Link to our Facebook
Link to our Instagram
Link to our TikTok

INTERVIEW: YesYou

15 November 2012 | 12:00 pm | Hannah Galvin

We caught up with Jono Kirkham - one half of production duo YesYou - to discuss their new EP, their tour and dancing with Byron's finest Tommy Franklin.

If you knew anything about Brisbane duo YESYOU, you’d know that they were pretty much built for Summer. The two dudes, Jono Kirkham and Gav Parry, rekindled their musical beings by starting YesYou after highschooling together.

They released their debut single, ‘Half Of It’ in 2011 and have since been writing, collaborating and performing, not to mention just releasing their debut, self-titled EP and announcing their Frivolous Life Tour.

Plug into the latest music with our FREE weekly newsletter

One half of the duo, Jono Kirkham, kindly pulled over and had a chat with me as he was driving around in his hometown, Brisbane, to talk about the EP, Imgur and sweaty, bearded men.

Curious to know about the birth of YesYou’s career, Jono gave me the run down on how him and Gav came to be the production duo gems that they are.

“Gav and I went to the same highschool actually, and we were in a rock band together in highschool, in about year 9, I think, when we were fourteen years old. We finished highschool then we didn’t speak for about five years because I went on to do more music stuff and play with some other groups and Gav went and did his own thing. I put up a poster on Facebook saying, ‘I’m trying to start a new group; it’s more like dance kind of, electronic, I need a singer,’ and then he saw it and was like “hey cool you’re doing music I’m writing demos”. So we just started sending demos back and forth and yeah that’s how it began!”

Continuously writing together, the duo have finally released their debut EP (which you can listen to HERE) featuring five tracks that are increasing in popularity, including ‘Half Of It’ and ‘Frivolous Life feat. Marcus Azon’. But just how long did it take to get it out in the fresh, musical air? I asked Jono for the deets..

“We released half of it about a year ago, and that was kind of unexpected cause Gav and I wrote half of it in my bedroom when I was still living at my parents house [laughs] and so, we just put it on Unearthed. About three days later we were just driving in the car, we heard it come on the radio, and I’m not joking - it was amazing. I thought my iPod was actually connected to the car and we were just driving and I was like “ah dude turn it off I’ve heard that song a million times” and he’s like “dude that’s the fucking radio!” So that was unexpected! We didn’t have that many other songs ready to go so we just sat down and wrote about twenty or thirty songs, you know, sort of built up a bit of a catalogue. But it’s taken about a year really to get enough material to release now and also back it up with what we want now, like we have heaps of songs ready to go now and be released so we kinda wanted to release something and not wait till another EP or whatever.”

A song that can be found on the EP is 'Amsterdam' – the track that resonates with Jono the most.

He tells me about the story behind the song and a pretty special experience he had during his visit over there..

“It’s about a crazy sort of life-changing moment. Marcus, who sang on ‘Frivolous Life’, he wrote that – the lyrics to that - and it kind of reminded me of the experience I had when I was in Amsterdam and you know, when you go to Amsterdam, you do illegal things there, and I was doing those illegal things.. And I was in the Van Gogh museum and I was just walking around. I had just arrived, like all my bags were with me and I was just walking around looking at all these original paintings by Van Gogh and I was like, "this," you know, "this is so amazing". It was like “what am I even doing here, this is incredible!” So when Marcus finished the song 'Amsterdam' - the chorus lyrics especially - it sort of translated to me really well. It really connected straight away when I heard it. Amazing, yeah.”

Amazing indeed! Although they’ve not played an enormous amount of shows, they’ve still managed to find themselves in some memorable moments. Such as an encounter Jono had whilst playing the Great Northern Hotel in Byron Bay.

“”You know that dancing man? I forget his name, he dances at Byron, um Splendour In The Grass..” He asks me, trying as hard as he could to remember the name of the dude. “The one that was on the video for Splendour?” I asked him.

Although we never actually figured out his name, we were both on the same page.

“Yeah! With the big beard! He was a massive drug addict and now he’s just started dancing with headphones and people thought it was awesome. And now he’s dancing at fricken Splendour In The Grass, right? He’s on stage, opening for these huge acts. Anyway, I didn’t know who he was and I just saw this massive bearded man - sweaty, bearded man – run up to me and give me a really big hug. And I was like, “Who the fuck is this?” And this is when we were playing with Jinja Safari on their tour in Byron Bay. And I was like, okay, I have no idea who this person is. As soon as he pulled away from this big hug, I was like, “Ah you’re that dancing man!” And he’s like, “Yeah! Come and dance with me!” so we went out the back of the Great Northern Hotel, where we were playing, and we just started dancing together in the car park and it was raining and I was outside dancing with this big bearded man and I was like, I have no idea what I’m doing but this is amazing.”

