The Young: Tight pop rock trio keys sound to piano

Photo by Adam Nathaniel Scott

The Young are, from left, Stevie Miller, Eric Griffin and Trevor Greene.

Though local pop rock trio The Young has been scarce in terms of local shows this year, the band has been hard at work. Recording its first full-length album in Nashville, the group has spent much of the summer out of town. With the release of its debut projected for this fall, The Young will once again up its local show frequency, treating its fans to a slew of new tracks to make up for lost time.

In these financially strapped times, people are scraping by with the bare minimum, and the same seems to apply to aspiring bands as the old three-piece format is becoming more and more common. Slim rosters certainly cut down on touring expenses, but this isn't a motive for The Young, who rarely play out of town. The Brit pop-influenced band professes that for a melody-minded act, less is more. What sets The Young apart from its growing number of three-piece colleagues is its instrumentation. Straying from the standard guitar-bass-drums format of the typical trio, piano is frequently the focus of the band's hook-oriented melodies.

"We're trying to write as smart as possible," says drummer/guitarist Stevie Miller. "We aren't going to fill a track with three guitar solos if we can't pull it off live. We try to write melody-driven music, so we don't need six members on stage trying to fill things out. I think it works out well."

"We have incorporated a live piano, played by myself, when it's made available," adds vocalist/pianist/guitarist Eric Griffin. "Having a three-piece makes scheduling things and marketing much easier on our band as well as money."

Recorded at Nashville's Lake Fever Studios, The Young's new tracks reflect a new emphasis on catchiness. With enough new material to fill more than two full albums, the band selected songs that satisfy a theme of "things people think but never say."

"Really, the songs are about personal experiences we've had in the past few years with death, love and the death of people we loved as well," says Griffin of the album's subject matter. "The overall theme of the album is digging into the things that everyone thinks about but never says. We are planning on naming it 'After the Crash,' which is the title of the second track. I wrote it after we lost my brother in an accident. It will have 11 tracks, and we are hoping to release it early this fall, but do not have an exact date just yet."

"As far as our style evolving, I'd say that we have tried to find that sweet melody that sticks after you hear it," says Miller. "We want to write songs that are going to stay put in your head for a day or two until you can listen to them again."

While the band admits it likes to leave its fans hungry, The Young recognizes that the recent six-month gap in shows is a bit much. Hoping to keep itself in the minds of local showgoers, Eric Griffin has performed a handful of solo gigs, but the group intends to be less aloof the latter half of the year as live support for the new release starts up.

"The last show we played in Knoxville was at the end of January at The Square Room," Miller says. "We went into the studio a few weeks after that and have been really working on this album ever since. We try not to play too often in town just to keep things fresh and not wear out our welcome, but once our album is finished we'd like to play in town at least once every six weeks or so."

The Young is set to make its Catalyst debut Thursday night, joining a bill that also includes ShadowWax. The show starts at 10 p.m. and costs $5.

"We are really just glad to be back in Knoxville," says Miller, whose summer has largely been devoted to mixing duty in Music City. "It will be nice to say hello to our hometown and play our first show at The Catalyst. We will be playing a lot of new material as well as some older tunes that haven't been heard yet. As for new album content, you might get a little of that too, but come out to our CD release this fall to get it all."

n GET 'EM WHILE THEY'RE COLD: Wednesday night Cold Hands returns from indefinite hiatus with a Preservation Pub performance. The reunion kicks off at 8 p.m.

n THEY'VE GOT WOOD: Wooden Wand hits Pilot Light Wednesday night. The show is slated for 10 p.m., and admission is $6.

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