Longevity in the music scene is difficult to achieve. Weathering the storm of band drama, touring, day jobs, vices, fickle fandom and writer’s block can be a practical superpower.
Desario formed in 2004 out of the ashes of the band Holiday Flyer, which included members John Conley and Michael Yoas. Holiday Flyer started in the early ‘90s. Conley and Yoas met as teenagers. They actually learned to play guitar together.
“We were about 16, 17,” said Yoas in a phone interview with Submerge. “We were both in high school—we didn’t go to high school together—but it was during a period in time when I lived in Sacramento during high school. We met through family members. My dad and John’s uncle were really good friends. We started playing music together almost immediately after we met. We pretty much learned how to play guitar together before we got good at playing guitar.”
To say that the members of Desario (also including Mike Carr on bass and Kirklyn Cox on drums) have been through a lot over the years is obviously an understatement. In addition to the album Desario is due to release, Haunted, they also released Red Returns earlier this year in April, as well as two prior full-length albums. Holiday Flyer had four full-length albums, as well as three EPs.
“When I look back and I see the number of releases and everything, it’s pretty cool,” said Conley. “Time-wise, it doesn’t feel that long, but looking back at some of the stuff, it does seem like it was such a long time ago, almost like a different life in some ways.”
Haunted, due out Oct. 28, 2016, has the band exploring a more intimate side, with the songs having more of a live and stripped-down nature. Much of the album has a hazy, dreamy feel, tracks like opener “Black Dream” and title track “Haunted” feel like slow dancing at your high school dance after hot-boxing your friend’s van. The band cites influences from the Britpop and shoegaze world.
“The Haunted EP and Red Returns both sound a lot different than our previous recordings,” said Conley. “They’re definitely more raw sounding. They’re a little bit more stripped down … We didn’t really do a lot of extra production. They sound like when we play the songs live. It’s kind of what we were going for, we wanted a more live, more gritty, raw feel.”
The band took a different approach to the recording process. In the past, Desario recorded their own albums, with Yoas behind the board handling production and engineering duties. However, this time around they opted out of handling everything on their own and enlisted outside assistance.
“We recorded [Haunted] with Tony Cale, the drummer for Soft Science, currently,” said Yoas. “He had a home studio when he was still living here in Sacramento. Previously we have done everything on our own, but we just wanted to mix it up a little bit, so we recorded it with Tony, and it was a good experience. It was very casual, he made it easy for us.”
There’s one other unique quality about the recording session that produced Haunted. As mentioned earlier, Desario started their career putting out two full-length albums (Mixer and Zero Point Zero); however, the last recording session didn’t work as a single album to the band. So, after stepping back and looking at the material, the band decided to split the songs into separate EPs, Red Returns and Haunted, feeling the two stood on their own, and needed separate releases.
“It seems like we start recording every time we have 10 or 12 songs ready to record,” said Yoas. “Then, as we get into the process, it starts dictating where we think it’s going to go. This one, for whatever reason there was like a natural break with this batch of songs. There was two separate releases amongst these songs.”
However, Yoas explains, he and the band intend to retake the reins going forward.
“For me, being the person that has recorded us and will continue to record us from this point moving forward, it was odd to give up the reins a little bit and go with someone else’s ideas and vision,” he said.
Typically, one would expect following a release (even two in a single year), a band would be planning to set aside a few weeks or so to tour in support of their album, but Desario is not your typical band. Actually, to date Desario has not toured at all, outside of the occasional show out of town. Mostly, they’ve kept close to home. However, they have had discussions of changing this, and would like to in the near future.
“We’re always talking about—at some point, at least—blocking out a couple of weeks at some point, and just trying to put something together,” said Yoas. “Whether it’s with some other band, or just trying to get out on our own. I think it’s something the four of us really need to do, it’s just a matter of making it happen with our schedules.”
And what will the future hold for Desario? Well, they’re ready to head back into the studio, of course.
“We’ve got about an album’s worth of material written that we just need to put the finishing touches on the arrangements,” said Yoas. “We will probably start recording a few of those pretty quickly here. We definitely want to get something recorded and released in 2017.”
