Guillermo CastroIt’s nearing 1 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon and the sky is threatening to unleash a dismal torrent of rain. I’m standing just inside the entrance of 8ARM on Ponce, tugging mindlessly on the straw to my iced coffee, and combing through my notes one final time. It’s not often that I interview bands this way, without having listened to the record we’re on the verge of discussing, and, truth be told, I’m feeling a tad rattled. Although we’ve been trying to arrange a meeting for the past two weeks, no one has offered me a link to hear new music, and I never press for one. So all I have jotted down are a few scattered thoughts and some bullet points: Background. Politics. Latinx Expression. Still flustered, I put away my notes and make my way into the main dining room. There, I’m quickly hailed by Yukons guitarist and vocalist José Joaquín Izaguirre and drummer Danielle Dollar who are seated near the end of a communal table.
After some brief introductions, Dollar informs me bassist Hannah Lenkey is running late but will arrive soon. I nod my head and respond that our photographer, Kelly Truitt, is also on her way. For some reason, perhaps in anticipation of our conversation on politics and systems of oppression, I decide to ask the pair if they’ve heard of Algiers, the Atlanta expats turned world-conquering gospel punks, who that morning had announced a homecoming show at the Drunken Unicorn. They both shake their heads no, but Izaguirre makes sure to jot down their name and assures me he’ll give them a listen soon. For the next several minutes we busy ourselves with random pleasantries and a few fleeting attempts at getting to know one another. After some prodding, Dollar reveals that she is preparing to graduate from Georgia State with a degree in Psychology and a minor in Spanish, though she has no immediate intentions of pursuing either. “This is plan A,” she tells me with a laugh.
When Lenkey and Truitt arrive, we decide to relocate to 8ARM’s patio for better privacy and to take advantage of the natural lighting. The sky, while still rippling with dark clouds, has mercifully shown restraint, and an occasional glimmer of sunlight filters through its murky barricade. The original plan had been to do the photo shoot around Old Fourth Ward Park, but with the patio all to ourselves we decide to stay put. Moments later, we find ourselves huddled at the edge of a long table, tracing the contours of that first bullet point.
What’s in the past?
Yukons came together, as many bands do, in the hopes of breathing life into an already established set of songs from an aspiring songwriter. In this case that songwriter was Izaguirre who spent much of the summer of 2016 composing and recording demos in his Marietta bedroom. After moving into the city later that year, he began seeking out other musicians in the hopes of putting together a band that could help reign in and give shape to his raw, guitar-driven compositions.
One of the persons Izaguirre first met after moving to Atlanta was Dollar, who at the time was playing guitar in DIY group King Guru. When Dollar heard the young newcomer was looking for a drummer, she became intrigued. Although she had never formally played drums in a band before, she had spent countless hours fiddling around and teaching herself how to play. “I’m friends with a ton of musicians, so there’s always a drum set around,” Dollar explains. “I listened to [José’s] songs and I thought, ‘I could do that.'”
Indeed, one practice was all it took to convince Izaguirre he had found the drummer he was searching for. “She just killed it,” he says. “So I was like, ‘Alright, that’s all I need. Let’s do it.'”
Now with two members in place, the pair set out to find a bassist to complete their group. With no immediate connections available, the first person they turned to was Lenkey, a former high school acquaintance of Dollar with little formal experience, but plenty of chops and enthusiasm. Although she and Dollar hadn’t spoken in almost three years, Lenkey accepted the offer to join the band without listening to a single song.
“I sort of immediately said yes,” Lenkey says laughing. “I had been a musician since I was 14, but I had never officially played in a band. I hadn’t talked to Danielle in years, but I wanted to be in a band so badly! I had played music for so long and it was my time to shine.”
Still, while the band now had an established lineup, they lacked a unifying vision. Many of Izaguirre’s demo tracks were written and recorded quickly without an overriding sense of direction. That’s not to say the songs didn’t share similarities in sounds or style, but rather that they didn’t partake of a mutual ideology that bound the music together. Similarly, when it came time for the band to select a name, they floated several options but finally settled on Yukons, in large part because it sounded cool. Any additional meaning was enacted after the fact.
“We just got together and said, ‘Alright, let’s come up with a name for this,'” Izaguirre says. “So we named it Yukons because we think it sounds cool, and also, I’ve never been that far north. So maybe it’s this idea of hoping for something that’s far away, something that’s distant. I would love to go to a place like that, somewhere that’s beautiful.”
No barriers
In the intervening years since adopting the moniker, however, the threesome have searched out and discovered a more lasting sense of purpose. While the group’s early material could be regarded as mere sketches of songs, their upcoming LP, South of the Equator, is meant to reveal a far fuller, more fulfilling direction for the band, one that unites their singular talents into a more collective aesthetic. The seven-song cassette was recorded live in just two days with producer and engineer Graham Tavel provided free reign to shape the final product. The result, according to the band, is a more elaborate and spontaneous record that captures the group’s adventurous spirit, while setting all the members on equal footing.
“On his demos, you can tell it’s José,” Dollar says. “You can tell it was his baby and his project, and it has a really cool, raw sound. I think we’ve kept that raw sound, but it’s fuller and I think it sounds like three people. It’s still guitar heavy and has a similar vibe, but, I don’t know, it goes in a lot of different directions.”
