The temperature dropped to ten degrees in Greenpoint, Brooklyn on one of the coldest nights this winter, the weather report indicating that it felt like negative three. But not even that could deter music lovers and band groupies. They bundled up in their biggest winter coats with flannel shirts layered underneath, making the fifteen-minute trek from the L train station to Aviv, the garage-turned-dimly-lit-performance-space with faux-grunge art pieces like pink painted decapitated ducks and drunken tags on the walls.
Lang sophomores Emily Yacina and Will Sacks played a half-hour set between other groups. Yacina majors in environmental studies and Sacks in philosophy. Both played the guitar while Yacina also provided vocals, singing songs she had written herself.
Yacina had been writing, recording, and uploading her own music on her Bandcamp for a while when she posted a Facebook status looking for another guitarist to add to her live sets. Having met through a mutual friend Sacks went to high school with, Sacks sent Yacina a message and they began rehearsing together. The two have been booking gigs as a pair since last March, performing at venues like Silent Barn, a popular space on Bushwick Avenue in Brooklyn.
“I love Will,” Yacina said. “He’s a very special boy. He’s the funniest person I’ve ever met in my life.”
When asked about how funny Sacks is, the two told a nonsensical story about him getting nervous before a show and projectile vomiting on the front row. The two eventually admitted to joking and continued by referring to their stage chemistry as peanut butter and jelly. Yacina being the peanut butter, she said, and Sacks being the jelly because, he said, he’s “fruity and sweet.”
Yacina grew up outside of Philadelphia in Havertown, her parents putting her in guitar and dance lessons since she had no interest in sports. It was then that song writing began for her.
She recently found a journal with lyrics from the second grade. One of the songs read, “Why are the colors of liberty red, white, and blue?” Yacina laughed. “I was really trying to answer some burning questions,” she said.
Sacks was raised on the Upper West Side. He took guitar lessons in the second grade, learning mostly klezmer and jazz music. Sacks received his first guitar from a family friend, a painter, who wrote on it in acrylic “May the force be with you” because of Sacks’ love of Star Wars.
Like Yacina, Sacks writes his own music at home and records using Garageband on his phone, his sister sometimes singing the choruses.
And while the two said rehearsals are productive because their ability to listen to each other, showtime is when they have to listen to unsolicited opinions.
Both immediately recalled a time where a sound guy specifically told Yacina, not Sacks, how she should be playing her guitar. Yacina said she felt being a girl is significant in playing shows and being a musician in a male-dominated industry. Another guy critiqued her stage presence and said she shouldn’t be so shy onstage.
Yacina and Sacks are not deterred by any unfounded statements about how they perform, though. The two have ideas about what they want to accomplish in the next couple months.
Yacina said they want to tour more, however, she tries to think about her aspirations in a more realistic way. “I like to think of it like seasons at a time. ‘What do I want to do this summer for music? What do I want this spring?’ Instead of ‘I want to be this in five years.’”
For now, the two will continue to do what musicians do best.
“Just play as many shows as we can.” Sacks said. “Just keep playing. Keep strumming.”
Truman is the Editor-in-Chief for The New School Free Press and a senior in the Journalism + Design program at Lang. He has also contributed online content for both Interview Magazine and V Magazine, talking with musicians, directors and a variety of other artists. Born in raised in Oakland, California, he now lives in Bed Stuy with a witchy roommate who is always down to burn some candles with him.
