Interview: Yam Haus go deep on band's history, discuss new music
by Diane
July 17, 2024
Minnesota's energetic pop-rock outfit Yam Haus have returned after a hiatus aimed at rejuvenation and growth. Along with a standout performance at Grand Old Day in St. Paul this past June, they’re making waves with the uptempo riff-rocker "First To Try." Selected as The Local Show’s Artist of the Month for July, Yam Haus spoke with host Diane ahead of their upcoming performance at Basilica Block Party, and teased exciting new music on the horizon.
Since starting in 2017, singer/guitarist Lars Pruitt, guitarist Zack Beinlich, and drummer Jake Felstow have garnered an impressive array of accomplishments, including network TV appearances, millions of Spotify streams, headlining national tours, securing major label record deals, and more. We candidly discussed the challenges, motivations, and experiences of forging an ambitious career path in the music industry.
Listen to The Local Show at 7 p.m. on July 28 to hear the premier of Yam Haus’ upcoming single, “Color You In”.
Give me a little bit of something on where the band is now, and a bit of progression of we're the band continues to drive from. Because I know y'all's sound has elements of indie, pop, and rock ‘n’ roll. And I just feel you are these portals of sound that are just making really great accessible music here in the Twin Cities.
Lars Pruitt: I like portals of sound. That's the name that might be the new bio.
I was gonna say, I don't know if that's ever come out of my mouth before.
LP: Yeah, you should hang on to that for your project. Like, yo, we are a portal of sound. You talked about the roads we take to get here. I took Highway 36 West. I live in Stillwater. But yeah, I think for us, we started a band in 2017. And we've been on this odyssey of figuring out who we are. And I think right now in this exact moment sitting here with you, we're fresh off of the longest hiatus we've taken since we started. We took probably a solid five- to six-month hiatus. And we wrote during that time, we did some recording. But we very much got off the road. And I call it the proverbial promotion treadmill we stepped away from for the first time since we started, which felt really good. And right as we did that, right before that, we'd gone through a bunch of changes. Went through a lineup change for the first time. Our good buddy walked away from the band, Seth. We're still very good friends with him. And that was beautiful and hard. And all the classic band clichés, you know, getting married and having kids and stuff. Life comes at you fast.
And in that time, it was really funny. Because all these things on the industry side ... we just got our first big label deal. And so all this stuff is happening at once. We went on two national tours last year on our own for the first time, headline. And it went well, went bad, went everything in between, and got our asses kicked. And I think there's the gauntlet of paying your dues a little bit on the road dog thing. And coming off of that, with how much we'd been through and not giving ourselves a ton of time to process, it felt good to spend two months doing nothing, nothing. And then another two, three months picking up our instruments and saying how does this feel? And what do we have to say? What do I have to say? What's going on? And we sort of stepped away and we're just dipping our toes back into the proverbial treadmill. And that's why we're here with you.
Tell me about "First to Try," the latest single.
LP: It's a little bit of a song about our breakup with my homie Seth … I've been into writing a lot of cliché love songs that are actually not about romantic partnerships, and more just about all the relationships we have with various things, like our career, our friends, and our goals. And so I just think about how much in life we fail at loving people well, and then ask for other people, or the same people, to pick it back up again, and give it another go at loving me. And that applies to the band. So that's sort of where it came from, for me, lyrically.
Zack Beinlich: Yeah, we had this list of songs that we went to producer Tony Hoffer. We love Tony. He did stuff with M83 and Beck … And we sent him a list of songs. And this was one that we were really passionate about, but no one else really liked. And we're like, “I don't think that this song is gonna do anything.” And then Tony was like, “I love this song.” And so we're like, “Well, let's cut it and see how it goes.” And at the end of the process, we were like, “Dangit. Lars was right again. Tony was right again.” It wasn't a song that I thought we were gonna do. And I didn't put a lot of weight into. And then it happened, and it's probably the most fun I have playing a song on stage. And it's been one of our better-performing songs. Yeah, it's one of those things. Everyone tells you what the hit is, and how to find a hit. And then it's always the song that you think sucks. It turns out to be the song that people like ... just gotta keep trying, I guess.
Jake Felstow: It's also just fun to see the creative process do its thing, because, like Zack said — he and I were like, “I don't know if it's my favorite song.” And yeah, it's just cool to see as you add layers to it in the studio, as it kind of takes a life of its own. You start to realize, “Oh, this thing is really cool.” And there's something beautiful here that we kind of were able to find. And Tony was able to help us find. Yeah, it's just fun to see it. I just love that process.
