Phil Yates and the Affiliates Interview

bookies new and used books is a supporter of wxav 88.3 fm and wxav.com located at 10324 southwestern avenue in chicago bookies offers a selection of new and used books with orders available for books not currently in stock for more information visit their website at bookiesbookstores.com this is a wxav 773 sounds podcast introducing you to the best local bands in the chicagoland area hey this is peter creighton with 773 sounds here on wxav 88.3 fm chicago and we're really lucky because right now we have on the line with us phil yates from the great local band phil yates and the affiliates phil how you doing today i'm doing great peter it's great to be here we're so happy they're able to spend some of your time with us so i want to take you all the way back to the beginning how did you discover music how did you realize that you were musical and that you wanted to play and compose um that's a great question i i think it was in grade school my uh my school had an opportunity when she hit fourth grade to be in the school band so this was in springfield illinois uh and i ended up picking up trumpets um i think uh my parents were spinning some uh old uh chicago records and stuff like that and so the horns are very prominent in those songs so i was i gravitated toward that so i played trumpet from like fourth through eighth grade and the local schools would all get together march every year in the saint patrick's day parade so you can imagine a bunch of like 10 and 12 year olds marching through the streets with the valves freezing in the sleeves uh so fun fun times but um i felt like i was really good at trumpets and my high school didn't have band so i ended up uh switching it to guitar and bass when i was like 14 15 years old and i think in terms of trying to come up with composing my own songs writing my own songs i think there was a small part of me that thought i wasn't a very good guitarist or good bassist in terms of learning other people's songs you know that i um especially when i was first starting out i'm like well you know i can't play this song but maybe i could try my own thing in my own direction um and i love the fact that that it was school that that got you and that pulled you so it's such an important thing that the arts remain in our public school because it literally gave you you know a musical career a musical passion i i absolutely agree with that and um you know like neither one of my parents are musically inclined at all um i think all these years later they're still kind of confused and amused and maybe bemused too if we want to keep up with the rhyming scheme but you know i keep on keeping on with it that's awesome so how did the affiliates start how did you go about creating your band that that's a great question so when i was um so i did the solo singer song or everything for quite a few years so um it was i didn't play i think my first open mic uh slash performance until i was like 22 23 and that was when i was uh going to grad school in burlington vermont and uh i had some friends who pushed me to do it and um so it'd be more traditional folky type of uh coffee houses and some open mics that way and it wasn't until i'd say a good 10 years of doing that that i finally thought oh i need i'm tired of being sort of the acoustic opener at a punk show or something like that i want to you know i want to play more loudly than what i do the acoustic so um i had the opportunity to record a song for a movie uh the movie is called ninjas versus zombies and oh that's amazing yeah there's a there's a great direct indie director out of richmond virginia justin timpani um put it together it's part one of the trilogy so spoilers ninjas won the first movie i had some friends back me up on that to do like a full band performance and i thought this is the direction i need to go um i was in la at the time i moved back to vermont and put together a backing band and um my bandmates knew that i was such a huge fan of elvis costello and the attractions and the imposter so they thought since i'm writing all the songs it should be affiliates and the something and uh my first guitarist uh kevin stevens said oh the affiliates it just flowed nicely with the name and so that that's the origin of the name and um it took uh it took our local uh music editor of the free weekly uh seen us out and about for like three years until he ran into me at the bar and said oh i finally get the name i'm like okay so some people get it right away and others it takes time but when i moved back to chicago i wanted i wanted to take the name with me and uh my former bandmates were fine with that um so i didn't have to like pull the i've heard nick cave say something like whoever plays with him are the bad seeds you know i don't want to like pull that nick cave card on them but so they were they were great about that and um yeah so it took me about i'd say 10 months or so to put together uh the chicago version of the affiliates but um i i do think you know they interpret some of the older songs in a slightly different way than uh what the vermont crew did but um i think i think we attack the songs in a different manner and with that i really like you know we tend to i think hit those songs harder if that makes sense yeah no that makes complete sense and i gotta say just like the the sound of the band you're optimistic you're you're indie poppy like when i first heard you you definitely hear that elvis costello sound but there's a little bit of rem you know there's a little bit of that like really 90s pop sensibility with it you know how do you when you're going to write like your songs then do you kind of take inspiration from like the music that you already enjoy or do you kind of let it organically you know just come out with the band and how you're like ebbing and flowing i think it's it's a cop out for me to say a little bit of both i mean it's funny that you mentioned rem because i always list um sort of my holy trinity like what are my top three acts and it's always the