In this interview spotlight, I chat with Yard Sale Toys about the latest album, technology, adapting during a pandemic and more,
Full Q&A along with links and music below.
Where are you from and how do You describe your style of music?
Yard Sale Toys is from Philadelphia, PA. The best way to describe the style is eclectic indie rock. I normally hate the word “eclectic” but here it is accurate. It’s a side project meant as a catchall for songs that didn’t quite fit in with my usual loud, punk rock type stuff. The name Yard Sale Toys speaks to that. If you buy used kids’ toys, you often get some unexpected randomness. Like, you’ll pick out a Star Wars set, then when you open the box, you’ll find a Transformer and a pair of Barbie shoes mixed in. We’re the musical version of that. It’s about 80% pop rock but there are these odd moments of electronica, jazz, and other styles.
How did you get here? As in, what inspired or motivated you to take on this journey through music and the music biz?
I’ve been making music since I was a kid, writing songs, playing in bands. I’ve always been obsessed with music. I’m unable to stop at this point. In recent years, I haven’t played many live shows because it just takes so much time and energy, and it’s hard to fit in my schedule. So I’ve shifted into more of a studio person, collaborating with friends recording and producing various projects. Yard Sale Toys grew out of that. I would have songs that I wasn’t sure what project they fit into, so it became the miscellaneous category. Then the pandemic hit. I was trapped at home, going a little stir crazy, and I just started writing a whole batch of songs as basically a form of therapy. And they were all over the place because it was driven by this catastrophic world event, so it became the first official Yard Sale Toys release.
How does your latest project compare/contrast with your previous release(s)? Were you setting out to accomplish anything specific, follow a specific theme, or explore different styles of creation?
Spring Break 2020 was a drastic departure from what I’ve done in the past. My last full-time band, Ghosts in the Valley, was all loud, aggressive, and purposefully rough around the edges. That’s my preferred avenue. But Spring Break 2020 had a different goal and approach. When the lockdown started, I knew we were living through a historic event. Funny though, I thought it was going to be short-lived. I figured we’d be looking back in a few months laughing about it all. I wanted to capture what was happening, so we wouldn’t forget all the weirdness. But it started out as light-hearted and kind of silly. I would notice some quarantine quirk, like how all the white bread was gone from the supermarket but there was all this rye, rolls, bagels and English muffins to be had, the only thing people were hoarding was white bread, and I just started writing lyrics. Normally I always write music first and then come up with words that fit the feel of the music. But here it was the opposite. I’d have this notion in my head relating to some aspect of the pandemic and that would dictate the music, which is why the songs on Spring Break 2020 vary so much. For example, even before I wrote the title track, I knew I wanted it to be an upbeat pop song, something you’d listen to while driving to the beach with the windows rolled down. But the song “Obligatory Home School” needed to sound cold and computerized because it was inspired by the isolation of my child’s digital classroom.
Name the biggest challenge you faced as a creative during these unprecedented times? How did you adapt? How have you kept the creative fires burning during all this?
The biggest challenge was finding the proper time and space. We were quarantined. My wife was working from home, my child was doing remote learning, and I was suddenly her teacher. Everyone was just home all the time. Ironically, it ended up forcing a level of efficiency. My wife and I agreed that I would need a breaktime from teaching every day. It was super stressful because suddenly my kid’s education was resting on my shoulders and I had no idea what I was doing. So around lunchtime each day, she’d entertain our daughter for about an hour, so I could de-stress. For me, that meant grabbing a guitar and messing around. All these song ideas just kept coming out and I started recording them. Because it was this scheduled but limited time, I started planning out what I would do each day. Each morning I’d say to myself: What’s the status of each song? What am I ready to add during my lunch hour today? Piece by piece, for one hour a day, I just kept building, jumping from song to song, doing whatever I could figure out for that day. It was the equivalent of therapy for me. Rather than freak out about the notion that I might be ruining my daughter’s education, or fretting over the collapse of society, I had this thing to focus on each day.
What was the last song you listened to?
A track called “You Must Come with Me” by Head Machine. There are these amazing boxsets called “I’m a Freak Baby” put out by Cherry Red Records in the UK. They are this treasure trove of underground hard rock and psychedelia from the Britain in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Head Machine only did one album, I think in 1970, they would eventually become the band Uriah Heap. This song is outstanding! It has this fantastic heavy guitar riff and then it flows seamlessly into this amazing verse melody that makes you want to clap your hands and sing along. It should have been a monster hit that gets played endlessly on classic rock radio.
Which do you prefer? Vinyl? 8-tracks? Cassettes? CDs? MP3s? Streaming platforms?
I still have thousands of CDS, that was my main era for accumulating music. Though I don’t listen to them as much as I used to. I still have a bunch of vinyl too. I love the large artwork, and the satisfying sound of the needle drop, and it’s true that certain things sound better on vinyl. All that stuff from the late 60s, early 70s, was mastered specifically for the quirks of vinyl pressing. I hate cassettes, and I hate the movement to bring them back. Cassettes have always been garbage. They were useful for a time because they were cheap and portable. Now, you can store 1000 mp3s on your phone, they sound 10 times better than a cassette, and they don’t warp and wear out. Cassettes were instrumental in launching home recording, though. I may not be here today without them. My first recordings were on cassette. My first multitrack was cassette, but it was brutal to work with and again, sounded terrible, and I’m sure those old tapes have fallen apart and are physically unlistenable by now. Honestly, most of my listening now is done streaming. Sad to say. Mp3s sound pretty bad and computer speakers are awful, but it is so convenient to be able to pull up any song you want. But I refuse to listen to anything on a phone. It makes me a little nuts when people pull out their phone to play you a song. You can’t hear anything on that tiny speaker, there is literally no bass, none. At least let me plug it into the aux on my stereo or use a Bluetooth speaker. I remember the first time I saw some kids on the subway sharing an iPod, they each had only one ear bud. I had mixed emotions. I was glad they were sharing this musical experience but… they’re each only getting half the image. As someone who has spent many hours in a studio fretting over a mix, seeing that makes you feel like you’re wasting your time. But I try to think about the people out there who do listen to both speakers.
Where is the best place to connect with you and follow your journey?
For music, Yard Sale Toys is on Bandcamp, so is my previous band Ghosts in the Valley, we’ve technically just been on extended hiatus and there is talk of releasing some new stuff in the near future. To get a bigger picture you can go to yardsaletoys.com or 3amcynic.com, same thing. 3am Cynic is my various projects – music, video, writing – under one roof. For general following – @scottywhy on Twitter and Instagram. Insta is more chill, and Twitter is more me pointing out political hypocrisy.
I really appreciate Your time. Anything else before we sign off?
VOTE! This year and every year but definitely this year. And vote Democrat because our democracy is about to collapse. Seriously, I’m not kidding. Unless you want to live under fascism, everyone better get out and vote blue in 2022.