And y'all grew up in Hudson, [Wisconsin]. Were y'all classmates?
LP: Zach and I grew up together. We played sports together first. And we were these confused jocks.
ZB: And we did not like each other.
LP: We didn't like each other. That's true.
No way. There was a competitive rivalry?
ZB: Yeah, I was a senior on the hockey team and he was a sophomore. And there was always just this little bit of tension where I was like, “This kid's a punk.”
LP: We also sucked so bad.
[laughs]
LP: Which made everything harder.
JF: Lars was pretty good.
ZB: Lars was really good.
LP: Well, but our team sucked. I sucked.
ZB: I mean, I waited my whole life to be a senior on the hockey team. And then we were bad. And then Lars came in and was like, "Come on, guys. We're all good."
LP: I was the young, cocky —
ZB: I'm gonna punch this kid.
LP: I was like, "We should be winning these games." And Zack is like, "Shut the hell up!"
ZB: Yeah, we grew up [in Hudson], but we always came to Minnesota for everything. Mall of America, shows, and sports games ... I basically grew up in Minnesota.
LP: And I was born in Minneapolis. And I did live in Uptown with my parents till I was two. But yeah, we just ended up settling in just across the river there. And then Jake, I'll let him explain. But he's actually from Detroit. So I don't even know what he's doing here right now.
JF: Yeah. I don't know. How did I get to MPR?
[laughs]
JF: Yeah, I grew up in Detroit, suburbs of the city. Loved music. And when I was kind of coming to the tail end of high school, I just knew I wanted to do more with it. And at the time, it didn't feel like Detroit was the place to stick around. I'm sure there was great music in Detroit.
LP: Detroit Rock City?
JF: Motown came and went.
LP: You can only be in so many Kiss cover bands before you gotta move.
Or Eminem, you know.
LP: Yeah, those are the two paths in Detroit. You gotta be Kiss or Eminem.
JF: Or Kid Rock. Yeah, it's real tough. Anyway, I ended up coming to a college in Minnesota. And I was studying under some great musicians. I mean, there are some incredible musicians here in Minnesota. So I was really inspired and loved it. I was playing drums in the city. And yeah, it was right after I graduated. I happened to meet these guys, and heard they were starting a band. There was a lot of buzz within friend groups kind of near us.
LP: I think for me, I was always sort of the annoying friend with Zack and my buddy Seth, back in the day of like, “What if we did a band?”
Yeah, no kidding. You were jocks but also you're musicians?
LP: It's sort of the High School Musical situation. It's sort of like, a "get your head in the game" type of situation. Yeah, I was kind of soaring, flying —
ZB: We'd be playing hockey and you'd come out and you'd start doing snaps.
LP: I come from a very non-jock family. My family is very bohemian and musical. And my parents actually met in Minneapolis. My dad's from Atlanta. My mom's from Golden Valley here in Minneapolis. My mom was the sound engineer for a production, I think, at the Orpheum in the ‘80s called Snow Leopard. And my dad was the lead. And my dad was in musicals all through his 20s and was in professional theater. And my mom was a classically trained piano player and also did audio engineering school. And she had her own band. And so for me, my form of rebellion was doing sports.
[laughs]
LP: And so it was very always in the back of my head, viewing music and the arts were something cool and inspiring for me. But it took me a second to make it my own. It was always kind of forced on me. Sports usually are for a lot of kids. To me, sports was like, "This is my thing! No one plays sports but me!" So it just took a minute, but I think by the time high school was wrapping up, I was realizing, unfortunately, I am just not good enough at sports to do anything with this. As much as I'd like to believe otherwise, which is why Zach and I hated each other probably. I thought I was so sick.
And then it was that awkward "Are we really going to do this?" And meeting Jake was very timely because he had a lot of similar notions growing up. He really wanted to do the band thing. That was always this back pocket dream of going for it. I remember just thinking, “The only thing I don't want to do at age 22 or something, is I don't want to wake up at 40 and be like, ‘What if I had tried a music career? Why didn't I do that?’" So, we're still on the odyssey here, because we have definitely not succeeded. But we're out here. We haven't died yet. And we love music. And it's been really fun to do it with friends. And we're definitely — I would be proud to say we're a band. It's not a low-key solo project that I'm just getting some hired guns for. And that's been the best and sometimes worst part about it is that we're just a little mini tribe of humans doing it, which is really fun.
