(light upbeat music) - Will you "Consider This"?

It has taken years and years to blossom into, oh no, I guess just kind of make good on everything that you've been gifted with.

And this is Blake Wirth and he had a big idea, you know, one of those thought bubbles to do a show here on Channel 47.

And guess what?

It's happening.

- It's happening.

- All right.

So, Blake Wirth, first let's hear about who you are, where you came from.

- Well first of all, thanks for having me on.

- [Christine] Uh huh.

- Her and I go way back.

- Yes.

And I have to apologize, 'cause apparently I caused you a lot of grief.

- A lot of grief.

- For almost three decades.

- Nearly three decades.

- Yeah.

- Nearly 30 years, as old as this shirt here, by the way.

- Okay.

- That's almost 30 years old too.

It's over 30 years, but, yeah, real quickly, I wanna tell the story.

- [Christine] Okay.

- So, sixth grade basketball game.

Christine's son was ahead of me in a grade.

So she was still at the game.

Back in the '90s, this was the '90s, there was a player named Larry Johnson.

- [Christine] A professional.

- A professional basketball player.

Any of your viewers, if they followed the NBA, they would know Larry Johnson, also played Grandmama on "Family Matters" for an episode.

Anyway, Larry Johnson, initials LJ, after he'd hit a big shot he'd do, this little LJ.

That was his celebration.

I hit a big shot in the game.

Probably wasn't even a big shot, it was probably second quarter, but- - For you it was a big shot.

- For me it was a big shot.

Every shot was a big shot.

(Christine chuckling) Anyway, I hit the LJ and after the game, you pulled me aside.

You were like, "I can't believe you flipped that ref off."

I'm not gonna do it on camera, but LJ's celebration, if you tweak it a little bit, it's a bad gesture.

- Right.

- So for 28 years, I just carried the guilt.

- [Christine] I just feel terrible about that.

- It's okay.

- I really do.

To do that to a young kid.

- I know.

- How rude of me.

- But, let bygones be bygones.

You came to the screening of "VIBE 309".

- I did, yes.

- Last week.

It was incredible.

So, a little bit about me, born and raised in Peoria.

Went to St.

Mark's, went to Bradley University.

After Bradley University, I was kind of looking for the next move, as everyone does in college.

- And finding yourself.

- Finding yourself, of course.

I didn't know what I wanted to do, but in high school, at Notre Dame, I heard about the Peace Corps.

- Mm hm.

- And I put that away.

I locked that away.

I said, "That sounds really cool.

Sounds like something I'd wanna do one day."

You have to, you have to graduate college to do it though.

- Okay.

- So, it was something that had to be put on the back burner.

So, a few years after I graduated Bradley, the wheels were spinning, I was trying to find my purpose, find myself.

- Right.

- So I was like, you know, "I got nothing else to do.

So let me just go overseas for 27 months real quick.

I'll join the Peace Corps."

And I did.

I got stationed in Madagascar, which was incredible.

- I bet.

- They call it the eighth, the eighth continent, the Red Island.

- [Christine] Did you know anything about Madagascar before?

- Well, you know, people knew the movies 'cause they had come out.

- Right.

That's what I thought.

- Around that time.

- Right.

- Very different than the movies.

- Okay.

- Very different.

There are no giraffes or anything like that.

Was there a giraffe in the movie?

- I don't remember.

- I think there was.

I think Eddie Murphy voiced one of them.

But anyway, no, it wasn't anything like the movie.

I didn't know anything about it before I got my placement.

Back then, you could only apply for, you could prioritize the continents of which you wanted to go.

- All right.

- Now I think you can pick your country and put it on a short list.

But I picked Africa as my first one.

I just wanted to get out there.

I wanted to see the world.

I didn't have means to necessarily travel the world, but that was a way to do it.

So yeah, I left when I was 24, 25.

I was 25 years old.

I left and- - You got on a plane and you flew from here to, to where?

To where?

To where?

- Right.

Actually, we went to Philadelphia for a few days.

We had like a little kind of orientation gathering.

