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YYNOT
- A Rock Band that Answers All of the Questions |
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YYNOT is a Rock band mostly out of California with a dash of Florida and
their name addresses what others might be prompted to ask. Those
questions might be why three musicians and a singer got together first
as a RUSH tribute band and later started to write their own songs, but
still very much in the vein of Progressive Rock. Another question might
be what does a twenty-two year old lead singer (Rocky Kuner) know about
the pinnacle of RUSH’s career or what does she know at all about that
era of music? Yet another question stems out of the former question,
which is can three older (not old) guys who grew up listening to RUSH
and a Generation Z singer actually make it work? Well if one considers
the strong following that YYNOT has and they have played concerts all
across America rather than just being a regional band then the answer to
the last question is a resounding yes!
The new album Resonance opens
with an instrumental “Synergos,” written by Billy Alexander, a longtime
friend of Riveting Riffs Magazine. Alexander sat down with us to talk
about the band YYNOT and the songs on this album. Heavy drumbeats (Joel
Stevenet) and dare we say it, riveting guitar riffs slice through the
air (courtesy of Alexander), while Tim Starace works his magic on bass.
Superb songwriting (Billy Alexander) and fabulous vocals by Rocky Kuner
take over with the second song on the album, “Wildest Dreams.” The song
is both an encouraging missive and a challenge to keep imagination
alive, to keep that little girl or little boy spark inside of us or to
reignite it and to keep pursing our dreams. The theme is reflected in
the chorus, “Sing it to the top
of your lungs / Who’s to say you’re not forever young / Set a course to
cross the sea / May you imagine yourself / Living your wildest dreams…”
It is also reminds me and anybody else listening to have a dream even if
it is not a major life dream. It might be a dream to get away to a
tropical island to recharge.
Musically the song was fun, because it allowed me to keep the Rock and
Roll edge and to keep the guitar slicing through there. I like being
able to have a lot of flowing guitar textures throughout a song. There
is a lot of melody. There is even a rhythm break when Joel gets to take
off a bit and do some drum fills. I thought it was an opportunity for
each of our music personalities (to come out). It felt like a fresh new
song and radio friendly.”
The conversation then turns to the history behind the name of the band
YYNOT, and Alexander explains, “What you know of me is more from the
Country and Country Pop kind of stuff that I have been writing and
producing predominately writing and producing for however many years (He
had one song that charted in the top twenty and another in the top
thirty, as a member of the band FEEL.), but I grew up listening to
hard Rock and Rock and Roll stuff. When I was nineteen and twenty I had
my own band and I wrote all of the songs. We were much more like a Prog
Rock type of a thing. I have experience doing that and I definitely have
that whole world and background with that.
This was an accident how this (YYNOT) came along. I still continue to do
other genres of music, writing, playing and producing, but this one fell
into my lap, because of nostalgia. I grew up loving the band RUSH, but I
was very young, 10 years old and it was the first concert I ever
(attended). They were big heroes of mine as a kid and I looked up to
them, because of their musicianship and their writing. I really
gravitated towards them and they were a very strong influence on me
wanting to be a good musician. I would still see RUSH when they would
come to town even though I had stopped buying the records. I still kept
track of them and they were a great live band.
The last show that RUSH did I knew it was probably the last time that I
was going to see them, so I got some good tickets for my wife and I to
see them on their R40 tour in Irvine, California in 2015. For that tour
they were running their careers in reverse chronological order. They
started with a bunch of stuff I wasn’t familiar with and that was their
newer material. Then midway through (the concert) they played when I
left off (started going in a different musical direction) and going back
to the beginning when they were a Canadian trio in 1974 and their first
album.
Throughout that concert I started getting very nostalgic and I had a
germ of an idea in my head. I thought with some of my skills in writing
and producing it would be fun, as a musical exercise to write an
instrumental that had a lot of heavy nods to that period of their
career. If nothing else it was something for me that was better in
quality than the cassette tapes from that style of music that I had
written in the late eighties or early nineties. Then I recorded it. I
recruited a Nashville drummer friend of mine Tony Morra who had played
on a ton of stuff that I had produced and written over the years.
He was also a RUSH fan.
I came up with the name YYNOT for that song,” then he continues to
explain why he chose that name, “Well for one RUSH has an instrumental
song that is very popular and that they named for the Toronto airport
YYZ. I took that and made it a little bit of a cheeky answer to anyone
who might ask why bother doing an instrumental song that sounds like a
bunch of stuff from RUSH in the seventies and eighties. I asked the
question in the name of the song, before it was asked. It grew from
there.”
Billy Alexander continues, “People encouraged me to share the song
“YYNOT,” and through doing so I discovered an incredible bass player Tim
Starace. We got together and I said I will do my guitar part here and
let’s just do some RUSH covers for fun. I will mix the audio. We will
share them as online covers of these songs. I sang the songs, but with a
lot of the songs that I liked from RUSH back then (Geddy Lee) had very
high screeching vocals. We needed someone to do that and I just didn’t
want to get some friend of mine who was in a Metal band and who sang
falsetto Heavy Metal style. I wanted somebody who sang like Geddy Lee
did back in the seventies when he just belted it in the higher register.
