Dave Dernovsek grew up playing competitive classical piano. In college, he picked up guitar and “started to play in the jazz-funk realm,” he says. “But I’d always had interest in the jam scene and then eventually developed a strong interest in electronica.”
Then, in the early aughts, he saw bands like Lotus and Sound Tribe Sector 9 “really take the art form to a new level and do it with live instruments — that always really appealed to me. I’d always wanted to combine that with a live-looping-type project that didn’t sound like a loop.” His goal was for the loop to be “a slight tool and sort of invisible.”
He started messing around with the concept with a few friends in the basement, and once they figured out how to execute everything, Yak Attack was born. The trio started playing shows around their hometown of Portland, then toured regionally and started booking festival dates.
Today’s lineup features Dernovsek on keys and guitar, Jacob Rubanowitz on bass and drummer Julian Koell. The band just wrapped up a string of dates opening for genre-melding jam band Spafford. Next up, they’ll hit Bend’s Volcanic Theatre Pub on Friday, Dec. 6 with locals Spencer Marlyn Band kicking off the show.
While Yak Attack’s last full-length album was 2018’s “Safety Third,” the threesome put out a couple new singles in 2022 and have been steadily uploading improvisational live sets to Bandcamp and Nugs.net where there are “40 to 50 shows” available, Dernovsek says, including this past February’s set at the Volcanic.
“We record almost all of our shows,” he says. On stage, Yak Attack brings the dance party with live-looped electronic jams that are uplifting, jazzy and funky. As far as a new studio record goes, “we’ve been in the lab a lot. We’ve got a release that’s almost done — it’ll probably be out spring — and we’ve got just tons of stuff in various stages.”
In general, Dernovsek and company have been grinding — just as they’ve been doing for more than a decade as independent musicians. “I’ve long held the philosophy that opportunities are fleeting. There’s no recipe for success in this business, and there’s really no universal definition of what success is,” he says. There’s a lot of luck or chance that could lead to an artist blowing up or not. Instead, he focuses on progress: “Let’s try to just make things a little bit better than they were.”
Seeing as a lot of things are out of the musician’s control, “one of the defining missions of the group has been: focus on the musical product and see where everything else fits in. And see where success, or not, comes from,” Dernovsek says.
He says he experienced a “mental rebalancing and prioritization” coming out of Covid, recognizing that “there are very few better feelings in the world than playing your original live music on stage to people who appreciate it, so I’m gonna just chase that feeling as long as I can.” He also acknowledges the need to maintain a positive outlook when you’re engaged in “what is essentially a very competitive business of extremely hard-working and talented individuals that are all competing for a very small pie.”
Dernovsek is grateful for the people who have helped his band along the way, including Bend’s Gabe Johnson (aka Brother Gabe of Watkins Glen), also a promoter at Parallel 44 Presents.
“He’s been really instrumental in the band’s growth, in both Bend and the region at large. We really can’t thank him enough for all the help and all the shows that he’s invested in with us over the years and elevating us.”
In the spirit of community, Dernovsek shouts out some of his favorite Pacific Northwest bands including the reggae-rock vibes of Eugene’s Spunj, the Seattle eight-piece, power funk band Cytrus, and fellow Portland acts like the psych jam band Bodhi Mojo, rock scene mainstays The Quick & Easy Boys and jazz, funk, soul outfits Greaterkind and Outer Orbit.
To sum up the Yak Attack live experience, Dernovsek says, “We basically sound like a DJ, but we’re all live instruments. There’s no prerecorded backing tracks or anything. I think it bridges the gap between being a musician’s band, where there’s a lot to digest in terms of technically what we’re doing on stage, as well as an accessible show that’s just fun to come dance to and get down.
“We want this to be a safe space for everybody, and we want everybody to get uplifted — be able to kind of come and escape from whatever negative things are going on in the world, but also find community and empowerment and all those good things at our show.”
At the end of the day, Yak Attack wants to “ultimately be delivering good music and good vibes to our audiences,” Dernovsek says.
This article appears in Source Weekly November 28, 2024.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
