Everything Is Art For YACHT
By: James Edwards
March 18, 2010 – Portland, United States
Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans, the dual creative force behind Portland-based electronic outfit YACHT, are quite excited. And for good reason. Their 2009 disc, See Mystery Lights, was received with almost universal praise and was heralded as a turning point—not so much for the addition of Evans to the once-solo project and the label switch to James Murphy's DFA Records, the duo says, but for the startling new "emotional and spiritual" direction they've been taken during the last two years, initiated by their much talked-about expedition to Marfa, Texas to experience the unexplained Marfa Lights. The latest development has seen the addition of a new touring component to YACHT, The Straight Gaze, consisting of Rob Kieswetter AKA Bobby Birdman, Jeffrey "Jerusalem" Brodsky, and D. Reuben Snyder.
YACHT will be at South by Southwest in Austin until March 19, and from there head out to California at the end of the month before hitting Europe in June.
"It's been a whole new experience, and more importantly a whole new way to experience people and audiences and the music itself," Bechtolt says of the tour so far.
The first time YACHT tried the set-up with The Straight Gaze live was at a "one-off dry run" at Hamilton College in Upstate New York. After that, they kicked off this new tour with a show in their hometown of Portland, Oregon.
"It came from the same desire to change that moulds and shapes the band periodically," Evans says. "Pretty much every six months we have the burning desire to totally rearrange things when we get bored with the project and remodel and reorganize until it feels final again for us. We're so involved with what we do and do it day-in-day-out, so when it starts to feel day-in-day-out, it starts to feel inauthentic."
Bechtolt notes that adding Evans to the once-solo project was one of those changes:
"It's always been a burning desire of mine to keep YACHT as an evolutionary entity that's constantly adapting."
Adds Evans: "We feel like it's really important to stay connected to the world around us and to stay vital and to stay frightened a little bit, too. I think a good performance comes out of the challenge and the fear of the vulnerability of not knowing what's going to happen or how. If you change it a lot, you constantly put yourself in a situation where you're not sure of the outcome and that allows you to perform at your highest possible level. You're forced to be much more honest with what you're doing, and for us, that was the central idea behind The Straight Gaze."
With all that YACHT has going on in conjunction with the musical aspect, stagnation would probably be the last thing to expect out of them. Jona and Claire are heavily involved in various multimedia projects utilizing film, video, and visual arts that they insist exists as a greater concept of what YACHT is rather than a separate "side" entity.
"YACHT is essentially anything we're doing together," Bechtolt says, while Evans chimes in: "YACHT is whatever we are that we're doing in front of you. If we're standing in front of you and making breakfast, that's YACHT."
"We feel like we have a responsibility to discuss and defend our ideas when we're on the road and speaking with others, as it's such a big part of the band and what motivates us that we don't want to appear as though the conceptual side of YACHT is anything like a marketing ploy or anything that purely aesthetic rather than something that's emotional and spiritual to us."
Indeed, both the artistic seriousness and humor with which Bechtolt and Evans approach YACHT—the nautical symbol and the very name of the band link up quite interestingly with the strategically-placed Scientology books in the "Psychic City (Voodoo City)" video—hasn't escaped the audience, for which "varied" seems to be a mild description.
"Every night we find at least one person who wants to take it very, very deep with us," says Bechtolt. "We don't find them, they find us. We'll be hanging out at the merch table with someone; maybe an X-Files fan or a conspiracy theorist, maybe just someone who wants to know not so much about the music or the band, but more about the ideological side of YACHT, about everything else that isn't the music. Which is great for us! That's a big reason why we try to be seen after the show, and it's very important to us to try and collaborate like that with audience members and keep contributing to the ideology and building it and growing it."
"We feel like explores of a new and untouched land," Evans says. "We have no idea what the response is going to be like from one night to the next and that's another interesting way for us to stay on our toes."
Regarding the division between being exploring the world as both a tourist and musician, for Bechtolt, it's a singular feeling.
"I've been touring since I was 13, in all kind of bands with all kinds of styles, and I've only left the country, and Oregon as well, really, with the vehicle of touring, so I don't know any other way of seeing things."
Video: "Psychic City (Voodoo City)" by YACHT
