Here's the New Young Nashvillians Record, After Only Three Decades

Before this year, the last time The Young Nashvillians were in the studio Reaganomics were in full flower, a channel called MTV was indoctrinating Middle Tennessee kids with the looks and sounds of the New Wave era, and the tallest building in town was the Life & Casualty tower. There was no Batman Building, no Nissan Stadium, no Bridgestone Arena. The Belcourt showed commercial movies. The Vanderbilt radio station … well, Vanderbilt had a radio station.

Much has changed in Music City since then, but it may be said that every iteration of New Nashville gets the Young Nashvillians it deserves. After 30 years, Nashville's favorite band of teenage indie-pop wiseguys packed The Stone Fox last December for a surprise reunion show (announced a year in advance). Next thing we knew, word came that YNs Jon Shayne, David Lefkowitz, Jerry Lefkowitz, Paul Lefkowitz, Brad Smith, Todd Wells and Norman Yamada had actually cut a brand-new four-song EP, Two Sides of the Young Nashvillians.

If you were a high-school senior in Nashville three decades ago, the cheerfully scruffy sound and brainy, off-handedly clever lyrics of "She's Not My Girlfriend" and "Name Tag Salesman" will greet you like a long-unseen pal from study hall. (The B-side features two new seasonal songs, "Me and Mrs. Claus" and "Christmas Vacation Time," a companion piece of sorts to their vintage "Vanderbilt in France.") It's available now on vinyl at Grimey's, heralded by the nifty trailer after the jump; you'll find information about various purchasing options here. 

While you're deciding which of those best fits your holiday shopping needs, Young Nashvillians David and Jerry Lefkowitz, Norman Yamada, and Jon Shayne — the Nashville investment advisor who's had a side gig as Merle Hazard, country music's preeminent "hat act with a bent for neo-classical microeconomics" — took time to answer a few questions below about the long-awaited third record and its making:

When was the last time you guys got together in a studio, and how did this differ from the old days of recording a Young Nashvillians record?

Jerry Lefkowitz: That would have been Glen Fox’s Pollyfox Studio, to which we were directed by the White Animals. They had recently recorded Ecstasy there (I think), and were raving about John Stoecker, who engineered there. It was cool to be in a real studio, but the loose comfortable feel of the Shaynes' basement was definitely lacking.

David Lefkowitz: My tangential musical contributions took on a new form this time — a phoned-in muffled cameo vocal part. In the old days I'd sing my parts and bang on assorted makeshift percussion in Jon's basement, then Paul and I would go upstairs and watch baseball on TV with Jon's dad while Jerry and Norman jovially bickered over chord choices.

Jon Shayne: There was a huge difference between the recording we made in 1982, in my parents' basement, Metropolitan Summer, and the others. We had no idea what we were doing on the first one, for the most part. Jerry knew some recording techniques, having trained at Hillsboro High School's studio, but not the rest of us, and I didn't even know enough to know that he knew what he was doing. We used a TEAC 4-track tape machine, reel-to-reel, 7 1/2 ips, which is still in my attic. No noise reduction, no compression, and a simple board. These days, that would be really cool. Back then, we did it out of stupidity and lack of budget. Also, we had no idea that our recording year would wind up on vinyl. It was just going to be a cassette tape for our friends in our minds. Fortunately, Jerry gave it to Kevin Gray of the White Animals, and Kevin put it out as vinyl on Dread Beat.

The next year, pumped that The White Animals had actually issued our stuff on vinyl, we recorded Pollyfox, probably the cheapest studio on Music Row. Made even cheaper for us by the fact that we recorded from, I think, midnight to 7 a.m. It was exhausting, even for college students.

Norman Yamada: We made the mistake of trying to record late at night because the rates were cheaper, and were therefore exhausted all the time … bad mistake. That might be the reason why our second record (The Young Nashvillians Are Here!) was so short.