When Jono’s not dancing with Tommy Franklin (thank you Google) I was curious to know what he enjoyed doing in his down time whilst on tour.

“I love to go on this website called IMGUR. It’s kind of like Reddit but it’s all these images from around the world. It’s the best thing ever on tour because it’s so funny and no matter what happens or what we do, I can just look at these images and then just chill out and burn out and – oh my god I sound like the biggest fucking idiot in the world [laughs]! It’s actually what I love to do on tour [laughs] just go on this website and burn out and laugh by myself. None of the band get it, it’s just me, I’m the only one who likes it [laughs]. [Sigh], I can’t believe I just admitted that [laughs].”

It’s okay Jono, everyone has their guilty pleasures!

Back to the music side of things, Jono told me what it’s like having other creative musicians wanting to remix his work.

“I love hearing a different take on the song that you’ve spent so long working on, you know? It’s really good to hear, like it’s something you wouldn’t actually do to your own song but when you hear someone else do it. It’s like, “aw man, I would have never have thought of that! That’s awesome.” And that’s also the best part about collaborating as well, which is what we do. Like you can do something that you would never actually think of doing, which is the best part about it.”

And just who have been YesYou’s favourite people to collaborate with?

“We’ve worked with so many people like they’ve all been such different processes.. When we were recording with Tim from Cub Scouts, that was really fun and Shane from DZ [Deathrays] was really, really fun too. They’ve all been awesome but I guess the one we haven’t really stopped writing with is Marcus [Azon of Jinja Safari]. For some reason we’ve just kept writing so many songs together and that’s been quite amazing cause you go from just doing one song and then it ends up being about thirty songs, you just keep writing together. It’s just an amazing connection we have.  It’s not about collaborating, you can have a really good connection with a lot of people which we do. With some people it’s been great but with Marcus it’s been a bit special you know.”

If you’re not already aware, YesYou double their members when it comes to playing shows, resulting in four members up on stage.  I asked him if this adds a great deal of energy to the life of the act.

“Yeah, that’s a good question, because we could have easily taken a DJ path and just gone up as just Gav and I, press play, do some samples and triggering, but we were like you know what, fuck that, we’re going to give an actual live experience – we want to have drums, we want to play real instruments and put heaps of time into it so when people actually see us they’re like “shit that was awesome.” They haven’t just gone and seen a DJ play which I think is really boring. We put heaps and heaps and heaps of energy into making it an actual live experience."

On that note, Jono told me what he was most excited for on their upcoming Frivolous Life Tour.

“We’ve put so much work into this live show, we’ve made it a lot more different in a way that we have heaps of sampling going on and lots of like intricate little things with like samples and laptops. We’ve tried really hard to make it different in that way, to put it up a notch. And so all this hard work we’ve put in is to show people; so I’m so excited just to get out there and play for other people. There’s a lot of stuff happening up there on stage.”

To wrap things up, I asked Jono what has been the most rewarding experience as the father of YesYou.

“I want to go back to that experience when I was driving the car and I heard the song come on the radio that time unexpectedly for the first time ever. I think nothing will ever beat that. And you know, that was the start of our career. I was a teacher before this, at a secondary school teaching drama and English and then I quit my job to do this. So that was the changing point. I was like, “you know what, I wanna do this, I’m gonna have a shot at this” [laughs]. So yeah, I’m doing it!”

Catch the duo, and their extended live band as they tour with their debut EP and new single on their Frivolous Life Tour. Judging by how excited Jono is to finally show his audience what he and Gav have so busily been working on, it’ll be completely worth your while!

FRIVOLOUS LIFE TOUR

Tuesday, 27th November

Oxford Art Factory, Sydney (Triple J's ARIA week event with The Rubens and Asta)

Thursday, 6th December

The Toff, Melbourne

Tickets available at Moshtix

Saturday, 8th December

Plus One @ Ed Castle, Adelaide

Tickets available at Moshtix

Thursday, 13th December

Cobra Kai @ Oh Hello, Brisbane

Tickets available at Moshtix

Monday, 31st December

NYE on The Harbour @ Cargo Bar and Lounge, Sydney

Details at Cargo NYE

Words by Hannah Galvin, check out her street on POSSE.COM