In the guitar, Yvette Young found a refuge from the pressures of the world of classical music competition, and from parental expectations.
“I went from a situation where I was afraid of one of my bandmates, and did what I needed to do to free myself from what I felt to be an emotionally, and thus creatively draining, situation,” reveals Young, who parted ways with Covet’s members during the recording sessions for the new album, Catharsis, and had the bass parts re-done by noted touring and session bassist Jon Button.
So, Catharsis reflects the close of an old, painful chapter and the beginning of a new one. “The process was arduous, and decisions were difficult and super daunting, but I’m ultimately so proud I got through. I learned so much about recording and chasing a sound, and I learned about advocating for myself and fighting for what I want,” says Young. “I think it’s an important thing for a lot of creatives to remember: Art must not come at the expense of overall well-being and safety, and the only sustainable way to create is in an environment that you feel free. That’s what this music is to me—my freedom.”
covet - firebird (official video)
Making the album proved to be therapeutic. “I feel like, on Catharsis, some of the songs are a bit darker and it was definitely me having an outlet for some stuff that was painful, but a lot of it is uplifting and very happy and dance-y,” Young says. “Because music is transformative, and if you’re ever feeling in a bad mood, if you write music that sounds really happy, it can uplift you. Writing music that sounds like how you wish you felt can be really helpful sometimes.”
“I’ve always been really fascinated with ‘can you make someone feel something or convince them of something without even saying a word?’”
A public search for new band members would have drawn too much unnecessary attention and Yvette would have had to spend too much time vetting every prospect. Instead, she found her new bandmates via her good friend, composer and pianist Summer Swee-Singh, who recruited bassist Brandon Dove and drummer Jessica Burdeaux. Burdeaux was Summer’s bandmate at the time, but had an opening in her schedule. “Summer is an angel. She knows me. She knows that I’m an overly nice person sometimes. I tend to let people boss me around and then I give up,” explains Young. “She said, ‘You need people that are just as caring and just as hardworking.’”
Dove and Burdeaux’s work ethic was immediately on full display as they learned Covet’s ultra-technical music in just two weeks. To much online gossip and drama, the revamped Covet lineup was revealed on social media in October 2022. But even as the wheels were set in motion, Young’s resiliency was put to another series of tests. Just four days before the first show of their appropriately named Rebirth tour, their van—a 2007 Ford E-350 that Young paid for out of pocket—was stolen. Covet then raised money on GoFundMe to rent a van and get the tour going. But then that rental van was broken into, with the windows smashed and gear stolen. Even with all of these mishaps, the first tour of the new Covet lineup was successful.
Emotional Nerd Rock
The songs on Catharsis, with its mix of melancholy and majesty, are the most accurate representation of where Young’s current interests are. “I want to write something that’s catchy. I want people to be able to hum it—like for your average listener who doesn’t understand guitar, who doesn’t listen to music. I want them to be able to enter this music and still get something from it,” she says. “But I don’t want to leave guitar players bored, so I’m going to put some flashiness and odd-time stuff in there, but trick people into dancing to it. That’s really fun for me.”
The current Covet lineup, touring behind the new album, Catharsis, is drummer Jessica Burdeaux, Yvette Young, and bassist Brandon Dove.
Photo by Eli Chavez
On their Facebook page Covet describes themselves as “Emotional Nerd Rock” and Catharsis songs like “Firebird” and “Lovespell,” the album closer that features saxophonist Alex Rose from Minus the Bear, deceptively sneak geeky polyrhythms and metric mind games into the context of feel-good, catchy music. In “Lovespell,” Young explains, “There’s a part where I’m in five, drums are in four, and bass is in three. And you’re dancing to it, and you can’t tell. I play it on tour now, and that’s the song that people dance to the hardest. They don’t even notice it. I feel like I’m in a good place. I have a cool opportunity where I’m writing catchy stuff that moms and dads like and can listen to, but I’m also trying to open people’s minds up to more progressive elements of music that you wouldn’t necessarily find on the radio.”