And there were 29 of us.

- Okay.

- That went over there.

We met in Philadelphia, and then we went for, we took a bus to New York City in the middle of the night.

I remember it like it was yesterday.

- Okay.

- Bus to JFK.

JFK to Johannesburg.

Johannesburg to Antananarivo, which is the capital of Madagascar.

Altogether, 18 to 20 hours of flight time.

- Gosh.

- It's a lot of travel.

But yeah, and then from there it was 2 1/2 years nearly of learning, being humbled on a daily basis.

I lived without electricity.

I didn't have running water.

- For the entire time?

- The entire time.

No electricity.

Banged my shins into the tables a lot when the sun went down.

- Oh gosh.

- Didn't really see much in my house.

A little hut.

My running water was a little well, it was a couple hundred yards away.

- [Christine] Mm hm.

- So I'd get these little buckets- - [Christine] And go up and pump the water.

- And I'd go out and fill 'em up.

Then I'd hit the waddle back to my house.

Forearms were looking good back in that day, but- - Well, you could appreciate that at least.

Yeah.

(Blake chuckling) - It took eight, 16 buckets, total eight trips to fill this big thing in my house of water.

And that was my water for about a week.

I did that every week.

- [Christine] And then was it filtered too, or?

- Well, I had to filter it.

The Peace Corps supplied you a filter.

- All right.

- And in that filter were sand, mosquitoes, like, just everything you can think of would get filtered out until it was clean enough.

- Right.

- Yeah.

- And being there for that amount of time made you appreciate Peoria.

- (sighs) Yeah.

- Or the United States.

- Well it made or the appreciate, like everything.

Certainly where I was, where I was born and raised here, I came back with a different appreciation.

I think everyone wants to kind of get out there and see what else is going on.

I obviously, when I was younger and just graduated college, I knew there was more than Peoria so I wanted to go.

- Mm hm.

- And I think that's good.

I think you should get out.

I think you should explore the world, meet new people and- - And live like they live.

- Yeah.

Well that's the thing.

- Yeah.

Not just just vacation, but- - Right.

Yeah, I was immersed into their world.

I learned their language.

I went, you know, everything you can think of, from going to the market and how they live on a daily basis, I adopted their way of life.

- Mm hm.

- And they really appreciated it.

- [Christine] Really?

That's great.

- Really appreciated it.

Just trying to learn their language and trying to speak to them in their language, they appreciated it.

They were so welcoming and hospitable.

It was, I mean, I think about it all the time.

- [Christine] Quite an experience.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

So, say good morning.

Is it Madagascan?

Is that the language they speak?

- Yeah, or Malagasy.

- Okay.

- You'd say (speaks in foreign language).

There's several ways to say it.

So the first three months, we'd do this like training and I learned like the basic Malagasy language.

- Okay.

- And then I learned where I was gonna go for the next two years, which was way south.

Madagascar kinda looks like your left foot.

- [Christine] Okay.

- If you kind of get that left foot up there.

- [Christine] (laughs) Got that?

- So I lived on the very south of the island, the very south of the island.

- Mm hm.

- And you had to fly there.

The roads were so poor, it would take several days to drive.

- [Christine] Oh gosh.

- Yeah.

The roads were horrendous.

So we had to fly there and they spoke a different dialect.

- [Christine] Sure, just like this country.

- So then I was behind the eight ball right when I got there.

I had to basically learn everything all over again.

It was different, but yeah.

Remarkable chapter of my life.

- Wow.

Well, then you had that appreciation.

Did you come right back here from there?

Or did you go elsewhere to try to develop a little bit more?

- Yeah.

I loved the experience so much.

I loved being away.

I loved learning new things daily.

I loved just being out in the world.

And so I wasn't ready to be done with that part of my life.

So when I came back, I got into a little film thing.

A couple buddies and I started to make some movies.

And then I had already signed a contract to go to South Korea.

So I lived in South Korea for a year, and I taught English as a foreign language.

- One of those, yeah.

- One of those.

