Yellow Racket Records represents an academy* of artists who are in a particular place in life.
We are musicians who live quietly – raising families and working day jobs; fixing leaks and making lunches; balancing the budget and mowing the lawn (with no little amount of grumbling, mind you).
We make music in a way that enables us to come home at night; to make dinner for friends; to walk our dogs at dusk; to chase our kids with quilts over our heads; to kiss our lovers after lights out.
And because we are in this particular place in life, by necessity we make music any place we can.
We make music in bedroom studios when everyone else is asleep. We make music in professional studios when everyone else is at work. We make music in empty churches during the week. We make music in empty office buildings on the weekend. We make music at house parties when we can draw a crowd. We make music in our cars when we have 10 minutes alone.
For us, music is a necessity of life, without which we would shrivel and waste away. But just as great a necessity are the families and communities who rely on us to be present, and who enrich the music we make.
You may not find us in glossy magazines or crowded arenas. You may not find us touring in a van for 5 months straight. But you will always find us making music, no matter where we are.
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*What do we mean “academy”?
Let us clear it up for you. We’re not a school. At least, not in an institutional sense.
But we like to think that Yellow Racket represents a school of thought. As with any group of artists, our hodge-podge constituency has a combination of aesthetic values that make YR as unique as the individuals who comprise it. Even though these values vary from person to person, the common thread between us is our academic approach to music. It doesn’t mean we spend our time reading stacks of books in the library (though that’s always a good thing to do). It means we are committed to the exchange of musical ideas, philosophies, and techniques in a collegial setting, whether it’s a classroom or a bar booth.
What kind of music do you represent?
One of the most important questions in life is “What kind of music do you like?” And one of the worst answers is “Oh, you know… a little bit of everything.”
That being said, we like rock, folk, classical, jazz, hip hop, new wave, shoegaze, chill wave, nu gaze, new shoe, gazewave, and all that other nonsense. We think the best musicians borrow from all over the spectrum, and the most interesting things happen when they borrow from music that sounds nothing like their own. Always, always, it must pique the mind and pluck the heartstrings.