“Interlude,” Catharsis’ piano-driven track with a nostalgic/melancholic vibe,is similar in mood to some of Young’s previously released solo piano music. “It’s so funny, because my voice on piano is a little bit different than my voice on guitar,” she explains. “When I write, it feels like I’m not even there anymore. Like it feels that who I am doesn’t matter. I just hear stuff and it comes out. I know that sounds crazy, but I feel like I’m just channeling emotions and trying to find ways to express certain abstract feelings without having to use lyrics. That’s the value of instrumental music. I’ve always been really fascinated with ‘Can you make someone feel something or convince them of something without even saying a word?’ Just by the tension of the music, the timbre, the pedals that you use, the way that you phrase something, the key changes, all of that. It’s really fun to try to do that. The piano music and Covet’s music is all storytelling. It’s me trying to transport people to a fantasy place.”
Music on Her Own Terms
Young is among today’s most important young guitarists. Steve Vai named her as one of the five guitarists taking the instrument to the next level and recruited her to teach at his Vai Academy last summer. Ibanez has graced the virtuoso with two signature models: the YY10 and the newly released YY20. So, Young is a now a bona fide guitar hero, but the road to stardom was not easy.
Since the beginning, Young has had a conflicted relationship with music. Born in San Jose, California, to parents from Beijing, China, Young started piano at 4 and was immediately thrown into the fire. Her father, a piano salesman/technician, composed music, and her cousins played competitive piano at a very high level. Little Yvette was next in line—a prodigy in the making. She had to practice four hours a day and played high stakes competitions from age 9 to 18.
Young’s painting for the cover of her new album is a perfect reflection of its sense of uplift and emergence from adversity.
“The classical world was pushed really hard on me. I don’t know if it was my thing when I was younger,’’ recalls Young, who, in her youth, was obligated to practice fragments of 30-minute concertos over and over again until they were memorized and mastered. She also started violin at 7 and later played in her high school orchestra and the California Youth Symphony, where she was concertmaster. While Young delighted audiences with her flawless performances, deep down she hated the competitive aspect of music. It was not fun and Young’s internalized perfection in her musical and academic pursuits (having to be a straight-A student), combined with the intense pressure of the elite classical world’s cutthroat environment, led to anorexia nervosa. This eating disorder saw Young in and out of the hospital during a four-year span in her teens. The condition became so severe that Young would sporadically flatline in her sleep. Miraculously, she survived.
This dark period marked the beginning of Young’s new journey. While in the hospital, she picked up the guitar. It wasn’t a deliberate move; she wasn’t seeking another instrument to conquer and compete with. Rather, the 6-string was therapeutic and empowering. It also helped reignite her passion for music. “One cool thing about guitar, for me, is it was really important that it was an instrument I picked for myself. I don’t let anyone else dictate how I approach it,” says Young, “Music saved my life. I don’t think I’d be here if not for guitar. Guitar helped pull me out of my eating disorder. It made it so I felt like I had a voice, when I don’t feel like I’m the most outspoken person. The most exciting part of it all is that now I have the opportunity to share with people how wonderful of an outlet music, in particular guitar, can be. And how amazing it can be for building up your confidence. I’ve been through a lot. I’ll always be writing music. It’s kind of like my comfort but it’s also my way of expressing joy.”
“Art must not come at the expense of overall well-being and safety, and the only sustainable way to create is in an environment that you feel free.”
Young learned some chords by watching videos, and while she understood music theory, that didn’t factor at all into how she approached the instrument. Young explains: “Honestly, because of my classical upbringing, I feel like I have a good ear. I would listen to songs and—I didn’t even really read tabs at that point—I would just figure them out meticulously, note-by-note, and then teach it to myself.” The first song Young learned was Creed’s wistful ballad “One Last Breath” (referred to as “Six Feet From the Edge”), and she listened to Radiohead, and folk artists like Cat Stevens and Sufjan Stevens. While she first learned everything in standard tuning, Midwest emo bands like American Football and math-rock bands like Toe were major influences and led her to the world of alternate tunings, which she has built her style around ever since.
In 2013, while working as an art teacher, Young found fame accidentally after posting guitar videos on Facebook. One of her students created an Instagram page for her, and suddenly she became very famous. “I didn’t expect to have one of my videos go viral. The one video that went viral was this tapping fast thing, and I got contacted by a bunch of companies to do videos for them,” recalls Young. “At the time, I was a teacher, I was working in a school, and music was just this fun side thing—this outlet I get to do after I work my 9 to 5, to feel better. I had no idea that these videos would pop off like that, so it was exciting.” In 2014, Young formed Covet, and the trio has since been at the forefront of the math-rock scene.