Played a lot of badminton, a lot of volleyball.

And yeah, and then I was like, "Okay, I'm ready to, I'm ready to go home."

- Stateside.

- Stateside.

I miss my family, miss my friends.

And, but you talk about the appreciation.

I just learned to appreciate like the simple things.

Just going out to dinner with a friend on a Wednesday night and just talking and venting if something's frustrating you, celebrating if you have exciting news.

But like, those were things I came to miss, the simple things.

And yeah, that's a big reason why I came home.

- Well, and I gotta tell you, so not only that gesture that he made in grade school, but he was just a little stinker and had to go to detention a lot.

(laughs) - [Blake] Yeah, yeah.

Sure.

- But you, it was never really bad.

- Yeah.

- It was just impish.

It was a little bit, a little bit naughty.

- Yeah.

Yeah, that's fair.

I would say most teachers, when they saw me coming, probably had like a knot in their stomach.

It was just like- - Oh no.

Not another day.

- You know, a few teachers left St.

Mark's, went to other schools.

I don't know if that was directly because of me- - Because of you.

- Or what, but I was.

I cared more about, see, I've always been like a storyteller.

- [Christine] Right?

- I've always been a storyteller.

It's been my foundation.

And back in the day, the teachers called that interrupting.

I called it working on my material.

- [Christine] Okay.

Got it, got it.

- But I did find myself in detention quite frequently because of it.

I would get detentions in detention and that was, you know, my mom didn't really like that, but- - [Christine] That was not a good thing, no.

- That was not a good thing.

- No.

- And you didn't like that.

- [Christine] Well, no.

- [Blake] Did you get knots in your stomach when- - You had a little reputation.

- I did.

- I'd just say, "Guys, don't be like Blake Wirth."

- Yeah.

- And so they, they weren't.

- We should had bracelets made.

Like, "Don't be like Blake Wirth."

- All right, so, you came back here and then you were working, all different kinds of like video jobs.

You worked for Simantle for a while.

- I did, I did.

Worked for Simantle.

Before that I worked at the children's home, actually.

- Oh, okay.

- So social work is a big part of my background as well.

Worked at the children's home for several years and I still talk to some people I worked with back in the day.

You grow a very tight bond when you work in that kind of field together.

Any field really, but.

So after the children's home, I went to Simantle, became a writer, a copywriter.

And that's where I started to work on expanding my skillset.

And after I left Simantle, I started my own business, Wirthwhile Creative.

And this, my first real big, big opportunity through that was with the "Choose Greater Peoria Initiative".

And that's important because the "Choose Greater Peoria Initiative", and I think I've been on it for a few years now, I've just gotten to meet so many cool people, so many important people who are doing tremendous things all over the region, not just Peoria.

- [Christine] Right.

- And that's why I named the show "VIBE 309".

- I like that.

- Because you gotta go to Morton, Washington, East Peoria, Pekin, Metamora.

Everywhere.

There are- - Like 17 different counties.

- Yeah.

- Mm hm.

- Amazing stories happening every day, all over the place.

So I wanted to leverage what I had learned through the "Choose Greater Peoria Initiative".

The people I had met, I wanted to be able to like, create something that people can rally behind.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- Let's talk about that.

- Okay.

- So this is called "Vibe 309".

- Mm hm.

- It's brand new show.

It's gonna be aired November 6th.

- Sixth.

- All right.

On this station.

- This station.

- At?

- 8:30 PM.

- All right.

- Central Standard Time.

- I got it.

But, well we'll, no, it might be not, standard time.

You're right.

- Standard Time yeah.

- Because we're on, yeah, we have to switch right before that.

- That's right, that's right.

- Okay.

And so this is, this is the vibe- - Yeah.

- That we're feeling and describe, you know, like my generation, I know what a vibe is just 'cause I have kids your generation.

- Yeah.

- You know, maybe, maybe if I didn't, maybe I'd go, "What the heck is "Vibe 309"?"

- [Blake] Yeah.

- So, let's talk about your idea and when you came here and all that.

- Okay.

