Finding Inspiration in Connection: A Conversation with Yoke Lore

Adrian Galvin, the mastermind behind the fearlessly existential, banjo-fueled indie act Yoke Lore, is full of good advice. Before he played “Beige” at his sold-out show at DC’s Union Stage last Saturday night, he urged the crowd to be extremely mindful of the ways we speak to one another, both good and bad, and to get creative in the process. Reflecting on how we say “I love you” so often that it’s kind of lost all meaning, he offered up alternative suggestions: notably, what color does a person make you feel?

To me, this didn’t just serve as a thesis for the song, but for Galvin’s entire musical approach. Through extreme intentionality and awareness of human connection Yoke Lore’s lush, layered music offers a new way of looking at the big stuff: love, fear, hope. Before the show, I sat down with Galvin and learned more about the all-encompassing approach he takes to making music, how he gets through tour, and what motivates him to take musical and personal risks. Read our conversation below, or listen to Yoke Lore’s new A/B single, “Bravado / Body Parts,” now.

To start, I wanted to ask you about the name of the project. If you look at your artist bio on Spotify, it says your music “tells the story of how we are bound.” I wanted you to speak to that, do you think that’s an accurate representation of what you’re trying to do? 

So, Yoke Lore is an idea that I’d been playing with as a yoga teacher. I used to teach yoga, and yoga is the science of binding. I began to think that the ways I had been exploring the body and talking about the body could be applied more universally. In yoga, when you make a point of contact, it gives you a point of stability from which you can then either go further or go somewhere you haven’t been or take a risk that you wouldn’t have taken before, physically. I started to want to apply these concepts to other areas of my life. 

I believe these ideas about people as much as I do about the body, that when you make a connection, you establish a point of solidity which then allows you to learn something about yourself and the world that you wouldn’t have known by yourself. You’re able to take more personal and emotional risks, because you have the safety of a point of reference with someone else that you can learn to count on. 

Does Yoke Lore ever feel like a risk that you’re taking?

Hell yeah, every single night. It’s one I’m ready and willing to take because of the points of contact I’ve created in my life — the people around me and the concepts that I deal with. It’s a risk to write like that, because it leaves me pretty vulnerable. And there’s the risk of just stepping out in front of 500 strangers and baring it all...hoping they can receive it and hoping that I can still give it every time.

How have past musical projects and the connections you’ve made through those led you to the point where you’re ready? 

Everything I’ve done has been a necessary part of the ladder that I’m climbing. Growing up, in high school bands and stuff I learned how to be in a band, what it meant to make music with other people. I really found a love in doing it. In college, I explored more. I was in a bunch of different bands, learned how to write with others — like really, truly collaborate — and how to use the things that I wasn’t good at to navigate a dynamic between other people. 

And I learned how to tour. Being the drummer in a band that was touring and playing a bunch of shows, I learned what that life was like, and I learned that I wanted to do it my own way. Starting Yoke Lore, I really had the ability to make it exactly what I wanted it to be because I’d had so many other experiences.

As a listener, it seems like doing it your own way involves pulling from quite a few different genres and really transforming your music. Was that an intentional decision? 

I want to make this project as holistic as possible. I strive to include as many different perspectives — not just of the sonics of it all, but the points of view — I view it all as a multi-cam show. You have one scene, but you have multiple cameras coming from different points to really create dimension so you actually think you’re watching a reality. But anyway, I believe that my art has to have all these different perspectives in order to create a real situation in a song or EP. I believe that me using a really old instrument that has a specific history to it and mixing it with a much more recent creation like synthesizers or vocoders, and then throwing in very physical percussion and swooping choral style vocals allows me to create a real, holistic situation. 

I love that philosophy. So what music do you connect to personally? 

All of it, mostly. I grew up on classic rock with my parents, listening to a lot of Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, Carole King and Joni Mitchell. My favorite artist ever is Nas — I think he’s above and beyond. There’s this really awesome banjo player named Roscoe Holcomb who I’m really into. He’s from the early 1900s, he has an amazing, really intense, grating voice that’s really haunting and disarming. But I like a lot of beautiful music too. I spent a lot of time in church and synagogue growing up so I have a lot of hymnals running through me. I feel like I need it all and can use it all. Anything out there, I can figure out how to use.

Absolutely. I’m a poet and I feel very much the same way. I tend to read a lot of people working in the same form as me. But there’s always something to learn from poets working in different modes.

I think that’s the question: not so much what inspires you, but how much you can take inspiration from. It’s a skill to be able to learn from everyone and be inspired by every situation.

Yes. In high school, I complained about reading Beowulf, and my mom was like, “it’s not about if you like it, but why is it important enough to teach? What can you learn?” And that’s the approach I take.

I loved Beowulf. If you just wanted to talk about Beowulf, we could do that. 

I mean yeah, the interview’s over. 

It’s the classic proto-Dracula. It’s the classic monster story that teaches you in the end more about yourself than about the monster.

See, my tenth-grade English teacher should have just said that. To pivot, how has this tour been?

It’s been really good. We’ve been headlining bigger shows than we’ve ever headlined before, and played bigger rooms than we’ve ever played and we’re selling them all out. We just had a couple of days off, and we got ourselves a really nice AirBnb in Connecticut on this lake, had a couple of days to just chill. I love tour and I love playing shows every night, but constant movement is always a bit rough.

How do you deal with the constant movement and disorientation that accompanies touring? 

You just have to enter into a different headspace. It’s not so much how you stay okay, you just have to know that you’re not going to be. It’s accepting a different set of circumstantial normalcies and being okay with not having your normal routines and your pieces of comfort that you’re used to and your points of safety that you usually have to return to.

That is practical advice. You’re also releasing new music soon. What was the process of putting that out into the world?

I don’t really write on tour, but after I tour I usually take a couple of days to go somewhere by myself to get stuff out of me. I’m excited about these two. (Ed. Note: “Bravado / Body Parts” is out now. Listen to the tracks here.) 

Kind of going off of that, you’ve been releasing music since 2016, but you still haven’t released a full album. Is there intention behind that? 

I’m not really that concerned. The industry is obsessed with albums, but I don’t think consumers are, at all. People want me to do it so I can be on some end of year album list but I just don’t think people are listening to twelve tracks straight anymore. There’s no point in just trying to hold onto something that’s not worth holding onto. This is a consumer culture. I want to speak a language that people can understand, and make music that people can digest easily. I want to make it palatable for people. You know, it’s challenging enough musically and lyrically and esoterically. I don’t need to also challenge them with twelve songs straight.

Yeah, that would be a lot of existential feelings to digest all at once.

Right? Like chill, dude.

Three quick questions to wrap up: what’s the last song you played on Spotify? 

I hope it’s not something terrible! Oh, this isn’t bad, it’s “Lost in the Dream” by the War on Drugs.

What was the first concert you ever went to? 

Spice Girls.

That is beyond excellent. Did you do anything to celebrate Halloween?

Me and Garen watched… I think we hit five Halloween films. Maybe six.

Stream Yoke Lore’s new tracks, “Bravado / Body Parts,” now.