An Interview With NYC Rock Band, THE YOUNG PRESIDENTS!

NYC rock band The Young Presidents released their latest album, FireHorse on May 24^th. “Loner” is the collection’s lead single.

“Loner was a song I had been hearing in my head for a few days while touring with the band on the West Coast,” explains vocalist Dan Jackson. “The song came together so quickly, then the lyrics just fell into place. The story presented itself and it really began the whole ‘acoustic’ side of the record.”

FireHorse is the follow up effort to 2014’s Coalition. The band has returned to the great “power trio” of rock: guitar, bass and drums. Members Mitchell Kaneff and Jake Hertzog self-produced the new album, showcasing grungy, hard-edged, and indie-infused rock n’ roll.

Follow The Young Presidents here:

www.theyoungpresidents.com

www.facebook.com/theyoungpresidents

www.twitter.com/youngpresidentz

www.soundcloud.com/theyoungpresidents

Learn more about the band in the following All Access interview:

Thanks for your time! How’s 2016 been treating you all? 

Great thank you or having us! We are so excited about our new album and just performed at Brooklyn Bowl and the Cutting Room in NYC so 2016 is starting out great!

What were some of the highlights of 2015 for the band and your music?

The biggest thing for us last year was working on this record and producing it ourselves. We had been so fortunate up to that point to have worked with some world class producers, such as Rob Fraboni and John Angello, and last year we really wanted to take what we learn from them and produce the record ourselves. One highlight was recording some of our acoustic tracks in Sag Harbor at a beautiful house, using the living room for guitars!

How did this group first come to be? Where did you all meet? How did you come up with your band name? What other names were you considering?

Jake and Mitch met Euphoria Studios NYC and started playing almost six years ago. They had another drummer and as a trio choose the name The Young Presidents because Mitch and the previous drummer were also presidents of companies outside of music. Then the group went through various personal changes, including the guest vocalist project Coalition in 2014, and we finally settled on the lineup we have now.

Why do you think you all work so well together?

True to our name we try to be a democratic band – that is to say, respect everyone’s opinions and and everyone’s talent in order to creat art. We are lucky to have an extremely gifted group of musicians so everyone brings ideas to the table and we try to craft the sound around the strengths of the collective group.

How would you describe your sound to someone that hasn’t heard it yet?  

A constantly evolving mixture of classic rock, 90s alternative, and contemporary influences, with a touch of jazz fusion on occasion.

You just released your newest album, “FireHorse.” How do you think your sound has grown and developed over the years?  

The biggest thing for us was the settling on the line up now including Dan and Cinque, and we have evolved our sound to capture their strengths and style. We like to think we are maturing as artists and songwriters, this record is more focused than our last one (which was a guest artist record) so the contrast couldn’t be greater. We also really stripped this down to the quartet sound on “FireHorse”, which was a nice contrast as well since we had larger orchestrations on “Coalition”.

Where do you get the inspiration for your music? 

Everywhere! But this album has two stories – the acoustic songs all relate to a particular break up, and the electric songs were all inspired by the recent tragic loss of a very close friend of the group.

Is that constantly changing? 

For sure, each song is a new story and we strive not to repeat ourselves.

Specifically, how did your single “Loner” come together?

Dan brought us the bones of this song when he first joined the group and we really worked on it together for a while. It fit the vibe of our Sag harbor sessions and we are really pumped that it came out the way it did…groovin and “lonely.” (Laughter)

Who are some of your favorite artists? 

Wow, well Mitch and Jake are into classic rock and jazz fusion, Dan loves southern rock and folk music, Cinque loves contemporary type stuff – hard to find something we don’t dig!

Miles davis

Jimi Hendrix

U2 

Muse

The Who

Dylan

The Band

Kumasi Washington

Mike Stern

Pat Metheny

Kendrick Lamar

Radiohead

Live

Third Eye Blind

The list goes on!

What artists have continued to inspire you and your music?

All those listed above, but I think we are quite inspired by artists like Adele and Kendrick Lamar who are making great modern music but with real musicianship and message, that’s great art, that’s what we want to create.

What do you hope is the message of your music? What do you hope listeners take away from your songs?

Even though some of our music has darker themes, we hope that the message is a positive one – joy, love, gratitude, hope – we feel so lucky to wake up and make music every day that we feel that comes through in the music. If our music can resonate and make people a little more passionate or joyful when they hear us, we have succeeded.

Is there anything else that you would like to share with our readers about yourselves or your music?

Definitely check us out online and on social media, we are gonna keep on rocking hard and thanks so much for all your support!!