After three years of no new projects, alternative artist Pete Yorn has debuted his eighth album, “Caretakers,” with hints and traces of his time at Syracuse University.

Yorn graduated from SU in 1996 with a bachelor’s degree in speech communication. Now, Yorn has more than 377,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and about 20,000 Instagram followers. He has been releasing music since 2001 and has worked with critically acclaimed entertainers like Scarlett Johansson.

Mira Fleschman, a sophomore in the Bandier Program, has been a fan of Pete Yorn since childhood. She said the fact that Yorn is an SU alum made her feel closer to him and his music.

“My family loves him and always plays him in the car on family road trips,” Fleschman said. “He’s a storyteller with meaningful lyrics and he reminds me of amazing childhood memories.”

Jackson Phillips, a member of the band Day Wave, co-produced and co-wrote the album with Yorn. Fresh off of finishing up his last acoustic show of the year, Yorn said the album, and his work with Phillips, came to fruition spontaneously.

“I was talking to my brother a few days before I ended up meeting with Jackson Phillips. A few days later, I got an email connecting Jackson and me,” Yorn said. “Out of nowhere, we just started recording songs. It was just kind of this magical chemistry we had.”

Yorn said he approaches songwriting with an open mind. He added how the best songs came together fairly quickly and that by spending less time thinking, the songs become more interesting.

“Calm Down,” the single off the new record that has accumulated more than 712,000 streams on Spotify, was written by Yorn, Phillips and Stephanie “SoKo” Sokolinski. The three artists had little prior experience working together, but they collaborated together on this project.

Yorn said he started writing “Calm Down” by using spare parts of old songs. During the development stage of the song, the three added a verse that was inspired from a song that Yorn wrote during his move to Los Angeles from New Jersey. He said it was probably not long after graduating from SU that the song popped into his head.

“The lyrics were ‘All is well in my hometown, people sleeping in the streetlights.’ It was like spare parts,” Yorn said. “I just latched onto that, and I used those lyrics for the verse. They were from a very nostalgic time.”

When he listens to “Calm Down,” Yorn said he envisions an inner dialogue about when one is caught up in their own head worrying about their own life. The lyrics ‘when I look at you’ is about witnessing oneself, he said.

“I really love the new album,” Fleschman said. “The single off the album titled ‘Calm Down’ still sounds like him, but updated and good.”

Yorn always planned on going to law school and figured that music was just a hobby. But once he arrived at SU, he wrote a song a day — sometimes even three. Throughout his life, Yorn said there was always a pull toward music.

By junior year, he decided he was going to finish school. However, he was going to pursue music over law school.

Yorn said that people were very supportive at SU. Friends would hear him play and push him to perform songs in public. A girl heard him playing around a dorm and asked him to perform at a talent show and charity event at a bar across from Harry’s, Yorn said.

When he got into the bar, it was packed with other performers. Yorn said that when he got on stage, there was only one microphone. People running the event held the mic to his head so he could sing the song.

He performed a tune called “Someday,” and years later it ended up on a record he did with Scarlett Johansson, called “Break Up.” The song is the last one of that record which was about when Yorn had his heart broken for the first time.

“I sang the song, and I remember everyone went crazy, and I won the whole thing,” Yorn said. “It was one of those moments when you look back on in the movie of your life. It was definitely an encouraging moment. I was like wow, maybe I can do this a little bit.”

At SU, Yorn joined his friend Joe Kennedy’s band as a drummer. Kennedy ended up in Yorn’s touring band for years later in life. This wasn’t uncommon for Yorn, as he said multiple Syracuse alumni have been in his touring band.

SU students who are striving to be artists should know to pursue their passions, Yorn said.

“Do what you love, not what you think you should love,” he said. “It might lead nowhere, but if it leads somewhere, it’ll feel better.”

Published on October 20, 2019 at 10:43 pm