Michael Yonkers’ Lovely Gold is a mystifying and beautiful record, all recorded on a hand-built, “four-channel, tube-type,” machine. Yonkers was kind enough to answer some questions for BOMBlog from his home in Minneapolis.

 

When the Michael Yonkers Band’s album Microminiature Love was reissued in 2003 (first on LP by De Stijl and then on CD by Sub Pop) a truly unique musical mind was re-introduced to the world. The album, a mind-bending collection of fuzz-out melodies and home-recording wizardry, was recorded in 1969 and is an utterly singular document. Had Yonkers been of legal age to sign a contract with Sire, who wanted to release the album, he’d likely be a well-known innovator. Instead, he’s continued to toil in obscurity, expanding on the singular world he’d created through restless experimentation with electronics, recording techniques and genres in his home in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. After suffering a terrible spine injury in 1972, Yonkers has been only intermittently able to play live, but he’s continued to record and write music, most recently with local Minneapolis art-rock band the Blind Shake.

Drag City and Galactic Zoo Disk have just released Lovely Gold, an album recorded in 1977 and never before heard by non-Yonkers ears. More stripped-down than Microminiature Love, and more rocking than 1969’s Grimwood (reissued in 2007) Lovely Gold adds an entirely new dimension to the Yonkers discography. It’s a mystifying and beautiful record, all recorded on a hand-built, “four-channel, tube-type,” machine. Michael was kind enough to answer some questions for BOMBlog from his home in Minneapolis, where he’s busy working on a new album.

Clint Krute: Can you talk a little about your development as a musician in the 1960’s, in the relative isolation of Minnesota? What led you to experiment so restlessly with sound and song structures and electronics?

Michael Yonkers: I was fascinated early on with the idea of being able to record sound onto tape. This was a new thing when I was young. This technology had never been available to the masses before and I managed to score one of the first consumer tape recorders with my paper route money. I became interested in changing sounds by running the tape backwards, changing the speeds and making tape loops. Then, I had the idea of adding another tape head, and running the sound from it back into the machine. This gave echo. And wow—that was major.

This was in 1961. There were no stomp boxes and the only guitar effects available were the reverb and tremolo that were built into some amps and maybe a stand-alone echo box. At the time, I was listening to a lot of blues and I tried to copy the guitar sound of the distorted little amps that the blues folks used by cutting slits in an old speaker, which I turned on with a foot switch. This wasn’t enough for me, and in 1966, I designed one of the early electronic distortion foot-operated boxes.

For the music part, we have to go back further. When I was very young—I was born in 1947—there was no rock music. I heard rock music when it first came on the radio. I followed it from the very beginning. When I got old enough to have a paper route, I used my paper route money to buy one of the first transistor radios. Before that I was using a little crystal radio, in the shape of a rocket, in order to listen to what I called “my music.” When I heard The Trashmen on the radio in 1963, I said to myself, I want to do this. So, after buying an electric guitar, more paper route money went to buy my first amp. The tape recorder experiments, and the guitar and amp meshed together and got me on my music/sound path.

CK: A lot happened to you between 1968, when you recorded Microminiature Love, and 1977, when Lovely Gold was made. Did your back injury and your subsequent health problems have any influence on the songwriting?

MY: I had a full time job with an industrial surplus company, where I had been injured when over a thousand pounds of scrap metal fell on me, breaking my back in two places. It was a very serious injury. I loved working there though. I was surrounded by fascinating people, and fascinating stuff. However, in 1973 I had to have major surgery on my spine and I was recovering from this when I started writing the music for Lovely Gold as well as the music for a few other albums at the around same time. I was unable to perform as a rocker, so there was no band. And since I had to write the music while lying down in traction, all the music was written on an acoustic guitar. I wrote many songs during this period, because it was a very long recovery process.

CK: What were doing for work when you made this record? Were you playing out with a band?

MY: By the time I got around to recording Lovely Gold I was still working part-time with the surplus company, but I was also doing some work for a major shopping center. I was helping with seasonal holiday displays and events like concerts and fashion shows. My day-to-day was a confusing and complex schedule involving many types of activities mixed in with lots of physical therapy. There was no band but I was playing out from time-to-time as a solo artist. Typically, these shows found me doing the first part of the set playing my music in acoustic form, and then switching to an electric/noise format for the last part of the set. At this point, I had put together a box full of weird electronics and key-type switches that I could switch in and out using a matrix switch. At the end of these shows I would sit down with this box and just make noise.

CK: What were Minneapolis and St. Paul like in the ‘60s and ‘70s? Was there an audience for this kind of music?

MY: The Twin Cities were like an island of rock. It was vibrant, complete, and outstanding in every way. Like anywhere, if you could find the right audience—you’d had an excellent response. If not—things did not go so well. There were times when I was simply asked to “pack up and leave”. In the ’60s, my band and I many times found ourselves in the wrong venue. We might have the plug pulled on our amps after the first song, or even be threatened with violence. One time a guy jumped up on stage with a knife and I had to use my guitar like a baseball bat to keep him away. Another time we were chased off stage by a bunch of guys who followed us out of town in their cars, I guess to make sure we did not come back. For the most part though, it was a very exciting place to be for an experimental rocker.