Yvette Young’s Gear
Young’s new bandmates, Jessica Burdeaux and Brandon Dove, learned Covet’s ultra-technical music in just two weeks.
Photo by Sarah Phung
Guitars
- Ibanez YY10
- Ibanez YY20
Amps
- Vox AC30
- Vox AC10
- Roland JC-40
- Yamaha THR10
Strings
- D'Addario NYXL (.011-.056)
Effects
- DigiTech Whammy Ricochet
- Walrus Audio Julianna
- Caroline Guitar Company Somersault
- Boss DD-3 Digital Delay
- MXR Carbon Copy Deluxe
- Earthquaker Devices Avalanche Run
- Earthquaker Devices The Warden
- Dirge Electronics Slowly Melting
- Moreland Magnetics 707 Fuzz
- DigiTech FreqOut
- Hologram Electronics Microcosm
- ZVEX Mastotron
- Ground Control Audio Noodles
- Boss OC-5 Octave
- Meris Mercury 7
- Electronic Audio Experiments Longsword
- Strymon Zuma
A 6-Stringed Piano
Young is part of a new generation of virtuoso guitarists that have created a new language far removed from the vocabulary of legacy, boomer guitar heroes. You won’t hear Hendrix, Slash, or even Yngwie-inspired licks. The omission of these influences wasn’t deliberate, however. “I just wasn’t exposed to it. It’s like when you grow up more sheltered. I didn’t really consume any pop culture, to be honest. I wasn’t even allowed to listen to rock rock when I was younger because my parents were more traditional, and they were like, ‘classical music is the way.’ I’m a late bloomer, man. I just discovered rock like, last week,’” she jokes. “I started out listening to indie music/post rock. Post rock really appealed to me because it was a lot like classical music in the way that it progresses. It’s very dynamic and it’s emotional. For me, music has always been less about virtuosity and more about its emotional appeal.”
Still, there’s no doubting Young’s virtuosic abilities. Her ultra-technical style is inspired by the piano’s polyphonic capabilities. She views the lower strings as the left-hand accompaniment register of a piano and will use it to play implied bass parts and harmonies. The upper strings of the guitar are used as the right-hand melodic side of the piano. Both hands may cross over into the other register if the music calls for it. Pianistic effects are achieved by her use of uncommon tunings, fingerstyle moves, and right-hand tapping.
“Now I have the opportunity to share with people how wonderful of an outlet music, in particular guitar, can be.”
While tapping is a big part of Young’s style, its modern-era pioneer, the late Eddie Van Halen, wasn’t even in the equation when Young started doing it. Rather, she picked up the technique from listening to bands like TTNG and other acts in the obscure art/indie scene that she grew up with. She’s recently gotten into Van Halen’s playing, though, and has also started incorporating more conventional guitar-isms, like bending.
“I don’t really know how it happened. One day I was just like ‘Instead of this slide up one fret, what if I bent to that?’ I was like, ‘Ooh, I love the way this sounds with delay.’ It sounds really cool. I checked out a bit of Van Halen, too. I wanted something that had a lot of energy. I was running and I was listening to that, and was like, ‘Okay, yeah, like the way Eddie plays is really cool.’ I think subconsciously I probably just digested all of that and spat it out in the form of my own writing.”
Another part of her distinctive sound is muting. “I’m muting with my right-hand palm and with my left hand,” she explains. “My right hand will mute the lower strings and I’ll sometimes use the pointer finger on my left hand to stop the high strings from ringing out. I’m also doing whammy bar stuff. This is new to me. I feel like I had a little bit of a breakthrough and I downgraded to .011s now because I need to be able to bend. I was using .012s before and I had a dark era where I was at .013s.”
“In order to stay passionate at what I do, to not have it feel like how I felt in the classical world—doing things for other people or trying to impress other people—I really have to be my own fortress and I have to really stay in tune with what excites me.”
So, Young’s new Ibanez YY10 and YY20 models come with .011s. “First I did the YY10, Strat style, then YY20 Tele style, orange finish,” she says, explaining their genesis. “There’s no Wilkinson tremolo system. There may or may not be a new one in the works, but I’m really excited because [if it happens] it’s gonna be a higher end one.”
These signature guitars are tuned (low to high) F–A–C–G–B–E when they are shipped. “I wanted to just kind of challenge people to try it,” she relates. “I’ve been talking to a bunch of students and they’re like, ‘I never tried open tunings because I’ve always been scared of tuning it to something different.’ I was like, ‘Well what if it just came that way?’”