I mean, the levels of success all vary within different bands, like y'all have done some incredible things.
LP: And yes, we are very grateful.
Including the American Song Contest. I wanna year y'all talk about that a little bit.
LP: Dun dun dun! Next question! [laughs] Just kidding.
Well, I read in American Songwriter, or something, how it felt almost like this make-or-break thing?
LP: Yeah, I don't even blame the show. I really do respect the people that put it on. It was such a valiant effort. And I think it was a really great idea. And I think if they had the opportunity to do it again, they would have tightened up a few things that could have made it a lot better. It was they couldn't figure out if it was a discovery show or a clash-of-the-old-titans show. And that was the most frustrating part on the show side. It was this band you've never heard of Yam Haus versus Michael Bolton! And it's not just a Simon Cowell being like, “I'm gonna just advance the band based on how I feel.” It was based on the populace voting. So even if 80% of the people that saw for the first time thought we were great and voted for us, Michael Bolton just has an army of moms on Facebook that were just ready to vote for him.
ZB: He was really sweet though. He was on our episode. We went back for the voting episode. And he — what do you say to you? He said, "Ready to go?" which is our song. "I really like that song." We're like, "Michael Bolton! Thanks, Man!"
LP: I didn't know much about him before that. And then I went on this odyssey after – of all the funny stuff he's done. He's in so many Lonely Island cameos, and Andy Samberg [skits]. Tim Robinson. He's so funny. He's such a character.
It was just a weird experience. It's very LA. And LA, I have a weird relationship with mentally just from where we sit with our career choice. It's just a lot of that “pick me” energy. That is fair. And there's a level to that that's required, I think, to succeed in music for sure. Just a dash of narcissism is definitely required to be an artist, for sure. And I respect that. And I have it myself.
I would agree, yeah.
LP: But then I just feel LA just takes it so far that it sort of sucks the joy out of it a little bit. And that's just as much my fault or my problem as anybody else's. I think there's definitely people that go to LA and have a really free awesome experience. And it's really enjoyable for them. But I dunno, it just sort of geeks us out, of what are we doing here? It was weird.
JF: The hardest mindset thing that we talked about a lot. It's almost like music — when you're comparing in a sports kind of way. You're pitting each other up against each other, artists versus artists, yet it's so subjective. It is an unhealthy mindset to be in for a long amount of time. And it was weeks on end that we were thinking like, "Oh, how can we compete? How can we compare?" And it just is so hard to measure up because there's not like a winner or loser per se like there is in a game of sports. You know, sports ball.
LP: It's hard to combine sports ball with art, but sometimes it happens.
ZB: That's why we love coming back to Minnesota. The scene here feels so – every time we have a show I see 10 artists in the crowd that are just there to support and there to hang out. And it feels like a lot of other cities we go to don't have that loving musical community … I feel very lucky that we're still here and still want to call this home because it's just so welcoming.
What can you tell us about some of the new music that y'all are releasing?
LP: I am so excited. We have one more single that's gonna just live on its [own], similar to "First to Try," before we sort of formally start to get granular on the album idea. And we're in the midst of working with a really amazing record label called Big Loud Rock. And they're going to help us figure out how to roll it out and how that's all going to work. And frankly that's their department. So I'm down to figure out how to do it. But I'm grateful that they're letting us, in the next month or two, cut a body of work.
I'll tell you more about it once it's official official, but we have a concept that we really like. And there's a batch of songs around that concept that feel really strong, and exciting, and honest, and inspiring to us that I hope people will like. And it's definitely a continued evolving departure, musically, for us. I read a quote on Pinterest: “It takes a long time to sound like yourself.” I'm just starting to scrape the surface of that since we started. The whole time I've just been parroting what I see around me. And that's a very normal, healthy place to start as an artist, is taking what you hear and making it your own. For the first time, with this body of stuff, I just feel like it's the most like me- or us-sounding. And we'll see how that all pans out … We've spent a lot of time writing and selecting a shortlist of the tunes for the next body of work. ... which will be nice. We hate being in the single treadmill of like, “Is this song cool? Is this song cool?”
Are y'all writing and playing constantly?
LP: Yeah, the last six months — there's, like, 70-plus songs in our label batch.
Wow!
