Interview with Pete Devine of Pete’s Rock News and Views (http://petesrocknewsandviews.com)
PD: How would you describe yourself or your band as an artist?
YD: We’ve been described as to have a deeply alluring sound that unites hard-hitting edgy blues laced with a snapping punk rock bite, but I think we’d describe ourselves as a fun listen, every song is a little different but you still know it’s YAKI DAH
PD: Can you tell us briefly about your background – i.e. where you’re from, how you came to make music, etc.
YD: 3/4 of the band were born and bred in Swansea, South Wales with our lovely drummer coming all the way from Italy. While 3 of us having a similar upbringing in Wales, the love for music is beaten into you like a drum and from what Francesco (Drums) tells us about his childhood in Italy there was a lot of music in his house while growing up. We all got into music for the same reason, just for the love of it and the chance to make others love it that little bit more too.
PD: Who and what inspires you to make music, both in terms of musical and other influences? What do you like to write about in your songs?
YD: We’ve all been inspired by so much over the years we’ve been involved in playing music, from family members to current affairs. We just write about what we’re feeling in the moment, some songs are about overcoming adversity, one of our songs is about meeting a nice young lady and we’ve even got a song about a vampire slayer. The list goes on but we do pull our inspiration from a fair few sources.
PD: What are your aspirations as an artist?
YD: We just want to share our music with the world. We would love for this to be our full time job, there isn’t anything in the world better than writing and performing music. To be able to say that we play music for a living would be insane. But even if that doesn’t happen, I’m just happy whenever a new person gets to hear what we got to say!
PD: What is the proudest moment in your music career so far?
YD: Our proudest moment in our music career thus far has got to be our first radio play that we received this week! It was crazy to hear someone else speak about our song and play it an audience.
PD: Promoting one’s music is such a challenge these days, especially with so many new artists emerging from bedrooms in the day of the home studio. How is that going?
YD: The promotion side of things are going great, from word of mouth to our Instagram and Facebook posts. It is such a huge market out there these days that you really need to be able to stick out amongst the crowd. Just the other day I went to a gig and my girlfriend was wearing one of our t-shirts and some man asked her how she knew of YAKI DAH because he had come to one of our earlier shows and said he was following us ever since.
PD: And how do you book and promote your live shows and tours? Any performances coming up?
YD: We’ve been extremely lucky in regards to booking shows as our manager is one of most highly respected promoters in our scene. That really got the ball rolling with booking shows but then as more and more people hear us and come to see us the shows do start to slowly ramp up.
PD: What do you think about downloading music online? What about streaming sites like Spotify?
YD: We think streaming platforms definitely have their place in the market, if you haven’t got the money available to buy a new album every week it really does open up a lot of people to new music. We will always still prefer Vinyl or CD’s as you can never beat the feeling of buying a new album and finally getting to play it.
PD: What song do you wish you’d written and why?
YD: From a financial stand point we wish we had written any of Mariah Carey’s Christmas songs as she is now minted off those, but from a musicianship standpoint Alter Bridge – Blackbird is a masterpiece.
PD: So, what are you working on at the moment?
YD: We’ve just finished recording a new song of ours called You, Me & Lee, Going into the studio again at the end of the month. We’re keeping very busy, we’ve got some gigs lined up in Swansea in the next few weeks!
PD: Where can we learn more about you and buy your music/merch online?
We are on Facebook, Instagram & TikTok – no merch yet, you can expect that to be coming soon. Debut single releases on all major platforms on Friday 17th February, accompanied by music video on YouTube.
Yaki Dah links:
Band/Artist location – Swansea Wales
Facebook – You Tube – Instagram –
Spotify – Deezer – ffm.to – TikTok –
Check our page for Yaki Dah