CK: What was the recording process like for Lovely Gold? It has a different sound than your other albums, particularly the guitars.

MY: I had become frustrated with two-channel recording. I wanted more tracks so I put together a four-channel (or four-track) recorder out of electronic modules that I had accumulated. I had been told that the way I was doing this would not work but it did. At that time, four-channel recorders were typically only found in professional studios. I used that same machine for Goodby Sunball, the album before Lovely Gold and I was very happy with the way this analogue, tube-type, four-channel machine sounded. There was not much mystery to the recording process, I simply recorded the guitar and vocal, then added more. I recorded the vocal in the bathroom for the expanded sound. I also used a mixer that I built myself. It had a nice analogue reverb built into it.

CK: What music were you listening to at the time?

p(q).MY: I have really never had strong opinions about music. I do like quite a variety of music. During the period when I was recording Lovely Gold I had a large collection of polka records. I still really like polka. I do listen to polka music on a regular basis.

The music that I have listened to most over the years is my music. I feel I should keep track of what I am up to. I pretty much like almost all music styles though. After all, when it comes right down to it, it’s all just combinations of tempo and pitch. And, what is amazing to think about is that in the most simplified synthesizer, tempo and pitch are controlled by the same knob.

CK: Home recording often seems like a method of keeping a diary. The fidelity makes the listener feel like they’re overhearing someone’s private project. When you recorded this music, what was the intended audience? Were you doing this for yourself?

MY: You have pinpointed what could be obvious, but many times isn’t. Since I’ve never been in music as a business, the recording part has pretty much been a record-keeping thing. For the most part, I’ve considered my home recordings to be for me to listen to. Secondarily, they have been to keep track of what I have done. Now, I know that what I am about to say could be considered ‘not right’. But, it is right for me, and that is, from the beginning I have not much cared about what people think about the music I am doing, or I have done. Sure, it is nice when people like what I do, but I’m not going to go to bed worrying about it. That’s the beauty of not doing music as a business. If you are heavily involved in the music business, you have to care about your audience, or lack of audience. I just do not have what it takes, mentally or physically, to be in the music business. This avocational approach has probably affected my music the most.

CK: How did you meet the band you’ve been working with, the Blind Shake?

MY: I do not remember how many years ago it was, but one of the Blind Shake introduced himself to me on the street. He said that he was a fan of my music and told me that he was in a band. I heard them, and thought they were terrific. The booker of my favorite rock venue asked me if I would perform at a special concert for his birthday and, as a birthday present, he asked me if I would do a jam with the Blind Shake which went so spectacularly well that we decided to do some recording. As it turned out, the Blind Shake and I were cut out of the same cloth. We lived close to each other. They were into the home recording aesthetic and none of us were into music as a business.

About a year ago, I had a terrible exacerbation of my spinal problems, which unfortunately has affected my entire nervous system. Last summer I spent about three months mostly in bed, and I couldn’t play the guitar at all for four months. Last September I started playing, a little at a time, but I could only play for about five minutes before my fingers and hands would cramp up. Now I can play for about 15 minutes, but it’s extremely painful. Before all this happened though, I had put a group of songs to tape that I thought would be good for the Blind Shake and me to play. So eventually we hope to record those songs with Jim from the Blind Shake doing the guitar work. I doubt very much that I will be playing out anymore. I try to say, never say never, but I have to be realistic. Time will tell.

CK: You’ve been an active dancer over the years. Can you talk about your interest in modern dance and how it’s influenced your health and music?

MY: When I was in college I studied Korean karate and one day my instructor said to me, “you move well, but you have no killer instinct. You should study dance.” So, I took a modern dance class, and loved it and I studied modern dance for many years. After my back surgery and after learning to walk again, I eventually used modern dance as therapy. I was in real bad shape after the surgery, which had not gone well, and I very slowly started to do exercises I had learned in modern dance. Then I began to study ballet and began to d my own choreography. I even spent about five years studying Middle Eastern dance, or belly dance and I took the best of all these styles and developed a therapy program for myself. I ended up doing a lot of performing as a dancer. It wasn’t so much my dancing ability that got me on to the stage as my ability to do characters. And, I also developed a choreography style that was entertaining. I’ll be 63 on my next birthday, so even though I don’t take dance classes or perform anymore, I still use dance exercises at home. To me music and dance go hand in hand.

CK: How many unreleased albums are still in the vaults?

MY: As of right now, my unreleased music is in one of those pod storage things. Someday I hope to get at it. I don’t know how many unreleased albums are in there. I would estimate it as … a big bunch.

Lovely Gold is out now on Drag City/Galactic Zoo Disk.

For more on Michael Yonkers, go to michaelyonkers.com.