A friend had me check out Rocky (Kuner) who was here in Orange County
and I caught a video of her doing “Highway Star,” by Deep Purple. Here
was this little (person) just belting out these vocals and I didn’t
listen to the rest of the song on YouTube, I called her immediately. I
said hey I have this project if you want to come and meet and here is
the song. It was the Prog song “Hemisphere,” by Rush from 1978. She
learned it and came in prepared. She nailed it.
When I first saw Rocky do (the Deep Purple song) she was eighteen,
because that was her senior year. She had cool parents who had Rock and
Roll music and continue to have that music constantly flowing around the
house. From day one she was exposed to it and liked it. Rocky has that
in her blood. She likes a lot of other stuff. She is up on everything
that is current and the music she has written is a little more R&B.
Rocky has an open heart and an open mind to all kinds of Rock and Roll.
It is very evident that when Rocky sings a song even if it was one that
was popular in 1975 she will sing it with all of her might. It is
amazing to see and it crosses all boundaries. We have guys who are in
their sixties who are tearing up at our shows, as they are watching her
do a performance of a RUSH song. They grew up (with this music) and now
they are hearing it performed by this girl who has this fresh look and
voice. It has really been a trip and it is a lot of fun.
When it came time for us to play live we asked is it feasible to have a
bass player who lives in Florida all the way across the country and a
drummer who also lives far away. Rocky
and I were at least in one location and we decided to try it. We played
our first show here in Long Beach with the drummer who recommended
Rocky, Chris Moore. In the meantime I was writing more material and I
thought it would be good to keep it in the same vein of sounding like
something RUSH might have recorded back in the day. Since we are playing
these older RUSH covers I didn’t want to confuse everybody by producing
something that is ultramodern. I wanted to keep within the framework of
the theme and so I did that with the intention of slowly moving away
from the obvious styling. Once we got some people onboard who were
interested in the original material they started asking for those songs
in the live shows and they started asking for those more than they did
the covers. It grew from there,” he says.
As for the type of music fans that are drawn to YYNOT Alexander says
that a good portion of their fans come from people who are fans of RUSH
and the demographic is comprised of males between the ages of forty and
sixty.
“There is however another generation of fans that were exposed to this
type of music by their parents and they come out to our shows as well.
(The appeal seems to be) that we have a female vocalist who is
twenty-two years old and the songs are accessible lyrically, so they
crossover beyond just screaming Prog Rock from the seventies,” he says.
The conversation segues back to the current album, “The debut album
received good reviews and we have played across the country, so we
decided to do a second album. This time I steered it more in a personal
direction and I also focused more on the production end of things. There
is a little bit more of our own personalities which are always there.
This record is a recognizable shift. The record was released on
September 19th (2019), but the reaction has already been really
positive. It always blows my mind the passion that these fans of ours
have. That just charges us up,” says Billy Alexander.
“Another song that is very personal for me is “Precious Time.” It is the
last song on the record. There is a lot of meaning in it for me
personally. I don’t want to get too much into that, because I want the
listener to relate their own personal experiences and thoughts (to the
song). I was concerned that
it might be too personal and not enough of the YYNOT Rock type of song.
I went with it and it felt right to be the last song on the record,” he
says.
We have known Billy Alexander for more than a decade and this appears to
be the most fun he has enjoyed for many years, “I am so used to (having
the mindset) this is the job at hand or I am hired to do something . I
am used to it needs to be hit radio or this or that. Tim Starace would
pull me back a lot to make sure that we were always having fun.
That should be our only goal, because there isn’t any pressure.
There are no expectations. It is just let’s do this for kicks. We all
have our separate lives and separate projects, let’s just make this a
fun thing. We have a lot of fun playing live together. The people in the
band are various ages. Rocky is twenty-two and myself, Joel and Tim
aren’t twenty-two. Somehow it
works with all of the different backgrounds and the different
personalities.
It just really gels and the music is the one thing that brings us all to
that place. It is a real joy for me. I am a kid again and I can write
something that maybe before would have seemed a little pretentious or
self-indulgent, but now it is like wait a minute I bet if I was thirteen
I would think that is cool. I just go ahead and do it now,” says Billy
Alexander.
Please visit the
official Facebook page for YYNOT or the
band's website.
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Billy
Alexander who is also the primary songwriter for the band talks about
“Wildest Dreams,” on which Rocky Kuner’s splendid vocals are showcased,
“The current single that is out now is called “Wildest Dreams.” The song
talks about no matter what your age and no matter what your path in life
never forget how you felt as a kid and how everything was exciting,
fresh and new. You took chances and you had dreams. A lot of times
people get so caught up in life or they see themselves as, well I can’t
do that anymore, because I perceive myself as being a dad or a mom or a
grandfather or a grandmother. No matter where you are with it don’t
forget you are still a child inside. You didn’t go anywhere. It is the
same you. You weren’t replaced by an alien adult creature. You are the
same human being.” 
The
song “YYNOT,” is the last song on the band’s debut album that is simply
titled YYNOT. The album released in June of 2018 sounds polished, as you
would expect from seasoned musicians and it also serves proof once again
of the excellent production skills of Billy Alexander. It also provides
us with our first glimpse of or shall we say listen to the vocals of
Rocky Kuner.