Photos and Article By Cielo de la Paz – MORE PHOTOS HERE
I consider myself someone that has watched a ton of music videos. Rarely am I moved. Sure, I am entertained, but rarely am I moved. After watching Yoke Lore’s “Good Pain” music video, I sat in my office chair stunned and washed over with a huge wave of, I don’t know, sadness and regret? I immediately wanted to talk to Adrian Galvin, the creator of the band Yoke Lore. I wanted to know what his intended message was for that video. Did he mean to send out the message that I thought he did?
I was glad that I would be meeting him at The Chapel later that evening. As we sat backstage in the green room, I tried not to start with a barrage of questions about his music video and instead chose to awkwardly start with, “So, ever been to San Francisco?” Ha. After getting through the superficial banter, we quickly moved on to his propensity for contradictions. I brought up the fact that he said he is inspired by both Nas and Leonard Cohen. He grinned, as if proud He added on a series of other contradictions that have influenced his life: he was raised both Catholic and Jewish. He is also both the energetic drummer and the soft and gentle vocalist. And their hit song’s title? “Good Pain.” Enough said.
Adrian believes that to produce great music, you need to explore and learn about not just music, but absolutely everything outside of music. He clearly has that down. He spent 8 months living in a monastery in India. His major in college was “Encountering Self-Divinity, Paths and Liberation Theology, and German Social Theory”, his own invention. He is an illustrator, a drummer, a yoga teacher, and a dancer. I believe this is what makes his music so interesting.
So I finally warmed up our conversation enough to be able to ask him “What message were you trying to convey with your music video?” I found out that his producer/director of the music video had wanted to incorporate virtual reality into it. Adrian, being very good at knowing who he is, felt that a pure VR type of video was not his vibe. So he reworked the storyline to deliver the powerful message that it did. And what was that message? “You have to look at your past, and process it, in order to know where you are in the present.” I was impressed by such wisdom coming from someone not even in their 30s.
We ended our interview and I asked to take his photo outside, in front of The Chapel marquee. “You know your show is sold out right?” I told him. “It is?” he asked. He slowly smiled, as if marking a fairly important milestone in his mind. We left the green room, walked our way through the back door to avoid the crowd, and out onto the street, in front of the marquee. He paused and looked up at the brightly lit sign that said: “SOLD OUT”.
A few minutes later, Yoke Lore’s show began. True to his contradictory nature, his set list was a mix of gentle vocals and wild energetic banjo strumming. When “Good Pain” came up, I wasn’t surprised that the crowd was belting out the song along with him. How could they not? It’s a song that you find echoing in your mind as you fall asleep. Like I did that night and several nights after.
http://www.yokelore.com/
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Vandala Magazine 