beatles i was to sell and rem so that is definitely in my uh songwriting dna and you know going to high school and college in the 90s you know the 90s music is definitely my wheelhouse so things like the lemon heads the replacements guided by voices um you know wilco elliott smith that's all in there you know in that uh and so even if i'm not trying to pay homage to those acts when writing i think it's just seeped in me that like i take the acoustic guitar that's why i normally do when i write this i write everything on the acoustic guitar i'll record on like a voice memo and send it to the guys and then hopefully by the time the next practice comes along everyone's heard it and then we can like start playing and then it sort of goes through that affiliates filter a bit and you know ends up how it is but uh i think by nature of me writing on everything on the acoustic they all initially have sort of that same strumming same type of feel and um yeah sort of rem lemon's heavy in that regard so i gotta ask you you mentioned the beatles and i'm a diehard beatles fan too uh what's your album uh magical mystery tour is a good one yeah so um i i probably go so far and say that's my favorite record by anybody of all time i know purists would say well you know that the uk version was an ep originally and the american version is sort of a frankenstein if you will but um my first access is my father's original copy of the american version so that's the one i grew up with it's a full record that's my favorite record yeah that's a great one i uh when i got into them that was the second cd and my sister bought that for me because the first one i got was pepper and i was furious because it didn't have penny lane or strawberry fields on it right so she went out to best buy and she found it and that thing was on repeat months it's it's a great record and it's weird too because you got like on the walrus is on it baby you're a rich man blue jay way fool on the hill that's a really and it's weird saying beatles have an underrated record that's an underrated beatles album i think so and also you know as a kid i loved the book so yeah so i would just flip through the pages of that too and then i saw the movie maybe at too young of an age uh where um or maybe not i i think i was watching some money python pretty early on things like local pbs station and so um the the film i think matched my budding interest in the absurd absurd python but um yeah also like i think another it's funny though like when i go listen to beatles now even though that's my favorite record the one i tend to pull out the most to listen to at home is beatles for sale and i think that is definitely when we're talking about under the radar beatles records that that's one for me um well speaking of albums you put out a great record back in uh 2022 called uh thin thread um do you got any new albums and works that are coming out so the new record i'm finished writing so we have i've written i like having 10 songs for a record it's a nice nice round number easy to split on vinyl five on each side um so i have the 10 songs written um we've gone through some fits and starts trying to record um in summer 2023 after doing a tour our guitarist on that record left to focus on the solo career and his family stuff so we were sort of spinning the week spinning our wheels whether or not they continue to serve like a power tree or find a fourth and so some initial recording came in fits and starts um december we finally found a full-time lead guitarist and he's learning the new songs and the old songs so um i believe this month we're getting ready to record in earnest uh to knock them out um so i think we've done the backing tracks for three of the songs so far maybe four of the songs if i'm being optimistic um but i'm hoping you know by the end of fall early winter we have tracking finished and then it can get into the mixing mastering phase so ideally i was hoping 2025 you know but it looks like depending which label we you know release it on uh probably early 2026 will be the completed record but you know that's subject to change once we get into the studio my bassist built this wonderful pandemic studio in his basement and awesome that's where we recorded a thin thread and i think it's um kind of a blessing than a curse because um what's great about is we're not on the clock uh you know i always think of going to studios like being in a taxi cab you know as you're you can kind of see the the money that you're blowing there and and so we don't have that here which is great but then also i think there's the danger of not knowing when to let a song go say like okay you can keep on tinkering and tinkering and tinkering and never say okay time to cut bait it's finished so um i'm hoping we don't run into that with this new record during the recording process but from my end of things it's written it's now songs are ready to go through that affiliates filter to see what the final product is that's super exciting i'm here with phil yates from phil yates and the affiliates um you know people want to go and check you guys out you're on instagram and you're on facebook and bandcamp right correct correct just search phil yates and the affiliates yeah so uh the link on bandcamp is phil yates.bandcamp.com and that has all the affiliates records so um our last our last two records were with uh detroit's uh future man records this tiny uh label that focuses on power pop bands uh it's one person who runs it keith klinger schmidt he's a great musician in his own right uh performs in a band called the legal matters fantastic stuff and then um no need to beg is on there too uh that was a record we released on an italian label called uh almost halloween time records uh again uh one person runs that one luigi faligario out of barri italy and he's interesting because he does he hand draws each record jacket or cassette oh wow so you order it and uh you get a hand-drawn record jacket or cassette jacket and each one's different so but if you just want the digital download you can