Young’s own musical voice is ever evolving and, despite making a name for herself as a virtuoso, the self-described “people pleaser” resists pressure to cater to any expectations. “As I matured in my craft, I was like, ‘I feel like this isn’t even what I’m excited about,’” she says. “I’m sitting here live, playing these technical songs, sweating bullets, not feeling the music, just really worried ’cause everyone has their phone out and all eyes are on me, and I better not mess up this run or else it’s gonna end up on YouTube. I hated that. In order to stay passionate at what I do, to not have it feel like how I felt in the classical world—doing things for other people or trying to impress other people—I really have to be my own fortress and I have to really stay in tune with what excites me. The direction I go in becomes really clear when I focus on what gives me goosebumps when I’m playing, what makes me jump up and down ’cause I’m so excited about it.”
YouTube It
Yvette Young wasn’t raised on legacy guitar heroes and, as a result, her approach is fresh and highly personal. “I truly discovered it like an outsider. I was working on guitar and was like, ‘I guess you could play it like this.’ That definitely contributed to me sounding the way I sound,” says Young. “But I also consumed and listened to a wide variety of music. I was trying to take all the things I find exciting about different genres and just blend them into one sound.”
“Shibuya” sees Young—tuned to D–A–D–F#–A–E (low to high) with a capo on the 2nd fret—using her unique approach with plucks, taps, slaps, and slides to create a mesmerizing musical experience.
When Yasmin Williams plays her Timberline harp guitar, she uses her fretting hand to strike the low-resonating strings on the upper neck. They're tuned to open G.
It also raises a question: How does one go from bashing out Nirvana songs to becoming one of the fastest-rising stars in fingerstyle guitar?
"I wanted to branch off and write my own music," Williams says. "But I felt like the electric guitar was a bit limiting, especially with the percussive stuff I wanted to do. And once I figured out how to do fingerstyle, it was a lot easier for me to write my own tunes. I think the first song I learned was 'Blackbird,'by the Beatles. That pushed fingerstyle into my brain. I fell in love with it.
"But I've always written instrumental music, simply because that's what I'm comfortable with. Even when I listen to music in general, I don't necessarily care about the lyrics most of the time. It's always the instrumentation and arrangements that get me to listen to a track."
Sunshowers
Since the day in May 2018 that Unwind, her debut album, dropped, Williams's acoustic instrumental wizardry and tapestry of influences has been on full display, with her impeccable technique and unique take on fretboard tapping demanding attention.
Inhibited by the bulk of some acoustic-guitar bodies, Williams decided to approach tapping by laying her 6-string horizontally on her lap. This is much more comfortable for her, and offers better access to the whole fretboard, laying it out more like a piano than a guitar. It's just one way Williams expands her musical dialect with a non-traditional approach. It wasn't long after the release of Unwind that Williams started to gain a reputation as an innovator. And, as innovators often do, she already had her eye on something new.
"For Unwind, there wasn't much of a theme," she says. "It was more like a collection of songs I'd written from late high school to the end of college. Whereas Urban Driftwood is definitely about something. It has a theme and an arc to it." In the album's liner notes, Williams explains that all of the songs were written during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that the lockdown and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of George Floyd's killing is reflected in the unfolding of its sequence. She also sought to craft a sonic landscape that communicates a feeling of movement and the natural beauty that persists in urban spaces.
"It is a solo guitar, so the tone has to be on point. I can't have a muddy bass or a buzzing treble."
"It's my first project that shows where I'm from and pays homage to my roots," she continues. "And it was an extremely different process than how I recorded my first album. Since I had already released a 'guitar' album, I didn't want to release another one. I wanted to show my composition skills and show I've grown as a songwriter, composer, guitarist, and musician. That was a huge goal."
She aced it. Urban Driftwood is audibly a step forward—not only in the excellence and emotional depth of its playing, but for her inclusion of new sounds and musical colors. Partly, Williams accomplished this by including guest musicians. Amadou Kouyate, for example, adds djembe to the title track and"Adrift." The latter also features cellist Taryn Wood, and she and Williams create an adventurous topography of melodies that repeatedly interlock and veer apart.
"'Adrift' was me sharpening my composition tools and writing something with counterpoint in mind. It's almost like a fugue. I wrote that song to see if I could write a duet for guitar and another instrument. I thought it came out great and was a good fit with the theme of the album, so I included it."
