Aaron Yealdhall’s outlets for his creativity
Severna Park musician Skribe is also known for graphic art work
Aaron Yealdhall is a quiet guy expressing himself via graphic arts and music.
Skribe is his musical outlet, whether in his usual solo performances or as a duo or quintet. With two CDs under Skribe’s belt, including the most recent, “Postcards,”
Yealdhall keeps on making it happen.
He calls it “garage folk” with a nod to to the early influences of John Prine, Steve Earle, Tom Waits and more mixed with later no frills acts like Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine and the Deftones.
His graphic work, at times filling the needs of a commercial job, and at others as another vehicle to express his inner reaction to the world around us, came into particular focus last summer.
He was sitting in his home studio in Severna Park when news broke about the murders of five staffers at The Capital Gazette offices in Annapolis.
“I am sure I was like a lot of people.
Frozen. Stunned,” he told The Capital a few days after. “You want to do something, but you’re not sure what you should do, could do. What you should feel.”
His inspired rush to do something, to express his jumbled feelings, yielded a design using the phrase “Press On”, a two-edged statement about moving forward and keeping a newspaper’s printing presses rolling.
He and others in the Annapolis art community rallied to put the design on T-shirts with the image. Sales of the shirts generated over $35,000 for a fund benefiting victims of the June 28 incident and their families.
And the phrase, #PressOn, became a rallying cry among journalists internationally.
Spotlight caught up with Yealdhall at his studio.
Spotlight: You are doing art work and playing music. Are the impulses different for each? Yealdhall: I feel like the inspiration is a universal feeling that makes you want to create something. You want to turn it into something. Sometimes music is the only way you can express it.
Music is, for me, the more abstract side of things. For things you don’t understand or can’t put your fingers on it comes out as music.
As a visual artist I am not very abstract, it’s fine line, expressing an idea or point.With visual art more of my style is hard lines and wrapping everything into a finite image, more to the point.
But music is more abstract, you don’t have to put a fine bow on it.
I will never understand music in its entirety. Music is more an open feeling.
Spotlight: How did you come to do both? Yeadlhall: At some point probably starting to take my graphic side of things more seriously. If I am going to do it for a living I thought, ’OK, how do I do this as a service? What’s the practical use?’ My Dad was a commercial artist, so it is sort of ingrained in me. I saw him do things like logos. He simplified things. The information comes across like a punch line.
Dad did work for Esskay (a local meat producer). He did this one logo, I remember him working on it at our house in Severna Park. Next thing you know they put it up in right field at the stadium (Camden Yards). He had no idea.
Iused to brag on that when I was a kid.
We’d be playing Xbox or some baseball right there in the video game.
We used to get free video games. Now that was cool. I said, ‘Hey I am going to do this for a living.’ I like cartoons. ’Ren and Stimpy’ was my favorite. It looks just fun and innocent, but it was also a little scary, weird, sick. Like Holy crap, I don’t believe they let kids watch this.
Spotlight: How do you work, what’s your process? Yealdhall: I start sketching in pencil, the ink in the lines, sharp. And I like to use paint markers to lay the colors in. Then I scan it into photoshop, clean it up. I don’t like to add much, mostly I will take things out.
Spotlight: It seems Skribe takes various forms. How does that work? Yealdhall: Skribe does take a few forms.
Mostly solo, sometimes a quartet, even a duo on occasion, all depends on the gig.
Sometimes if we are playing a wedding and the drums don’t fit, we’ll do upright bass, banjo guitar and fiddle giving it a bluegrass, folksy feel. We try to be flexible.
But I try to play as much as I can solo, keeps me on my toes.
Isaw this guy busking in New Orleans, he had a kick drum, a suitcase, a kazoo. So I do a bit of the same.
It makes me come up with more stuff, more than if it was just me on guitar.
The music, it is all self taught. But I think I have learned the most about music playing with other musicians. I have been lucky to play with some really good people.”
Then Yealdhall picked up what he calls a hamjo—a three stringed, electric instrument made out of a ham can.
”It was made by a friend of mine in Frederick. He was bit by a crocodile and told he couldn’t play guitar, so he said, ’I’ll just make them.’ Yealdhall sat for a moment to tune in the hamjo, beside his amp sat five antique gas cans - “future guitars,” he said.