With the songwriting taking a decidedly different turn, it makes one wonder what now to make of the group’s self-created descriptor “Latinx Expression.” The label first appeared a year ago when the band unveiled their single “Clockwerk,” and while Izaguirre offered some explanation as to its meaning, the term remained for the most part a matter of inscrutable mystery. Speaking with him about it now, it’s clear the term refers to neither the creative pursuit of style nor genre, but rather to the ideologies embedded within the trio’s music. As such, to unravel Latinx Expression’s many layers of meaning and get at why it’s so critical to understanding what Yukons are attempting to accomplish, it’s important to dig for just a moment into Izaguirre’s past.
Born in Rockville, Maryland in 1995, Izaguirre is the son of Latinx immigrants who fled the political chaos of early ‘90s Venezuela in order to seek out greater freedom and opportunity in the United States. When he was two-years-old, the family moved to the suburbs of Marietta where Izaguirre was raised and nurtured as a child of two cultures. At home, he was taught to take pride in Venezuelan customs and traditions, and he was made to speak Spanish, lest he feel the wrath of his mother, who would yell at him for speaking English in the house. At school and among his friends, however, he was equally immersed in American culture, and that duality became instrumental in informing and developing his identity.
When it came time to release “Clockwerk” and begin writing for South of the Equator, Izaguirre spent considerable time thinking and writing and researching about his Latinx culture and deciphering ways to express it as much as possible. “With everything that’s been happening politically,” he explains, “right now it’s definitely a big part of who I am. I’m going to use my platform to speak up about the things that I care about… when I came up with Latinx Expression what I had in mind was, I could turn this into a funk band if I wanted to and it would still be Latinx Expression. There’s no barriers. If we want to take a particular direction then we will go there, but it’s still going to have this meaning behind it.”
Part of that expression of love for his culture is the desire for people to hear the band’s music in his native tongue. Of South of the Equator’s seven tracks, three are sung in Spanish, although Izaguirre is quick to point out that he’s not completely fluent. “My Spanish is definitely developed, but it’s not without flaws,” he admits. “So I kind of embrace that when I’m writing songs. That’s part of what makes it mine—my own imperfections and my own cultural experience breathing through it. My grammar and my mistakes—that’s all part of it.”
The other side
A few days after our interview, Izaguirre reaches out the possibility of premiering a new single alongside the feature. Naturally I agree and I’m especially ecstatic when I discover the track is one of the Spanish-language cuts found on the album. The jangly slacker punk jam is entitled “Abajo Cadenas” (translation: “Down with Chains”), which is a lyric pulled from the Venezuelan national anthem “Gloria al Bravo Pueblo.” Inspired by the first attempt of the Venezuelan people to win their independence in 1810, the anthem was composed to encourage those fighting in the revolution against colonialist Spain, a revolt that was crucial to what Venezuela became after. For Izaguirre, the song isn’t an allusion to a past long gone, but a rebirth of an idea that takes stock of the political turmoil and economic collapse that is plaguing the country.
“It’s speaking up to bring awareness to a situation that people don’t know about too much,” he says. “Part of it is the experience of living in Venezuela and having to leave and live somewhere else like my parents and a lot of my loved ones—the Venezuelan diaspora and everything that comes with it. It’s very frustrating and I wanted to express that frustration. A lot of Venezuelans, when they hear that song, they will immediately understand what it’s about.”
In addition to expressing love for his native culture and raising awareness for the plight of Venezuela and Latinx communities everywhere, South of the Equator spends much of its running time challenging any political discourse or cultural construct that reduces complex systems into simple black and white binaries. Although they hold no love for capitalism, the band finds it problematic that so many people in their peer group—students, artists, musicians, activists—turn towards communism as an immediate counter to the perils of capitalism without acknowledging the vast web of gray that exists between the two systems or the hypocrisy implicit in using capitalist interfaces to push for anti-capitalist ideologies.
“When you’re 18-years-old and you’re out of your suburban bubble, you want to be as progressive as you can, as radical as you can,” Dollar argues. “But it’s just a trend. And it’s a good thing because you’re becoming aware, and that’s important. You’re coming from a place where you’re recognizing capitalism is oppressive to a lot of groups of people—and it is, especially in America. But then they turn to the opposite, and they forget that it’s actively oppressive too in other countries. So it’s coming from a place of privilege, and I think we’re just trying to make sure that people are checking that privilege and being honest.”
If all this sounds dark or heavy or combative, there’s certainly some truth to that vision. But there’s also a joy and a liberation and celebration of humanity in the journey Yukons offer. It’s these two opposing forces that are unleashed throughout the record, and it’s up to the individual listener to untangle them and select the path that works for them.
“I have this idea of the world as in the midst of this mass transition right now, and part of what is happening is that different cultures are overlapping and crossing over because of the internet and globalization,” Izaguirre says. “But at the same time, many people are still distanced from hearing a different language or experiencing a different culture. It’s a huge conflict. The equator is just a line that splits our world in two halves, so I want people to take a look at the other half of the world, not just their half. The equator just happened to be the best representation of that division. Our music is a look at that other side.”
Yukons will celebrate the release of South of the Equator tomorrow night, Mar. 10, at 529 alongside Maritza Nuñez (Bitter), Rug, and DJ Esmé. Doors open at 9 p.m. Admission is $8. 21+ to enter.
More Info
Bandcamp: yukons.bandcamp.com
Facebook: @yukonsmusic
Instagram: @yukonsss
SoundCloud: @yukonsmusic