get my link on bandcamp so yeah we have uh we have everything there and um on instagram uh i think there's affiliates on the affiliates instagram page i didn't create that one so i don't have access to it uh so if anyone like really wants to follow uh the band and uh some of my solo stuff outside the band um it's at philip a yates on instagram just a single l there in philip but um so yeah i've done some things recently uh outside the affiliates so um that italian label put out a tribute to b thousand the guy by voices record oh yeah yeah and so i was able to contribute a cover of uh awful bliss the tobin sprout song oh nice yeah and so that came out about a month or two ago and i basically recorded it on ukulele electric guitar and percussion on a suitcase so i did that in my basement bathroom so i tried to keep that lo-fi aesthetic as much as possible so yeah yeah so that was that was a fun song to do sounds like it so we're a college radio station from your perspective you know what do you see the role college radio has not only the music scene but more specifically in the local music scene i think for a lot of local artists um college radio is that lifeline you know i think it's it's always a dream for bands to hear their songs on the radio and it's always a thrill to hear it and but i think traditionally college radio stations and you know various low-powered uh fm and am stations but specifically college radio um doesn't follow any rules you know there's it's a good college radio station just plays whatever they want at all hours of the day and so that gives stations much more freedom to test the waters and get a little weird get a little creative by you know playing stuff and no one else will and i think tapping into the local the local music scene regardless of it's chicago or other college radio stations i've been fortunate to do things with like columbia south carolina and burlington vermont that's that free form is it sounds generic to say freeing but yeah that that's where bands get that foothold and then could maybe expose themselves to more listeners that way um i mean i've already mentioned you know going to high school and college all throughout the 90s you know um a lot of bands that i listened to got their exposure from college radio you know the um rms of the world the uh you know any band in the our band can be your life book have a lot of can thank college radio for helping them bubble up to the masses yeah yeah it's funny because my students will always kind of ask me because you know i'm a child of the 90s too and they always ask me what was it like what was it like and i always tell them like it was okay to be weird like you could reach mainstream masses and i always use the example of primus primus would never make it if they're breaking out as a band today it'd be too hard for them but you have primus when they come out late 80s early 90s you have college radio um you're in chicago jv tv you know a lot of other public access music programming and they can bubble to the top and all of a sudden they're in bill and ted's bogus journey then they're on mtv and all this stuff happens and for me that's the thing i always love so much about college radio is there's no fear of embracing the unknown or the weird exactly like i grew i grew up downstate in springfield and um we had zero college radio there um so if you were trying in high school to discover new bands you'd have sort of 120 minutes and headbangers ball and stuff like that on mtv but occasionally late at night if you did your antennas on your radio in your room just right you could pick up the college station at the university of illinois in urbana champaign okay and so occasionally late at night through the static you can hear some nice uh weird stuff that you wouldn't hear on you know your mainstream radio in springfield and that was that was great sort of magical moments through the static like oh what is that song and then you know trying to track it down the next day yeah that's the fun of it i'm with uh phil yates from phil yates and the affiliates um i got one final question for you phil and it's kind of another broad general one for you what makes a perfect pop song oh that's great um i think with with us um so dabbling in sort of the power pop universe um i think it has to have a hook you know and not not necessarily a lyrical hook i think it has to have that musical hook and it could be guitar driven it could be synth driven it could be percussion driven but it's got to have that certain something that just grabs you and that worms its way into your ear so that you want to hear it again and then on top of it um then the lyrics and the vocal melody can do whatever it wants which is weird for me because i like when i write i do lyrics first and of course music on top of it so um it pains me to say that it's not the lyric that grabs you first you know yeah i think it's gotta it's gotta have gotta have that thing that just grabs you now i don't know what would be what would be a perfect song like that to just grab you i mean i i don't know i mean we've gushed about the beatles already and so i mean that that'd be the blueprint but um i don't know i mean it could be things like i don't know if it's cliche now to say it but you know september girls big start there that's that's the epitome of here here's a here's a well-crafted cookie song you know those chinese guitars at the very beginning you're like oh what's coming next and then it snaps into place doesn't overstay it's welcome and you're like okay great and i i think that something like that's perfect i agree it's always that melody for me it just it hooks me just right away and everything so phil thank you so much for spending some time with us again if you want to check out phil uh they're on bandcamp research phil yates and the affiliates thank you so much oh thank you peter and uh everyone keep listening to this radio station thank you for listening to this wxav 773 sounds podcast for more information on 773 sounds please visit our website wxav.com