To give her complete access to the fretboard while tapping, Williams has created her own lap-style approach to playing acoustic. Here, she's weaving a melody on her custom Skytop.
Photo by Umbar Kassa
Like "Adrift," much of Williams' music is carefully calculated. Her debut album was planned to precision before she entered the studio. But Urban Driftwood producer/engineer Jeff Gruber wanted Williams to take a different approach—to open her mind to new influences and new recording techniques. "Jeff got me to open up, in terms of not having to have everything finished before I get into the studio," Williams says. "Being able to experiment while recording was not something I was open to at all. I'm definitely a perfectionist. I want everything already figured out and finished. He showed me that it's okay if it's not. Great things will come out of experimentation, trial and error, and trying different techniques.
"Like, usually I use a looper pedal. And that's what I wanted to do on 'After the Storm.' I thought overdubbing and slicing things was cheating. I don't know why I thought that. It made things way harder than they needed to be. But that's how I wanted to do things. But there are four guitar parts in 'After the Storm.' Thankfully Jeff convinced me that it would sound better if I recorded each guitar part separately."
Put on Urban Driftwood with a good set of headphones and you'll understand what Gruber was after. The broad aural spectrum gives the impression you're sitting in the middle of an acoustic guitar orchestra. But now Williams has to reproduce that onstage. "Unfortunately, I didn't think about that before going into the studio," she says, laughing. "It's extremely hard, especially since my songs are already so technical. But I don't want the live performance to affect the studio recording. Thankfully, I can play most of the songs on the album myself now. Like 'Swift Breeze'—I figured out a way to play it live with the looper pedal. But I definitely will have to use backing tracks on some songs, because the parts are instruments that I don't play."
Yasmin Williams Gear
With its considerable overdubs, the material on Urban Driftwood is challenging to perform live. But with backing tracks and a deep reservoir of technique, Yasmin Williams rises to the task.
Photo by Jan Anderson
Guitars
- Custom Skytop acoustic with James May Ultra Tonic pickups
- Timberline acoustic parlor harp model with K&K pickups
- Sublime Guitar Company acoustic
Strings, Picks, and Accessories
- Shubb capos
- Calton guitar cases
- D'Addario Humidipaks
- GHS Silk and Steel string sets (.011–.048)
- Black Mountain thumbpicks
Effects
- Audio Sprockets ToneDexter
- Strymon BigSky
- Pigtronix Infinity Looper
- Joyo volume pedal
- Hologram Electronics Microcosm
- TC Electronic PolyTune
- Looptimus foot controller (for triggering backing tracks)
- Tap shoes
It's easy to get caught up in the songs and sounds of Urban Driftwood and miss the technical aspect of William's playing. It all seems so natural and seamless. But, watching her perform, you'll see her effortlessly whip through fast tapping passages, explore expansive chords, and reposition her guitar from conventional positioning to her lap for tapping, mid-song, without missing a beat.
"I have to practice that a little bit," Williams admits. "Especially for 'Juvenescence.' That switch is rather difficult because I only give myself a beat to do it. There's a lot of thought put into it. It's like, 'Okay, I'll play a harmonic here, give myself a rest, or something.' Usually, I don't give myself long because it will mess up the continuous motion of the song."
Williams' playing technique is just the tip of the iceberg. She's also known for incorporating additional instruments into her songs, and, in fact, her simultaneous guitar/kalimba performances are one of her trademarks. "I had always liked Maurice White's playing, especially on Earth, Wind & Fire's live versions of the song 'Kalimba Story,'" Williams explains. "Then one day I was writing a song and I wanted to add another timbre that guitar couldn't achieve. I was trying to think of instruments, and that kalimba sound kept popping into my head. I didn't realize it was the kalimba until I found one with no price tag in Guitar Center. I was like, 'That's the sound that I've been hearing! That's the Earth, Wind & Fire sound!' I've been using those ever since.
"Oh, and I use tap shoes, too," she adds, laughing. "Jeff had the two mics in stereo. One was on one shoe, and another mic was on the other, which I've never done before. He also added a plate reverb to it, which gave it the weird ping-pong delay in 'Through the Woods.' It blew my mind!"