“The next recording will be different,” Conley adds. “You can kind of hear a taste of what the next batch is going to sound like. The last song on Haunted, it’s a cover [of a song] by the band A House of Love, and we recorded that just a few months ago. There’s a shoegaze blog in Brazil called The Blog that Celebrates Itself, they’re doing a series of compilation albums, tribute albums to shoegaze, Britpop bands from the ‘90s, and we were asked to contribute a song to that [series]. We were so happy with the results, we decided to put it on the EP as well.”
Having released two EPs this year, and hoping to get another album out next year, one thing you might notice looking at the dates of their releases is the gap between the release of Mixer, in 2012, and Red Returns, this year in April. Well, the band had a change in the lineup, at drums. In regards to exiting drummer Jim Rivas, Yoas explains, “As cliché as it sounds, it was just musical differences.”
Enter new drummer, Kirklyn Cox.
“Kirk at the time he had recently moved to Sacramento, he was working in Arizona,” said Conley. “He was going to architecture school, and he had recently graduated from school, and he moved back here to Sacramento and he was looking for a band to be in … He wanted to play drums again. He hadn’t played while he was going to school. It just worked out.”
“Part of the reason for the delay between releases was just getting the band back on track,” said Yoas. “Getting used to the new lineup, reworking the batch of songs we have with Kirk. It’s different. We’ve changed a lot since he has joined the band. Now that we’ve finished up these two EPs, were changing and evolving again.”
That change, for better or worse, is quite possibly just a record of age and growth. When you’ve been playing together three decades-plus, it’s hard not to evolve together. Desario, especially with members Conley and Yoas’ long-term relationship, is no different than looking at a beautifully seasoned and well-weathered marriage. While there may have been tough times, they have each other, and no matter what changes come, they will still be themselves.
“We keep changing and doing what we think is different types of music,” said Yoas, “but in the end there’s always something in every song that’s always consistent and sounds like Desario, in my opinion.”
“Whatever we do ends up sounding like us,” echos Conley in agreement.
Celebrate the release of Desario’s new EP, Haunted, on Nov. 1, 2016 when the band will play Starlite Lounge (1517 21st St., Sacramento). Also playing will be Clay Rendering and Glaare. This 21-and-over show will carry an $8 cover and will start at 8 p.m. For more on Desario, check the band out at Facebook.com/desarioband.
Endings, as the saying goes, often lead to new beginnings. When Sacramento indie rock band Holiday Flyer called it quits in 2002 after almost 10 years as a group and four full-length albums, its members found new avenues to express themselves musically. Three-fifths of Holiday Flyer–which began as the brother/sister duo of John and Katie Conley, but grew into a five-piece band by its final album, 2001’s I Hope–went on to form Desario just two years later. Frontman John Conley, bassist Michael Yoas (making the jump from bass back to his first instrument guitar in Desario) and drummer Jim Rivas were joined by bass player Mike Carr. Desario released its first album, Zero Point Zero, in 2009. On February 28, 2012 the band will put forth its sophomore effort, Mixer, which shows that even after many years as vital parts of the Sacramento scene, the guys of Desario are still looking for new ways to expand their craft.
Yoas produced and engineered the entirety of Mixer, which was mixed by Larry Crane (who has worked with Elliott Smith, among others). Last time around, on Zero Point Zero, Yoas recorded everything except the drums. He says he and Conley had been playing music together as far back as the ‘80s. “We started in punk bands together in high school. We wrote together back then, and then I didn’t play music for quite a while.”
It was eight to 10 years by Yoas’ estimation that he hadn’t played music until his old friend lured him back into the studio. Yoas laid down bass for a few tracks on Holiday Flyer’s third album You Make Us Go and enjoyed an expanded role as a fixture on I Hope.
“Jim [Rivas] and I joined and put our stamp on it with bass lines and drums and percussion and added some arrangements,” Yoas says. “But for the most part, Holiday Flyer was John’s vision.”
Desario is an entirely different animal. Instead of leaning on one songwriter, the band takes a four-heads-are-better-than-one approach. In fact, the title of the album refers to the fact that the songs on Mixer were a group effort.
“It really is a band effort,” Yoas explains. “Other than the lyrics–John writes all the lyrics–it really can start with any one of us.”
This time around, the songs came together in Desario’s practice space, evolving from jams to the fully realized recordings found on Mixer. The album has a layered, sometimes spacey sound that’s imbued with underlying warmth. Songs such as “Victoria Island,” which begins with a sort of watery synth burble, stretches out into a well-paced five-and-a-half minutes of absorbing rock, layered with shimmering, distorted guitars. It’s indicative of what you’ll find on Mixer–songs that are a bit challenging, yet easy to get lost in.
