the hum / By Bob Doran

Embracing Ridiculousness

Yogoman Burning Band, plus the psychedelic Future Is Unwritten and Dutch bluegrass

(March 19, 2009)  When Jordan “Yogoman” Rain called last week, he was on campus at Fairhaven College, part of Western Wash. U. in Bellingham, where he was finishing up paperwork to graduate with an interdisciplinary degree in music and business. Diploma in hand, he’s now ready to become a full-time musician, which is what he’s been doing already as leader of Yogoman Burning Band.

Jordan started out 11 years ago as a reggae DJ, host of a regular Wednesday night session not unlike what we have locally at the Jambalaya. Coming out of the punk scene, he took the name Yogoman from a cartoon character created by a high school skateboarder friend. “Yogoman was like our mascot, something we’d tag around our school,” he recalled. “He was kind of a symbol of embracing ridiculousness and wild abandon, not caring about what anyone thought of us, just having a good time. I took that spirit and brought it into my DJing, encouraging people to be a bit ridiculous and get out and dance. The Northwest has that sort of overly self-conscious thing going on — people are scared to move around.”

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His mission was to break down that repression with a one-drop beat. Eventually he went from spinning records to singing. “I reached a point where I wanted to write my own material and kind of go on my own journey. I started writing my own songs and got involved with a group called the Alamo Social Club, which was a doo-wop rock group. I went from drumming to singing there, then started writing songs for the group.”

Combining R&B with reggae and rock steady, he added another dimension as he developed a sound for his own band. Rock steady, a Jamaican style that came between ska and reggae, was especially important to the Burning Band sound. He says, “I can dance to rock steady all night long and never get sick of it, whereas the roots gets a little too heavy and preachy and dancehall gets too monotonous and repetitive.”

The songs he wrote touch on the trouble with Seattle (he thinks it sucks), on themes of freedom and, of course, on dancing. “My whole modus operandi with this music and the band was not to become a rock star; it was to connect with people and to create a comfortable environment where people can cut loose and have a good time. One of the things I gained from being part of the do-it-yourself punk community was there was no separation between the players and the audience. That relationship is crucial. There’s no us and them, it’s a unity vibe — that’s what I bring.”

Ready to climb aboard the Y-Burning Band bus? YBB is coming to Humboldt for two shows: Saturday they’re at the Jambalaya as part of the weekly mission:Critical jamdown. Sunday they’re at Six Rivers Brewery. Come prepared to dance.

Friday, March 20 marks the Vernal Equinox. That’s right, winter will be over (not that it’ll stop the rain). The season change means it’s time for a few more chapters in The Future Is Unwritten, the psyche rock series created by Humboldt Free Radio’s pirate deejays. As one nameless deejay/organizer explained, the festival is intended to draw a wide range of bands in the garage/psyche genre.

“It’s a very loose definition of ‘psyche’,” he said. “The word psychedelic can describe so much: fuzzy guitar sounds, garage rock, all kind of spacey music fit in. It’s more a mood than a sound. We basically invited bands we like.” And sometimes with surprising results: Samsara Blues Experiment, a psyche/blues/metal outfit from Berlin, Germany took TFIU up on a gig offer made via MySpace and built an American tour around it. “It was cool that we were able to recruit an international band,” said Deejay-X. “And Nudity is also playing that night (Sunday) and they’ve been great every time they’ve been here.”

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