Facing the Music

By WYATT KANYER
RIVERSIDE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL

Music is a visit to the soul of its creator, and people react to the sound in their own ways.

Some dance, some close their eyes to absorb the meaning of the rich lyrics, others are simply awestruck, suspended in a moment of musical revelation.

This image is the goal of 26-year-old Dave Buchanan, lead vocalist of Thee Letting Forth of Fire, a seven-piece progressive/experimental metal band from Yakima.

His ideal music scenario is what he calls “honest art.”

Good music, he says “can be super-technical metal to underground hip-hop. As long as it’s honest, it’s legit. It’s not dependent on the style.”

Members of Thee Letting Forth — as the band is commonly known — don’t simply strive to write music that pleases the crowd. They aim to write quality music, music that allows them to demonstrate their artistic passion.

Buchanan compares bands that please the crowd first to “waiting at the gates” for the next trend to pass through, waiting to pounce on what’s popular.

“If you want to be an entertainer, that’s fine, but if you want to be an artist, you have to be willing to fulfill your own desires,” he says. “Artists … do art that might not ever get published and be what the mass market wants.”

Dying represents decay, void, darkness. And it’s the easy choice for Buchanan when asked to describe Yakima’s music scene. He attributes choosing such a severe term to the fact that there seems to be almost no adult support for the youth music scene.

“Yakima is eating its youth,” he says. “There is good art here, but most people aren’t allowing it to thrive.”

The band’s drummer, 23-year-old Josh Vega, agrees: “I don’t go to shows in Yakima anymore,” he says. “There is no individuality among the bands.”

And that’s not uncommon among bands in America today. The most popular bands are the ones on the radio, the ones who are controlled by the stipulations of their contracts with big-name record labels.

Twenty-one-year-old Jourdan Gaub, guitarist for the Yakima metal/hardcore band Bright Lit City, says the creativity behind the music affects its individuality.

“Bands in Yakima create music just to create it,” he says. “They just do whatever is most popular.”

The band’s drummer, 24-year-old Timothy Javins, says it correlates to a band’s identity and drive.

Eighteen-year-old Brandon Scott, one of the three members of the techno/hardcore Yakima band Traffic! Traffic!, says he notices Yakima’s metal trend. Yakima bands, he says “seem to have a small sense of music.”

But Scott also says he notices it’s not just the lack of individuality, but also the lack of ambition that prevents bands from blossoming.

“There are talented bands in Yakima, they just have the wrong goals,” he says, referring to band members’ tendencies to get wrapped up in their own “musical world.”

Scott’s philosophy: “I’m more logical regarding music. Music should be played to have a fun time, not to please other people” like record executives and close-minded fans. And he’s not alone in noticing that opposition.

“We don’t want to get signed,” Gaub says bluntly, pointing to how bands change their sound to fit the desires of their record labels. “Bands start sounding mainstream.”
What would it take to revive the “dying” Yakima music scene that Thee Letting Forth’s Buchanan referred to?

“It’s going to take an adult with a lot of money,” says 17-year-old Jeremy Schrank, a recent West Valley High School graduate. His band, Makings of a Massacre, has a rotating cast of members — three or four, depending on whether 16-year-old Andrew Evan, a junior at La Salle High School, plays “whatever’s needed, usually tambourine” — and a transformative name. (It went from Death at a Funeral to Rise, My Beloved to simply Rise to the current Makings of a Massacre.)

Schrank and Evan, along with 17-year-old guitarist Aaron Kunkler, remember The Zone, a defunct all-ages club in downtown Yakima. The venue, once known for its intimate shows, used to be the regular place for local bands to perform. It closed last spring, and no other all-ages club has taken its place.

“The support is not there yet,” Schrank says.

“It’s going to take more advertisement and teen interest,” echoes Kunkler, also a recent West Valley grad.

“The only places (to have shows in Yakima) nowadays are churches and houses,” Scott says, “and that’s not enough for how many bands there are.”

They agree: Yakima needs a venue for teens and twenty-somethings to showcase the “honest art” Buchanan describes and to connect with people.

“Music is about connecting on an emotional level,” his bandmate Vega says. “Whether it’s a Johnny Cash CD or an unknown artist, music should connect with a listener emotionally.”