Julz Muya took first place with her original song ‘Macho Yako (Your Eyes)’

ATASCADERO — The second annual North County Has Talent Show returned to the Printery’s outdoor stage again on Friday, Aug. 11. The show brought in an array of local entertainers who got down to business and shared their talents with the audience at 6:30 p.m.

“Welcome to the second annual Printery Foundation Talent Show,” stated the evening’s master of ceremonies, Rick Evans. “Good news and bad news: Good news is you’re at the second annual talent show, bad news is you’re stuck with me as emcee again.” 

The show gave the audience eight performances featuring three original songs, two dance routines, a few delightful cover songs, and even a fiddle solo. And the show even opened with a performance of “American Honey” by last year’s second-place winner Shae Angles. All performances were judged by returning judge Doriana Sanchez and new judge Kristina Prozeksy. 

Included and mixed in with the performances were some updates about the Printery building as well. Sheila New gave an update on the local and California state Questers moving forward with restoring the Printery’s windows.

“We have now moved on to the restoration of the 65 very large windows. 65 of them,” New said. “We were able to find a local contractor out of San Luis [Obispo] who’s currently working to restore two windows and their casings. Once these are completed, we’ll have a true cost per window, and we can start earnestly fundraising for those windows.”

Atascadero Printery Foundation President Karen McNamara also spoke to the audience as the votes were being tallied after the performance. She stated that removing the old karate studio ended up costing the Printery almost double because, during demolition, they found 18-inch wide foundations left over from the Atascadero News Building from 1916 that also needed to be removed.

“This is the most demolition we will do to this building. What you see here now stays. Everything stays,” McNamara said. “It’s going to get reinforced, and it’s going to be built onto. Eventually, we’ll build on the stage and backstage area.”

When the votes were in, Brenda May, representing the Printery Foundation, announced them. The prize money, totaling $850, was provided by Atascadero City Councilmember Charles Bourbeau.

Julz Muya, owner of Make Music and Thrive, took home the first-place prize of $500 for her vocal performance of her original song, “Macho Yako (Your Eyes).”

“The fact that they had this [talent show] for us was so validating and so important. So needed. It was a blessing,” stated Muya.

When asked what made her write her prize-winning song, Muya said she was inspired by the film “Sound of Freedom” and when she volunteered at an orphanage in Kenya.

“There’s a part in the movie ‘Sound of Freedom’ where it zooms on his [the main character’s] eye, and he’s looking, and [my] song is called ‘Macho Yako’ because God promised that He sees everything,” Muya added.

Zach Angles took home the second place prize of $250 for his fiddle solo of “Orange Blossom Special” by Charles Daniel’s Band. 

“You know I haven’t performed in a while, so this actually was a treat for me,” Angles said of his win.

Third place and $100 went to Ava Pius for her hip hop/gymnastics performance to Taylor Swift’s song “Shake It Off.” Pius had performed a similar routine at her school talent show and decided to rework it for her Printery performance.

“I didn’t know I was gonna get third place. And it felt really good when I heard that I was in third place,” said Pius with an adorable smile on her face.

She told Atascadero News that she was going to buy something for her parents with her prize money because it was their anniversary.

The next event for the Atascadero Printery Foundation will be on Sept. 8 at the Atascadero Chamber BridgeWorks area, where they will launch their brand-new website.

To find out more about the Atascadero Printery Foundation, go to atascaderoprintery.org.

Feature Image: (From left) Zach Angles (second place), Julz Muya (first place), Ava Pius (third place) with judges Doriana Sanchez and Kristina Prozeksy at the 2nd Annual North County Has Talent Show. Photos by Christianna Marks/Atascadero News