I got coffee with Jen Gordon back in, I think February or March.

And I had the idea, pretty fully baked too.

I knew I wanted it to be like a late night talk show.

- [Christine] Mm hm.

- I wanted it to be fun and funny.

I wanted to bring the humor because I think that's so important.

The people, and I talk about it in the show in the opening monologue, is this place, I've been all over the world, I've gotten to meet so many different people from all walks of life, but the people that I know from here, they're some of the best people I've ever met.

So I wanted to, I want this show to be about the people, not just the places and the things you can do, but the people.

And I think it really comes through in the pilot episode.

We have John Morris of the Peoria Riverfront Museum.

- [Christine] And you can't beat that for a cheerleader.

- You can't beat it for a first pass- - The Peoria area cheerleader.

- Incredible.

- Yes.

- He's a walking encyclopedia.

He is so optimistic, positive.

He just, he makes you wanna run through a brick wall.

(Christine chuckling) So yeah, the whole show, vibe, if you didn't know, if you're in a, say you go to, you know, Jim's Bistro, it's around Christmas time.

You can smell the steak.

You're seeing people you know, you're having a cocktail.

It's a great, it's a great experience.

And you're like- - It's a good feeling, which is a vibe.

- This this is a vibe.

- Yeah.

- That's a vibe.

- [Christine] Mm hm.

- So that's what this region is to me.

I've come to appreciate all of the great things happening, and all of the great people I've met.

And it is a vibe.

And I want people to see that.

I want people to see it through my lens, an optimistic and positive lens.

There are always gonna be people who want to be negative and I get that.

And certainly no city is perfect.

Every city has something to work on.

- [Christine] Exactly.

- But I want to focus on the good stuff, 'cause there's so much of it.

And that is what I want people to take away from this show.

I want people to feel proud of where they're from.

And I want people who maybe have never been here and they see the episode, I want them to say, "I'd go there for a weekend."

- Yeah, that's good.

- 'Cause once you get 'em here for a weekend, who knows.

- Then they say, "I had no idea."

- Alex and Chelsea Carmona, who we were talking about off air, they moved here from outta state.

They have friends who have moved here now.

- Mm hm.

- That's how it happens.

You just have to, we have to show people what we have.

- Exactly.

And not that we're trying to sell it, but we're just trying to share it.

- Yeah.

Yeah we're not trying to be anyone we're not.

We're never gonna be Chicago or St.

Louis, but we have all the amenities they have, a fraction of the cost of living, and just a really, really good Midwestern hospitality, so.

- Mm hm, mm hm, okay.

So, so you approached Jen with this idea.

You said it was pretty well baked and everything.

- Yeah.

- And so she went, "That sounds like something doable."

- Yeah, well she loved the idea.

Well, at least she told me she did.

She acted like she did.

She loved the idea.

- And here you are.

So she must have.

- Yeah, she must have.

She says, and it all kind of hinged on my relationship with Todd, Todd Pilon, the Todd father, as we call him around here.

And she made, she had to make sure that we would work collaboratively because it's a little bit of a different sort of show.

- [Christine] Not like this sitting here talking.

- Well, no, it is, it's that.

But it's this, this show is produced internally.

- And externally.

You're out in the field.

- Exactly.

- Getting the vibe.

- Getting the vibe.

So yeah, Todd and I, Todd's the director and I'm the producer and we have found a very, very good working relationship.

I've learned a lot from him too, which has been great because I mentioned I did some film stuff on the side for years.

But, the truth is like the lighting and the sound, it was always, always my achilles heel.

- Okay.

- I couldn't figure it out.

It was really tough.

- And he knows- - And he knows, the whole crew here, they know what they're doing.

I'm very grateful to, to be involved at this station and with this crew because they know a lot.

And I don't.

- Well, you do now.

- I'm learning.

- But you're gathering.

- I'm gathering.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

So, you know, men are hunters, women are gatherers.

And you're putting 'em both together right now because you're hunting for stuff.

- Yeah.

- And you're hunting for answers.

- Yeah.