JS: It is in the old CBS building, the same one that houses Owen Bradley's Quonset Hut. Same place where Patsy Cline recorded "Crazy." Were we the best act ever to record in that building? No. As I recall from the historic marker in front of it now, the Byrds, Bob Dylan, and Simon and Garfunkel made some records there, too, back in the day. The historical commission obviously ran out of space before they got to us.

NY: Needless to say, we were recording on tape back then, and the idea that we could correct our charming vocal mishaps or indeed post-process anything was close to unthinkable.

JS: We made three records that saw the light of day. The first, Metropolitan Summer, was done in my parents basement, in 1982. The second, The Young Nashvillians Are Here!, was made in 1983 at PollyFox, on Music Row. And this year, over a holiday weekend, we recorded Two Sides of The Young Nashvillians at Compass Sound Studio, also on Music Row.

In some ways, the techniques we used at Pollyfox in 1983 aren't wildly different from what we did Compass in May of this year. It's just that we used 24-track tape back in '83, whereas now, we could use an unlimited number of tracks on a computer. As a musician, though, it's not as different as you'd think. The main difference comes in the ability to edit. We can composite takes and even nudge things around, to make vocals line up better in time, and so on. Also, we are more mature now, and we have learned to get along better and plan ahead.

NY: It’s nice to have a little more power to fix things up these days, especially since only three of us now live close to Nashville — I was even able to kibitz at a mixing session via Skype from France, which is where I now live.

JS: By the way, one of the thrills of recording at Compass back in May, above and beyond the fun of getting to hang out a little with Alison Brown and Garry West, who own it, was that this was the same room where Kinky Friedman made the album Sold American. It is also where Waylon, Willie, Dr. Hook and others recorded. The ideal place for our offbeat stuff.

Did this grow out of the big reunion show you did last year at The Stone Fox?

NY: No, not at all. We always thought we shouldn’t rush our third album … What do you think?

JL: Yeah, the reunion was the first time we’d all been together since the '80s. Given that long gap, the intensity of the week re-learning, re-working, and rehearsing the old catalogue as well as writing a few new songs together for the show, it seemed like a good idea to regroup again sooner than later. So, the May session/vinyl release was proposed and came to be.

JS: I am not sure about the other guys, but Norman is who sold me on the idea of doing this new recording. I thought the concert at The Stone Fox was so much fun, I mentioned to Norman that maybe we should go ahead and put one on the calendar for two years ahead, which would have been the winter of 2016. But Norman said why not focus on a recording instead? Performances get forgotten, but recordings last. It was a good point, so we booked studio time over the Memorial Day weekend, in May, to record and expand upon some of the stuff we had worked up for the show.

What holiday records did you listen to as a kid?

JS: We had lots of records, but I do not remember any Christmas records. I do remember a Christmas song that appeared on one of my father's Tom Lehrer records. Dad had all the Tom Lehrer records, and I listened to them a lot.

NY: Lots of Baroque music; but also Christmas with the Chipmunks, Vols. 1 and 2 — which had a big influence with me when I listened to it at 16 r.p.m. — and A Partridge Family Christmas Card, of course!

JL: The Ventures' Christmas album, Herb Alpert, Leroy Anderson, Let’s All Sing Christmas Carols.

DL: Ray Conniff Singers and Leroy Anderson — more by osmosis than by choice.

Somewhat related: I distinctly recall my father refusing to sing "Rudolph" with the Nashville Symphony Chorus (he would just move his mouth without singing) because he objected to the idea that Rudolph was only treated nicely once he became "useful." It wasn't enough just to"'be."

Is there any chance of Merle Hazard and the Young Nashvillians ever collaborating on a supply-side hillbilly album?

NY: Doubtful. Most of the Young Nashvillians haven’t figured out what a Pareto distribution is, let alone how to measure the current money supply of the U.S.! We’ll leave that up to Merle to struggle with …

JL: You’ll have to ask Merle, I think his standards are a little higher than ours, but we’re here if he wants to let loose.

JS: Hah! Well, that would likely be about as successful as when Derek Smalls inflicted "Jazz Odyssey" on Spinal Tap.