He tuned it up and plugged into his1950s premier amp. Soon he was in the groove. pfurgurson@capgaznews.com
Skribe is his musical outlet, whether in his usual solo performances or as a duo or quintet. With two CDs under Skribe’s belt, including the most recent, “Postcards,”
Yealdhall keeps on making it happen.
He calls it “garage folk” with a nod to to the early influences of John Prine, Steve Earle, Tom Waits and more mixed with later no frills acts like Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine and the Deftones.
His graphic work, at times filling the needs of a commercial job, and at others as another vehicle to express his inner reaction to the world around us, came into particular focus last summer.
He was sitting in his home studio in Severna Park when news broke about the murders of five staffers at The Capital Gazette offices in Annapolis.
“I am sure I was like a lot of people.
Frozen. Stunned,” he told The Capital a few days after. “You want to do something, but you’re not sure what you should do, could do. What you should feel.”
His inspired rush to do something, to express his jumbled feelings, yielded a design using the phrase “Press On”, a two-edged statement about moving forward and keeping a newspaper’s printing presses rolling.
He and others in the Annapolis art community rallied to put the design on T-shirts with the image. Sales of the shirts generated over $35,000 for a fund benefiting victims of the June 28 incident and their families.
And the phrase, #PressOn, became a rallying cry among journalists internationally.
Spotlight caught up with Yealdhall at his studio.
Spotlight: You are doing art work and playing music. Are the impulses different for each? Yealdhall: I feel like the inspiration is a universal feeling that makes you want to create something. You want to turn it into something. Sometimes music is the only way you can express it.
Music is, for me, the more abstract side of things. For things you don’t understand or can’t put your fingers on it comes out as music.
As a visual artist I am not very abstract, it’s fine line, expressing an idea or point.With visual art more of my style is hard lines and wrapping everything into a finite image, more to the point.
But music is more abstract, you don’t have to put a fine bow on it.
I will never understand music in its entirety. Music is more an open feeling.
Spotlight: How did you come to do both? Yeadlhall: At some point probably starting to take my graphic side of things more seriously. If I am going to do it for a living I thought, ’OK, how do I do this as a service? What’s the practical use?’ My Dad was a commercial artist, so it is sort of ingrained in me. I saw him do things like logos. He simplified things. The information comes across like a punch line.
Dad did work for Esskay (a local meat producer). He did this one logo, I remember him working on it at our house in Severna Park. Next thing you know they put it up in right field at the stadium (Camden Yards). He had no idea.
Iused to brag on that when I was a kid.
We’d be playing Xbox or some baseball right there in the video game.
We used to get free video games. Now that was cool. I said, ‘Hey I am going to do this for a living.’ I like cartoons. ’Ren and Stimpy’ was my favorite. It looks just fun and innocent, but it was also a little scary, weird, sick. Like Holy crap, I don’t believe they let kids watch this.
Spotlight: How do you work, what’s your process? Yealdhall: I start sketching in pencil, the ink in the lines, sharp. And I like to use paint markers to lay the colors in. Then I scan it into photoshop, clean it up. I don’t like to add much, mostly I will take things out.
Spotlight: It seems Skribe takes various forms. How does that work? Yealdhall: Skribe does take a few forms.
Mostly solo, sometimes a quartet, even a duo on occasion, all depends on the gig.
Sometimes if we are playing a wedding and the drums don’t fit, we’ll do upright bass, banjo guitar and fiddle giving it a bluegrass, folksy feel. We try to be flexible.
But I try to play as much as I can solo, keeps me on my toes.
Isaw this guy busking in New Orleans, he had a kick drum, a suitcase, a kazoo. So I do a bit of the same.
It makes me come up with more stuff, more than if it was just me on guitar.
The music, it is all self taught. But I think I have learned the most about music playing with other musicians. I have been lucky to play with some really good people.”
Then Yealdhall picked up what he calls a hamjo—a three stringed, electric instrument made out of a ham can.
”It was made by a friend of mine in Frederick. He was bit by a crocodile and told he couldn’t play guitar, so he said, ’I’ll just make them.’ Yealdhall sat for a moment to tune in the hamjo, beside his amp sat five antique gas cans - “future guitars,” he said.
He tuned it up and plugged into his1950s premier amp. Soon he was in the groove. pfurgurson@capgaznews.com
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