It was an exceptionally rainy
night in early January, when I arrived at Harlow’s, in Sacramento, CA. Rain was
streaking off the front awnings in little waterfalls onto the few people
huddled under their umbrellas while they waited outside. I could hear the far
off thumbs and rattles of the final sound check of the evening as I joined the
dozen or so people waiting outside. The band I am here to see tonight is the
newest project from Skyler Michael (Dogfood, Thunder Cover) called NYTVZN
(pronounced like 'Night Vision'). This new project is Skyler’s electronic pop rock
project, and tonight is a show he has been heavily promoting through social
media. Everything from gear demos, to practice videos, and even dinosaurs! So, needless to say, I was curious as well as
excited, along with everyone else there.
Backed up that night by David
Albertson (Humble Wolf) on bass, Jayson Angove (Humble Wolf) on drums, and
Kevin Kinsella (Pointdexter) on sax, Skyler took the stage as their front man
and guitar player, sporting a neon green Ibanez RG. They kicked into their set,
inserting the thumping rhythms of synthesizers in their backing tracks, which
blended with their hard and funky rhythm section. Everyone was moving and
grooving, especially on stage. One could hear a strong influence of TheKillers, AWOLNATION, and, as Skyler told me later, The Neighborhood, and
Foster The People. This rocktageous pop production was also helped
along with Kevin’s sax playing, which served to add as a smooth accent over
each song as he played. It gave it that little extra OOMPH! that, when blended
with Skyler’s guitar playing and singing, really helped bring you in.
As the night came to the last
song, “I Love You, Baby” by Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, Skyler took a
second after the second verse and dedicated the song to his girlfriend, Tina.
Well, she shortly became his fiancé as he proposed to her from the stage. After
he knelt down and pulled the ring out of his pocket, the crowd cheered as she
said yes. With a huge grin on his face, and a bombastic return to the song to
match, Skyler proceeded to finish one of the more memorable shows I have gotten
to see at Harlow’s. NYTVZN certainly grabbed everyone’s attention that night.
Fast forward a few days, and I
am walking into Skyler’s music room at the back end of his house, where he is
working on a small update to his personal website on his laptop, and has Logic
Pro X software open on the screen for his desktop behind it. On the opposite wall
hangs two acoustic guitars in front of a wall covered in green paper. At the
bottom of that wall is, at first glance looks like an open guitar case, but
nestled inside it is a full-sized looping station, a few other assorted pedals,
and three spotlights that lit up the back of the upended top half of the case.
All the wires fed into the left side of the case and out through a black
plastic pipe that curved around the edge of the case to the front. From there,
the same pipe goes vertical and serves as a stand which is topped by a
microphone. A little underneath the mic is an 8-pad drum machine and a bracket
that also holds a tablet.
And, of course, a cup-holder on
the bottom of the stand. Naturally.
I turn away from the beastly
set-up before me, and have a seat across from Skyler. I notice a big, pink
lettered NYTVZN banner is hanging over the computer behind him. My curiousness
gets the better of me and I ask him where he came up with the name, NYTVZN. The
story actually stretches back to when he was still in the hard-rock outfit,
Dogfood. As they were ending as a band, he was still writing songs on his
laptop, mastering and playing all the instrument himself. He adds “The idea was
to just write a bunch of songs, see what they sound like, then name the project,
I suppose…NYTVZN, the name itself, was one in a long list of names, and it was
actually the name of a song that I wrote. When I make songs in the computer, I
have to name them something when I save them…I wanted to call it [the song]
“Night Vision”, but I was looking for a goofy way to spell it, ‘cuz I didn’t
want to spell it out fully, so I came up with all these different acronyms and
that’s where I came up with N-Y-T-V-Z-N.”
I look up at the eye-catching banner as Skyler spells it out. He also points out that the letters all connect
at their tops, making it all the more attention grabbing.
Banner aside, I ask Skyler how
he got to this point and where he started as a musician. He says he started
playing guitar when was about 14. Skyler adds about his musical beginning,
“My friends started a band
without me, and I was super jealous. So that when I grabbed my brother’s
guitar…None of my friends thought that I could, but within a month, 2 months
maybe…I wasn’t amazing, but I could play power chords, I could play punk rock,
I could dig in a little bit. And I had the passion to get better. Then, soon
enough, I was in their band.”
From this humble beginning, he
picked up the production side of things a few years later when he was about 18,
where he learned to program bass and drums. It was a learning process with him
and one of his friends, too. He went about it in an unconventional way. He
adds,
“I didn’t really deal with click
tracks at first. I would bring up a drum loop, and that was really simple…so I
worked off that…What was cool about being, basically, raised on computers was
that I already had good rhythm. It never was really an issue for me to play to
a click track, because I was already used to quantized drums.”
From there, Skyler has continued
to morph and evolve his sound, as well as NYTVZN’s future. In regards to the
sound he was going for, he says,
“I wanted it to sound very
modern. I’ve been tired of hearing new bands that sound like they came from the
90s. I wanted something very modern, and I think I have come close.” In
addition to its sound coming more and more into shape, NYTVZN is also going to
have Skyler’s full focus into social media as its main platform for new content
and other fun things Skyler has in store for us.
Like playing with Land of the
Lost in the background, for example.
When asked why he did it, other
than the fact that it’s hilarious, he simply says,
Making people laugh is one of
the best promos…people want to see things they haven’t seen before.”
Silliness aside, Skyler has big
plans for suture shows with NYTVZN. Oddly enough, though, he has a different
plan when it comes to future gigs. He remarks,
“If you want a good gig, you
usually have to make it [yourself]. This Harlow’s gig [on Jan. 10th],
I had to put it on. Nobody was going come to me and ask me to put my band on
this thing…The main shows I’m looking to take are upcoming shows like Concerts in
the Park [in Sacramento]…I like the First Festival idea, as well…and any other
94.7 or other radio festivals where they are having local bands play, I
definitely want to be on that.”
It makes sense for this to be
the focus, due in large part to NYTVZN’s specific sound style. As Skyler would
add,
“It [NYTVZN] really lends itself
to a festival-type show and vibe…”
Ever looking toward this goal,
Skyler is also fully prepared to go a route less traveled by bands both of his
type and, in some cases, in general. He elaborates as to his method by telling
me,
“Its [NYTVZN] going to take off
a lot, but it’s not going to be because of live shows. I have to focus on
videos and I’m going to focus on the Internet, because that, I think, is the
new show…These days what you have to do is spend some time, some energy, and
maybe some money on a very creative video on what your art is trying to express
out there.”
Looking around at his self-made
studio, one can definitely see that there is a lot of valuable tools at his
disposal. Everything in this music-oriented space has its purpose and its use
in making Skyler’s dream and, by proxy, NYTVZN’s future a tangible reality. He
even adds, offhandedly,
“I’m pretty good for DIY, but
what I need to be is good, no matter what [laughs].”
In the end, that is what one can
expect from NYTVZN in the coming months. With a person as motivated and
passionate at the helm of a project like this, there seems to be no limit to
what will come of NYTVZN, which only serves to make it that much more exciting.
