EMBRACE THE TOURIST

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RISE OF THE CRAFTSMAN

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Truthfully, though, they’re doing quite well for a scruffy, tight-knit band of early twentysomethings. Standing shoulder to shoulder, sweating in fitted jeans and lazy-day clothes, the conversation is going much differently from how it probably would have been just a year ago.

On their way down to a beachside photo shoot, crackly banter flows back and forth amid a swirl of judicious decisions about houses and world traveling. The dream for most OC-bred bands on tour is to get their name out, but it’s one grabbed by only a precious few. Yet Young the Giant have a secret weapon guiding them toward the rarified heights of the other giants of OC rock—the unlikely trump card of naiveté.

Years after hatching as a garage band in the doldrums of the OC music scene, their goal of charting their own sonic path regardless of other bands around them remains a constant. And while it sounds like a trope from a thousand band interviews, Young the Giant’s members say there’s a direct correlation between their platinum-level success and the times they made decisions based on the audacious ignorance of their youthful ambitions.

YET YOUNG THE GIANT HAVE A SECRET WEAPON GUIDING THEM TOWARD THE RARIFIED HEIGHTS OF THE GIANTS OF OC ROCK—YOUTHFUL NAIVETÉ.

WITH EACH STEP DOWN THE GRAVELLY PATH OF A SECLUDED CANYON ROAD, THEY LOOK MORE LIKE A WAYWARD, RAGTAG TRIBE THAN THE NEXT GREAT ORANGE COUNTY BAND.

YET YOUNG THE GIANT HAVE A SECRET WEAPON GUIDING THEM TOWARD THE RARIFIED HEIGHTS OF THE GIANTS OF OC ROCK—YOUTHFUL NAIVETÉ.

All of the early risks they took, leaving prestigious colleges to pursue music full-time, abandoning their previous band name at the height of their local popularity, releasing their debut indie-rock album on a well-known heavy-metal label—could’ve derailed most groups. But learning to ignore scoffs from fans or head-scratching scenesters allowed the band to succeed in spite of themselves.

“I have recordings of old phone conversations we had with our managers,” vocalist Sameer Gadhia says, his black hair tucked under a tilted Lakers cap. “Stuff like ‘You guys are gonna have to just get used to slaving it on the road, and we might not get anything for a long time—you guys might be playing to no one for years, and that’s probably the way it’s gonna be.’ And its funny: Things have worked out the way we naively thought they would. And that’s been the identity and the idea of the band for a long time.”

The boys outgrew every stage OC could throw at them, and they play their biggest headlining gig to date on Sunday: a sold-out show at the Pacific Amphitheatre at the OC Fair that’ll bring in nearly 13,000 fans.

But as most huge bands will tell you, this kind of thing rarely happens overnight. As they prepare for their homecoming gig and a sophomore follow-up to their chart-topping, eponymous debut, Young the Giant now face the age-old test of every up-and-coming band before them, how long can they make this ride last?

Inside the cramped garage of guitarist Jacob Tilley’s childhood home, he and fellow Irvine High band geek Gadhia started the Jakes in 2004, a diversion as haphazard as their name choice. It was just an acronym of all the members’ first names put together (Jacob Tilley, Adam Farmer, Kevin Massoudi, Ehson Hashemian and Sameer Gadhia). Tilley and the band carved out a small jam space amidst a jungle of surfboards, bikes and random crap to make room for their tiny amps.

Early tracks, featuring Gadhia’s emotive, trembling vocals, are a relatively similar (though obviously cruder) predecessor to their sound these days which clashed with the local music scene at that time. “We spent a long time trying to figure out what our voice was and trying to do something a little different than what was happening.”

WITH EACH STEP DOWN THE GRAVELLY PATH OF A SECLUDED CANYON ROAD, THEY LOOK MORE LIKE A WAYWARD, RAGTAG TRIBE THAN THE NEXT GREAT ORANGE COUNTY BAND.

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Though they may have stuck out by going their own way in their mid-teens, one thing the then-Jakes picked up early was gigging in the bar scene instead of sticking to backyard parties. Years before they’d be legal, the teens were forced to wait in the cold to play venues such as Detroit Bar, the Roxy and the Viper Room, allowed in only long enough to do a set before being tossed the hell out for being underage.

But such indignities paid off— Ben Adelson, a freshman music business major at USC, took an interest in the band after seeing them at an LA gig. At one point, the teenagers found themselves huddled in Adelson’s dorm room, where he’d talked to them about getting serious and being their manager—but what Cannata remembers most from that meeting was the opportunity for the band to collectively down a 12-pack of beer and half a bottle of cheap booze without getting carded or worrying about their parents. “At least I made it to the bathroom when I threw up,” Cannata, the youngest of the group, says, laughing. “Everyone else threw up all over his place.”

Despite the damage done to his dorm room, Adelson eventually got the band to agree. Under Adelson and longtime co-manager Drew Simmons, the Jakes played relentlessly in LA and Orange County. In a growing circle of local acts that included Delta Spirit and Local Natives, the Jakes were the wide-eyed youngsters everyone liked but never thought would amount to much.

Gadhia left for college at Stanford, and Tilley went to UC Santa Cruz, but the two would rejoin the band every couple of weeks to play shows and rehearse. This lineup wrote a number of new songs in 2008, including the melodic “Cough Syrup” a song the band ultimately released on their debut album as Young the Giant.