Rig Rundown - Yasmin Williams
Thanks to Gruber's passion for capturing sonic detail, every instrument on Urban Driftwood has a beautiful dimensionality. "Jeff was huge on making everything sound spacious and lush," Williams says. "When I listened to it for the first time, I was shocked at how spacious and vibrant the guitar sounded. He didn't use a DI or anything. He used two or three mics on the guitar, close-miked, and that's it. He used pencil condenser mics."
Although this straightforward miking technique puts Williams' performances under a microscope, good luck finding a string buzz or flubbed note on the entire album. Not many players can perform with that level of precision. "I get irritated at myself if I hear any type of note inaccuracies or buzzing," she explains. "The only thing I can accept is [sliding] string sounds, because I like it and there's not much I can do about it. Other than that, I want it to sound as clear as possible. It is a solo guitar, so the tone has to be on point. I can't have a muddy bass or a buzzing treble. It has to be good. That's the standard I set for myself. I practice that a lot. Accuracy is extremely important."
Williams' touch and technique are vital to her tone but playing her beautiful custom Skytop acoustic guitar probably doesn't hurt, either. "The Skytop [tuned to open D] is its own story altogether," she says. "I really loved [Skytop luthier Eric Weigeshoff's] designs, how the guitars look, and the fact that they have the two huge side soundports instead of the one soundhole in the front. It sounds better to me, and it actually projects a lot better, which you may not expect. But because of my lap-tapping technique, his normal side ports can get muffled because they're facing my stomach. So since I do a lot of that tapping, he recommended this wood that had holes in the front called teredo-holed Sitka spruce. The holes are natural and made by mollusks, and I didn't care how it sounded! I just thought it looked cool. [Laughs.] It's like functional art. But those holes do help the sound project when I'm lap-tapping. It does a great job."
The Skytop is on every track on Urban Driftwood except "Adrift."
"I use my old Sublime guitar on that because it sounded better with the cello," Williams notes. Her other trademark instrument is her Timberline harp guitar. In addition to its standard 6-string layout, this parlor-size instrument features six lower-octave strings, tuned in open G. Staying true to her pragmatic approach to technique, Williams prefers plucking the lower strings by reaching over the top of the guitar and picking with her fretting hand. It took some work to master, but the harp guitar is now an indispensable tool in her sonic arsenal.
TIDBIT: Producer Jeff Gruber was Williams' studio guru for her latest album, Urban Driftwood, urging her to experiment with overdubs and capturing every sound in pristine detail.
"I'd wanted a harp guitar for a while, but it always seemed intimidating because of the extra set of sub-bass strings. It's actually not, once you get the hang of playing it. It just has a whole other dimension. I use it on 'Swift Breeze' to play the super-fast tapping part. And I also use the harp guitar on 'Jarabi.'"
Regardless of which guitar Williams plays, she has a beautiful, natural-sounding tone, even when plugged in. But she's not afraid to use pedals to get it. "Gear is very important to your tones, to everything, to how you play," she says. "If you find something that works for you, then use that. I'm getting into pedals more and experimenting with delays and reverbs and all that. I love to use them live and have a pedalboard. I have a Strymon BigSky, a Pigtronix Infinity Looper, and a cool Joyo volume pedal that's miniature, so it fits my foot well. And I got a new pedal by Hologram Electronics called a Microcosm, which is super cool. It's like a granular delay/micro-looper. It has stereo reverbs, too. I also have a ToneDexter, which is important for my guitar tone live." That device uses Audio Sprockets' WaveMaps technology to create an optimized version of an acoustic guitar's voice.
For someone who gave up electric guitar for its tonal limitations, Williams is definitely becoming a pedal junkie. Is this part of another sonic evolution? "Oh, yes, for sure," she admits. "I'm playing electric way more than I have in a long time. My main instrument is still acoustic, but I think electric will pop up at a show or two in the future.
"Nowadays, I'm more aware that I'm in a unique spot in the guitar scene, and I'm not afraid of that anymore," Williams continues. "I'm actually enjoying writing music that includes percussive stuff that pays homage to D.C. or go-go music or West African music or whatever. I like putting something different into the guitar canon, if you want to call it that. That's the point of Urban Driftwood."
Yasmin Williams, “Juvenescence” | New York Guitar Festival sessions
Yasmin Williams performs "Juvenescence" at Dumbarton Oaks Park in Washington, D.C. Enjoy her beautiful, ringing tone and expressive technique, and watch, at 1:34, as she seamlessly transitions to her trademark lap-tapping without missing a beat.