- And now you're gathering all this stuff.

- That's right.

- Yeah.

And you've been working on your material for, ever since St.

Mark's school.

- My whole life.

I, in a lot of ways, Christine, I have been preparing for this show my whole life.

- [Christine] Mm hm.

- And I'm ready.

They say, what's the saying?

Preparation breeds confidence.

- There you go.

- I'm so, I love the show.

I believe in it.

I can't wait to shoot the next episode.

I can't wait to show the people for it- - Right, what you got.

So it's gonna be on once a month for right now.

- Yeah.

For right now, once a month.

Turns out it's a lot of work to produce a TV show.

And it's not only that, like in "Vibe 309", we're like you said, we're gonna be going out of the studio every episode.

- Mm hm.

- We're gonna show you other things to do or see around town.

So for example, the pilot episode, we talked to John Morris of the museum.

So he talks all about the museum, what they've got going on.

But, we go to Dozer Park in that same episode.

And we went to Dozer Park this past summer.

- [Christine] On one of the hottest days of the year.

- One of the hottest days of the year.

I was sweating more then than I am now- - Okay.

- Under of these lights, believe it or not.

(Christine chuckling) But, we had a great shoot.

It was a lot of fan interaction.

It was a beautiful, like, end of the game, the Chiefs won in extra innings.

I mean, everything went, went perfectly.

And it comes off in the show.

I mean- - It does.

- The people who have seen it have said, "That looked like a vibe.

I would go to Dozer Park, I would watch the Chiefs."

- And some people have never been to a game at Dozer Park.

- Right.

Yeah.

- And it's accessible.

It's easy.

- Mm hm.

- And you're close to all the action.

- You're close to all the action.

It's super affordable.

Minor league baseball is a vibe in and of itself.

But the Chiefs do it well.

They do.

It's a lot of fun, so.

- Good.

- Yeah.

- Well, so what are your future plans then?

So the next show, you'll have the show on in November, and then, then you have a little bit of a break during pledge and holidays and stuff, but you'll be back in January.

- That's right.

- So what are you planning for January?

Anything good?

- Yeah, oh, like are you kidding?

- Of course.

What a silly question.

- It's all good.

It's all good.

I actually, I have a really good problem right now.

I have all kinds of different, I have to nail down the next like five, six episodes.

We have, I have the guests, I have the locations.

I don't want to give anything away too much, but I just have to put 'em in the right order and I have to, 'cause you know, you have to factor when the episode will be released.

- [Christine] Right.

- So seasonal stuff going on.

You want to, but I have so many guests lined up that have already verbally signed on the dotted line.

Greg Batton agreed on air.

- Yeah, I heard that.

- I got him on air.

- [Christine] And he also agreed for the, for your little- - Oh, vibe check.

He wants to go to Pekin.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Mm hm.

- I don't know what he wants to do in Pekin.

- Well, you know, he grew up there, so he's got something under his- - He was vague about what we'd be doing, but I'd go to Pekin.

- Mm hm.

- If it's a vibe.

- Well, he was good friends with Scott Altman, the, the astronaut.

- Really?

- So maybe he'd have him there.

- That could be really cool actually.

- [Christine] That that would be very good.

- That could be cool.

- Yeah, see?

There you go.

- Yeah.

(laughs) - For an old lady, I remembered that.

Well, that'll be fun for you.

And, just putting this stuff together and trying to organize it all, it is kind of tough.

So producing that, it is a challenge.

You're doing good.

- Thank you.

It is, and like I said, I couldn't have done any of this without a ton of people.

You heard me, all the people I thanked from my partner Misty at Simantle and all of her people at Simantle who've helped the set come to life, the look and feel, the logo, the whole team here, from Jen to Todd to Don Steadman.

So, everyone has been remarkable and given me the runway, like I've just been blown away with everyone's belief in the show, in myself.

And they've allowed me to be authentically me, which is important.

- Well, and, and you certainly are.

And you have really, really grown into yourself, I have to say.

- It took- - Knowing you from back in the day.