LP: And I had a three-hour meeting with the head of our label, where we listened to the top 23. And walking out of that ... the one song that's gonna hopefully be the cornerstone concept of the next album, we'll see, was his favorite one. And I was like, “Damn, I thought I was gonna fight for that.” I thought I was gonna have to sneak that on track seven. But no, he was like, “I think that could be one of the singles.” ... So we'll see fingers crossed. I think that's one big learning curve for us in the last year or two is like, it feels like we've been in a little more of the big leagues of the music biz with people that are really accomplished, really talented. And I'm really grateful that we've been paired with some people in that world. They are very empowering to us. I haven't gotten the "If you guys don't have a hit on TikTok in the next year, we're gonna drop you." They're definitely in it for the long haul.
Yeah, there is that, which I'm unfamiliar with.
LP: It's toxic.
But I'm hearing about it.
LP: It's very LA. And this deal we're in, and where we're at as a band just feels very holistic – thinking marathon, not sprint … And I hope we can just continue to make bodies of work that we really like, and step back when we need to.
JF: In a way, it almost feels like this is the most patient we've ever had to be in our time as a band. You don't hear a lot about this part of the journey. You hear a lot about the starting point of a band, or maybe when they take off, or have some form of having a hit or widespread success. And this stage is, we're so grateful for it, but it definitely has been challenging. There've been some hard moments of wishing we were playing more. Or we wish we could just write a song —
LP: We wish we could pay our rent.
JF: Or put out a song as quickly as we would hope. And I'm sure a lot of artists feel that way. But even more so it felt dramatized. Like, we really have to push the brakes, and just kind of be patient, and wait for the right timing. And all that to say we're excited that it seems that that cliff will come soon.
LP: It's been a little dark in the valley.
I feel you. Being a musician isn't a glamorous life sometimes.
ZB: But don't hear us wrong. We're so privileged to be even in this spot where we have music industry executives that believe in us for us, and are willing to help us, and pay for recording costs. There's nothing lost on us – we are in such a great position. And everybody has to face the doldrums of daily life and paying your bills and all that. So we're just grateful to still have a dog in the fight to do music professionally.
Explain to me, "You Are Me."
LP: Nice.
[Those three words are] obviously in your title/name. And I think there's a depth to that. It's almost like a philosophical statement. What does that mean to you?
LP: I've ran from it at times because it feels corny. But like any universal truth, once you get past the corniest, there's a lot of really good stuff in there. And that's why it stayed. We even considered changing our name when Seth left. We went through a very open-handed like, "What's next?" in the last year. And so the name has been tested and tortured. And I'm proud to say it's still standing, which is great. But yeah, “You Are Me” is definitely just something that, I think, if everybody tried to embody, even just a little better, I do think the world would be in a much better place. …
We're in a pretty toxic cycle of history. It seems we're forgetting a lot of things. And there's been a lot of lessons that our grandparents and their grandparents experienced that we're sort of forgetting. And there's a lot of toxic, almost fascist-level movements happening. And a lot of tribalism. “Us vs. them”-ing happening. And some of it's an outpouring of injustice that's really valid. And some of it's just toxic schoolyard bullsh*t that leads to a lot of the very things we're trying to avoid when it comes to socio-economic stuff and political stuff. And I think, the more we can treat anybody we come across, whether they're a Trump supporter or a queer radical wanting to change this broken system.
The more we can actually have open discourse, and hopefully, treat people the way we'd like to be treated, as corny and elementary as that sounds, I do think it would help. Doesn't mean you don't have hard conversations, and you don't hold people accountable, and you don't hopefully work and organize to change and support communities. But I think for me, I've just been consistently reminded of this cheesy name we started when we were six years younger. And I've come around to appreciate it again. And I don't know, it's just one of those things that it found us. It's a name that found us for sure. We were living in a house called the Yam Haus. And it's kind of a joke, and we couldn't find a name and it found us. So I don't know, just being kind is a very simple way to boil it down. But yeah, universal principle.
JF: Zach, I don't know, this is your moment to maybe profess your love for The Current, because you've been listening for a long time.
ZB: I do love The Current a lot. I was at a drive-in movie in [2005]. And my older brother's buddy was like, "You gotta check this radio station out. It's no commercials." And I was like, "What do you mean?" And I listen to it all the time. Music discovery is a huge thing that — sometimes, when I get on streaming platforms, it's too much. I can't handle it. So I just want someone to curate the music for me. And The Current … trust these people to give me good music. I was genuinely nervous for today.
Oh, well, y'all did great. It's so wonderful to have you.
Everyone: Thank you.
