but is ultimately okay with that.
“That last song was everything that I want it to be, it was a great high energy cap-off to all the great times I’ve had up of that stage.”