On an early Saturday morning, Yoas took the time to answer some of our questions about how the album came together, and revealed how Desario thrives by keeping their songwriting process fluid.
How was the process of producing Mixer as opposed to Zero Point Zero?
Kind of arduous at times. When it’s your own music, you’re never quite sure if you’re going in the right direction or not. You’re constantly second guessing yourself. But in the end, we’re really happy with it.
Are you at all interested in producing other people’s work, or have you produced other people’s work?
Yeah I am. I’ve recorded some demos for a couple of bands. I haven’t finished them through yet, but I’m definitely interested in recording some other bands in town and getting more into that.
How is it working on someone else’s stuff as opposed to working on your own?
Honestly, it’s a lot easier for me. I have no problem giving my opinion on something, or if I’m hearing something to add or take away, it’s pretty easy giving my opinion and feel good about it. I am an avid music fan as well. When you hear something, just throw it out there.
When you’re giving feedback when you were working on Mixer, did you find that you had to be more tactful in giving your opinion since you’re a member of the band?
Absolutely…
Do you find yourself holding back sometimes? You’ve known the guys for a while. It must be an interesting dynamic in the studio.
Oh, you mean giving Desario advice?
Yeah.
Oh no. I’m not tactful at all [laughs]. As far as the guys in my band, I think at times I might have been kind of hard and had a vision and did everything I could to get out of them what I was hearing, knowing that we could all go back in the end as a group and sort things out and edit things. I definitely wanted to try to get a lot of different takes of everything just to have options.
As far as your vision for this record, is that something that came through in the writing of it or afterward when you started recording?
Definitely in the writing. We were going through a phase with this batch of songs. This batch of songs probably came together over the course of three years or so. We were trying to do things–for lack of a better term–more intricate and more elaborate, I guess, and not by choice, but for whatever reason it’s the place we were in for a couple of years. Just looking to make it as interesting with synthesizer and other elements we didn’t use at all on the first record.
You mentioned that the songs came together from jamming as a band. How did you like working that way?
It’s funny, all of us in the beginning were like, “It’s tough for us to jam. It’s hard to come in without any starting point and create music.” As we evolved as a band, we found that we all played so well together, it was really easy to jam–starting with one of Jim’s drumbeats or Mike’s bass lines. It could be anything that would make someone say, “Hey, keep doing that,” and that’s how most of the songs on Mixer started…
There has been many practices where we don’t have any shows to practice for, or we’re not recording anything. We’re very diligent. We have a scheduled practice night every week, and regardless of what’s going on, we make it a point to go in that night and practice, even though we have no reason to be there, just to see what might come out of it.
In that regard, are you guys writing all the time now? Has that process opened you up to be more prolific songwriters?
I think so. We’re constantly writing. With the stuff that we’re writing after Mixer, we’re taking a slightly different approach. John and I are trying to noodle with some ideas together and bringing them to the band to see if they think it’s worth moving forward with those ideas at this point. We’re constantly trying to change how we song-write, just to keep it interesting and so we’re writing different kinds of songs all the time.
So you’re working on stuff with John for a next record?
As a band we’ve already got six songs written. We basically have all the ideas for another album’s worth of material that we just need to hash out as a band and get arranged and just get it completed.
No rest for the weary, then.
Exactly. Yes, we’re always writing, but we definitely go into practice now with an idea of what we want to do instead of going in without any purpose.
You guys have a listening party coming up for Mixer before playing the CD release show on March 3. What do you have planned for the listening party?
We’ve got two hours at Phono Select. We’re going to let the CD play a couple of times in the store. It’s going to be available for sale. We’re going to put out some beverages and snacks. We’re just going to make it a real casual thing–come in, check out the record and enjoy a beer or a glass of wine and just have a good time.
Is it more nerve-wracking to play the new songs live or watching people listen to the CD at the listening party?
That’s a good question. I’m a little more anxious about watching people listen to the record than playing live. Playing live, obviously, I’m more focused on what I’m doing than watching the reaction of people listening to it.
Desario’s CD release show will take place at Beatnik Studios on March 3, 2012. Joining Desario will be Tremor Low from Oakland and Hearts + Horses.