So the cutest thing, sorry, I'm saying cute.

But at the end of the screening, Jen said your final comments on it.

I mean, it really is worth seeing this for sure, W-I-R-T-H, yes, (laughs) that you kind of had the Mr.

Rogers vibe because you were speaking from your heart.

- Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

And I'm, that's gonna be the show.

And I'm in the, I've been asked like, "Why me?"

Like, why am I the guy to host a show like this to do it?

And I think it's 'cause I, I look at myself as I'd be authentically myself and I think that's what Peoria is.

I think we're both authentically ourselves.

We're not trying to be anything that we're not.

Like I said earlier, we're not Chicago or St.

Louis.

- Right.

- But we're Peoria and there's a ton of history here.

There's a ton of excellence that has taken place here.

And I'm gonna make sure I do everything in my power to, to show the places that are worth showing, to get the people on the show that also believe in this region and what we're doing, and I just want to help all ships rise and help show this place for what it is.

It's a vibe.

- So when, yeah, when you were a young kid, did you, did you always wanna do that?

Bring stuff together like that?

- That's a great question.

Yeah.

My MO has always been to widen the circle.

I love trying to get different groups of friends, like my childhood friends, high school friends, college friends, adult friends, like when I can get them together, I'm the happiest in the world.

Because yeah, I love to bring people together, because we all learn from each other.

So, that's another goal of the show is to kind of make everyone feel included.

I want everyone to, like I said, everyone's got great stories to tell.

I want to help people tell those stories, and I want to do so in a positive manner.

- So you feel that you're, you're still your authentic self, 'cause I read something recently that, that your childhood friends, they know you and love you because they knew you and loved you before people thought you were supposed to be who you were supposed to be.

- Yeah.

That's beaut, you know, (sighs) one of the best parts about these last few months of this whole experience, like getting the show off the ground, showing it at the screening, like the support system has been, yeah.

Like my friends and family from day one have always seen this in me.

- Mm hm.

And it almost feels like, in a lot of ways, that I was the last one to like fully believe in myself to do something like this.

And then I've done it and everyone has been like, "This is what you're born to do."

I feel like I'm living my dream.

I feel, it's the same reason I ride my bike all the time.

It makes me feel like a kid.

I feel like a kid again, because I'm getting to be, I'm getting to do- - [Christine] What you've wanted to do.

- What I've always wanted to do.

- Yeah.

But you didn't always know you wanted to do it or that you were capable of it.

(laughs) - Sure, yeah.

You don't know, like, yeah, you need- - You don't know what you're gonna be when you grow up.

- You don't.

And that's why I would always tell anybody, even adults, but certainly younger people is just any sort of mentorship, like, just listen.

You don't always have to, like, but just listen and you never know what you can learn and what direction your life will take.

- Exactly.

All right, so how do people find you and the show, real quickly?

- Well, they can find me at my house, but I don't want people coming over.

- Right, I don't blame you.

- Right.

- But on online.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- So Vibe309TV on Instagram, and then on Facebook it's just Vibe 309.

I'm also on Instagram and Facebook.

Blake Wirth is my name.

- With an I.

- With an I.

- W-I-R-T-H.

- With an I.

- Mm hm.

- And yeah, other than that, I would say just follow the, the social channels and keep your eyes peeled.

We're gonna have some good content coming out, snack-able content of the shows.

Like that's a big part of, we'll have the episodes, but I'm gonna edit different clips that can live on social and web.

So, we're gonna keep it fresh and top of mind.

- I like that.

- Yep.

- Well, thank you very much- - Thank you.

- For sharing your story.

I'm sorry for the grief that I caused you all those years.

Yeah.

You should, can you make a W somehow for, oh, here we go.

Yeah.

- Oh yeah.

- Just, just, just, yeah.

- Wirth.

- That's good.

- Okay, thanks, Blake Wirth for being here.

- Thank you so much.

- All right, and thanks for joining us.

Hope you enjoyed his story, and hope you'll enjoy "Vibe 309".

Until next time, be well.

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