9+1 Q&A with Yakima

What inspired you to first start making music? And how did you come to be in your current incarnation? Or if you prefer, a brief bio about you.

Neil, John and Paul all know each other from school and met Kay in later years through playing music. We’ve had a few line-up changes since starting, but this roster has been going strong since 2017.

It’s probably fair to say that the initial trigger for making music came in adolescence, partly through wanting to emulate our heroes. None of us have ever really been totally happy with the music we’ve made while being in other bands and Yakima has given us the chance to really go for what we’ve always wanted to do.

Provide us with some info about your latest release…

Our latest single is called “Thanks” and it’s the heaviest song we’ve written. There’s a 7- minute duelling sax solo when we play it live. It’s wild.

Which ones would you consider your main influences both music-wise & non-music-wise?

Neil Sedaka holds a special place in all of our hearts. We challenge ourselves to write all our songs on the oboe first because if it works on the oboe, it’ll work on anything. Much like Neil, one of our biggest non-musical influences is the British Invasion of America. This is definitely not a Beatles reference.

In what way does your sound differ from the rest genre-related artists/bands and why should we listen to your music? In other words, how would you describe your sound?

We’re kind of lucky due to the varying tastes and influences of each band member. It feels like each of us approach our music on the same wavelength, but with a slightly different approach. We get the impression that we don’t really fit in with too many current trends or anything like that, so maybe that could be something fresh or maybe even nostalgic for listeners. When it comes to live shows we are loud and gritty (just the way we like it).

Please name your 3 desert islands albums, movies & books…

Can we choose four of each so we don’t have to share?

Movies – Taxi Driver (Scorsese), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (Stevenson), Stand By Me (Reiner), and Do The Right Thing (Lee).

Albums – Figure 8 (Elliott Smith), Slanted and Enchanted (Pavement), The Glands (The Glands), and Music Has the Right to Children (Boards of Canada).

Books – Jim Henson Biography (Brian Jay Jones), Lord of The Flies (William Golding), True Grit (Charles Portis), and Big Sur (Jack Kerouac).

Do you prefer studio or performing live and why?

Both have their ups and downs. We’ve recently started to love playing live. We guess that it’s taken a while for us to gel as a band and to be completely comfortable in our own skin on stage – it’s a nice feeling. The most exciting time in the studio is when something totally unexpected happens; either a note, a vibe or vocal melody that comes out of nowhere. It’s those milliseconds of surprise that keeps us going in the studio.

Is there any funny-unique story you would like to share with us, always in relation to your music ‘career’?

This may not seem so funny explaining to others, but it always provides endless laughter for us.
Part of being in a band and releasing music is that it usually has to be accompanied by press shots, which you could say is not always our forte. There have been many, many creative suggestions for these types of things in the past and even some which we have went through with, only for them to be hidden away in the depths of a computer hard-drive in the hopes they’ll never see the light of day. Some memorable scenes include piles of fairy lights, velvet chaps and dining out on a watermelon banquet.

Which track of your own would you point out as the most unique and why?

It may not be the same for people who listen to our music, but we feel that Sheep Boy, Cry Man has a uniqueness to it in relation to the other tracks on the EP. This is partly due to the subject of the song, which looks at aspects of hired companionship where the intention is to prompt an emotional outpouring of suppressed feelings. Other than that, it differs in feel to the others on the EP and we had the sense that it was a good track to finish with as it seemed to hint at the direction of future material during the time which we recorded at.

Would you like to share with our readers your future plans?

Next up, we are releasing our EP “Go Virtually” on April 3rd 2020. We’re really excited to get some more music out there for you all to hear and will be following this up with some live shows. Stay tuned!

Free question!!! (Ask yourself a question) you wish to answer and haven’t been given the opportunity…

Yakima, what is your favourite scene from a movie and favourite scene from a tv show?

Easy. Our favourite movie scene is the sax player in The Lost Boys. Our favourite TV scene is Mac and Charlie staring at each other from opposite sides of the restaurant in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Curated by: Christos Doukakis

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