custom events-list.php

Ok, I did a test with event-single.php like this:

<?php
/*
global $EM_Event;
/* @var $EM_Event EM_Event */
echo 'Test '.$EM_Event->output_single();
?>

And here is my code for events-list.php in the same directory:

$args = apply_filters('em_content_events_args', $args);

if( get_option('dbem_css_evlist') ) echo "<div class='css-events-list'>";

echo 'TEST '.EM_Events::Output( $args );

if( get_option('dbem_css_evlist') ) echo "</div>";

I have my single event page formatting on and I can see the word ‘Test’ along with all of the other single page event data.
I dont see the word ‘test’ in my main events page.

I have tried turning on and off my formatting in Event List/Archives.

Also tried not setting a page as my main event page and just using short codes. (Oddly – and I know this is a tangent – but the date range values are not being passed when I use the [event_search_form] shortcode by itself. Results are coming up in my archives but the date is not applied)

All I ultimately want to do is display my event list from settings excluding certain categories.
What can I try? – thanks for the help!

One more question.
It is not filtering out categories when I do a date range search.
Is there somewhere else I can put the additional $args?
This is what I used:

if( empty($args['category']) && empty($_REQUEST['category']) ){
  $args['category'] = '-21,-41';
  $_REQUEST['category'] = '-21,-41';
}