Suddenly, “Cough Syrup” became a hit after the release of their EP Shake My Hand and landed them airplay on KROQ’s Locals Only roster. They were now faced with the possibility of being a successful, national touring band. By now, Cannata, Comtois and Doostzadeh were beginning college as well; it was clear there would have to be a decision between a music career or the life of studied suburbia.

For Sameer’s father, Tushar, the idea of his son leaving a place such as Stanford was not acceptable. He remembers sitting down with the boys and their parents for a four-hour meeting to discuss what route the band would be taking. The parents relented by the end, reaching a compromise that each son would take an academic deferment.

“As parents, we were all torn” Tushar says. “I grew up in India, and where I come from, things are looked at differently when it comes to education. I also realize that when someone has a passion and a dream, you don’t stop them. Sameer singlehandedly convinced me and the rest of the parents in that room so that by the end of the meeting, I switched my opinion and said he had my blessings.”

THE JAKES WERE THE WIDE-EYED YOUNGSTERS EVERYONE LIKED BUT NEVER THOUGHT WOULD

AMOUNT TO MUCH.

OUR FIRST RECORD, WE COULD TOUR THE WORLD.

WE HAD ALL THESE HIGH HOPES OF WHAT COULD BE

WRITTEN BY NATE JACKSON FIRST APPEARED IN OC WEEKLY JULY 2012

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHN GILHOOLEY

It’s not odd for the band to get recognized anymore. But in 2009, when they were living in Newport Beach in a cramped bungalow, a far different scenario stood before them. Following the success of Shake My Hand, the band had labels courting them, the strangest of which was Roadrunner Records, built on a foundation of growling bands such as Slipknot, Nickelback and DragonForce. The Jakes didn’t know why Roadrunner would be interested, but it was offering a solid contract, unlike other, hipper labels who were promising everything but offering little.

“It was a risk,” Gadhia admits. “They came to us and said, ‘Listen, we don’t want to impede what you guys are doing. We realize our limitations, and we want to grow with you and make this a learning experience for both of us.’”

With a new record deal and a new album on the horizon came a new name: Young the Giant. “We chose that name because we were really naive and we had no idea.

Roadrunner stuck by its promise, bringing tireless taskmaster and nine-time Grammy winning producer Joe Chiccarelli who soon moved the band to the Sunset Sound studios—hallowed ground where the Doors and Led Zeppelin once recorded.

“You walk into these walls, and you feel so unprepared and so terrified,” Comtois recalls. Inside the multimillion-dollar den of sound, the newly renamed band let their sweat flow and beards grow under Chicarrelli’s brutal live-recording routine.

The tightness of the band is only a slight representation of how tight they’ve become as a group—not only united under a career, but also as people who actually like eachother. Since moving from Irvine, they’ve spent nearly every waking hour with one another for the past three years, living together, playing together, touring together. Even now, when each member could easily afford to live on his own—something most touring bands can’t wait to do—they still choose to stay together and move into yet another house for the process of recording their sophomore album, due out in 2013.

The other byproduct of their closeness, both at home and on tour, is the ability to roll with the punches, whether it’s technical difficulties, personal squabbles or being stuck in a blizzard. “That’s the kind of mindset we’ve been in,” Comtois says. “If it’s not going to work out and there’s nothing you can do, don’t worry about it, and something good can come of it.”

On the night of Aug. 28, 2011, Young the Giant sat backstage at the MTV Video Music Awards preparing to go in front of a worldwide audience for what they believed was a brief, obligatory appearance. Staring out into the Nokia Theater’s sea of bright lights, flailing arms and a glowing catwalk, the band switched on their amps. They could barely hear themselves over the frenzied roar of the crowd, and Gadhia launched himself into a trusting, crucifix-style stage dive. This cliché of rock-god antics was saved by the track, punctuated by spritely guitar and a rising chorus universal in its call for personal strength in the face of struggle: “My body tells me no, but I won’t quit, ‘cause I want more.”

It’s the kind of flash-in-the-pan pop magic the band would be wasting their time trying to duplicate—they know this. So they continue huddling inside Einziger’s wood-paneled studio with a flotsam of guitars, drums and electronic gadgets, jamming on new ideas and playing scratch demos from their three weeks in paradise. Each song flaunts shiny new ribbons of sonic influence, lush keyboard textures that float in and out, a wash of siren sounding omnichord effects, even Motown style piano, all tucked into their already recognizable sound—there are already eight new tracks. They’re growing up and have learned adding new sounds is akin to an artist painting.

“I feel that a lot of bands go in [the other] way,” Cannata says. “They have this ADD record with everything going at the same time, with no room to breathe, and over the next couple of records, they start taking stuff out. And that’s some of the times we really like in music. The times when nothing’s going on, and there’s quiet.”

Part of the appeal of this OC Fair gig, aside from selling out the same venue where the band saw acts such as Beck perform just a couple of years ago, is the opportunity to share some new material, opening another chapter of their sound in front of a hometown crowd, some that may remember them as snot-nosed teens playing to an empty room in a dive bar and handing out EPs. But it’s also a matter of actual love: The bulk of the guys’ friends and family still live in Irvine.

A few weeks ago, Gadhia remembers getting a call from his dad, asking if he’d attend his sister’s high-school-graduation party; it was on the same day the band were scheduled to play in San Francisco, more than 400 miles north. As the family gathered to celebrate his sister’s achievement, Gadhia magically showed up, on time no less, after boarding a private jet half an hour after jumping offstage.

Naturally, his bandmates were there with him. They split the cost of the crazy, last-minute ride back to OC. Like any pack of wayward tribesmen, they make it a point to return home together.

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