Alexandra interviews Yip-Yip
From the small town Winter Park, Florida, these two minstrels (Jason Temple and Brian Esser) came together with one vision: To make brilliant Experimental/Progressive music and bring it to the world. On Friday, March 6, 2009, they did just that at The Harvest Of Hope music festival in St. Augustine and I had the wonderful chance to listen to this duo, and ask them a few questions too.
Alexandra Elizabeth: Hey guys, how are you doing on this fine, sunny, Florida day?
Brian: Well today when I am actually doing this interview, it's kind of stormy out, but still a pretty nice day! I am great, I got off of work early, so I am happy.
A: We know you're from Winter Park, but how did you two meet each other?
B: We met in high school, I think in 10th grade. we became really good friends around the time that we graduated, and we started Yip-Yip not too long after that.
A: How long have you been together as a band?
B: I think we started in 2001, so 8 years or so now. It's crazy how long it's been, it doesn't feel like that long!
A:Where did you come up with this super fun name, Yip-Yip? I'm just guessing it is from Sesame Street, but hey, I could be wrong.
B: Almost everyone thinks that, including myself early on, but it wasn't until one of our first interviews a long time ago that it came out that it wasn't from Sesame Street. I assumed that too, but never really asked. Jason swears it came from random thoughts when we were trying to think of a band name, and that was the one we liked best. Jason says he never even saw the Bob and Joe Martian "yip-yip-yip-yip-uh-huh" thing when we was a kid.
A: Is there anything you two do when you're on the road together? Any traditions?
B: We usually try to think of some sort of thing that we do, like have pizza in every city, but after the first couple, we realized how hard it is do do it every day for a number of reasons. Usually to pass time and to explore a little, we always go hunting for thrift stores, antique malls, older video stores for VHS tapes, crappy pawn shops in the middle of no where. That is probably our favorite thing to do on tour, and luckily there is usually a lot of time to do that, since most days you have a few hours to kill.
A: I see you have a pizza blog, now that looks delicious, are you two going to do another food blog in the future? Perhaps a sushi blog?
B: A sushi blog would be fun, but I don't think Jason really east sushi much. I do, so maybe I will do one. I'm not sure. I would like to do more video blogging on our future tours.
A: Who are your influences?
B: DEVO has always been a huge influence on our band. It was the band that really got me into synthesizers. They also were one of the bands that really inspired us to try to do more than just music, but art and costumes, and live visuals, and all of that. Other bigger influences are Cardiacs, Nirvana, Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, Madness, Oingo Boingo, The Residents, Lightning Bolt, Neon Hunk, and Crom-Tech.
A: And who would you potentially like to tour with? Any bands or acts in particular?
B: We would love to tour with some of our all time favorite experimental bands like Lightning Bolt, Black Dice, Boredoms, or obviously, anyone from the list above that still plays shows and does tours like DEVO, Cardiacs and The Residents! That would be awesome!
A: Thus far, who was the most fun to tour with, and why?
B: We've had a ton of fun on most of the tours we've been on. We had a great time on tour with The Locust. They are really nice and supportive dudes, and they are absolutely amazing to watch live. We've also become great friends with The Show Is The Rainbow and Mixel Pixel, mostly from our touring together. An Albatross have always been awesome to us, they invited us on our first small tour outside of Florida. Last year they took us overseas for the first time on a European tour with them. Genghis Tron and HEALTH are also awesome bands/people and were a lot of fun to tour with. Hopefully we will get a chance to tour with any of those bands again, or a chance to tour with other awesome bands that we like soon!
A:So, what is next for Yip-Yip?
B: We are currently writing a new album that we will hopefully finish and record over spring and summer, and hopefully it will come out sometime early next year! It is the best stuff we've ever written so far as a band, we are working super hard on it. It's the first album that we will have vocals on. We are also planning on partially recording this in a studio for the first time. It's a step up from anything we've ever done on every level, and hopefully people will be into it! We love it so far and we are really excited to get it out there!
LINKS
Yip-Yip's Myspace Page (www.myspace.com/yipyip)
Yip-Yip's Website (www.yip-yip.com)
Alexandra Elizabeth's Blog (alexandramazing.blogspot.com)
EXTRA PHOTOS
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