We recently connected with Hoyt Yeatman and have shared our conversation below.
Hoyt, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
I think first what I need to define is what do I do? So of course I sing, play guitar, and write music for our band, Sitting On Stacy. I started playing guitar first when I was 10 at a performance based rock music school but when a singer dropped out I stepped up and did both and have continued to do so ever since. Writing came pretty quick after that because I had things I wanted to sing about. I would use my phone to record riffs and snippets of songs and used garage band to make the songs. The other thing I do is I record and mix our band. That happened out of necessity because we couldn’t afford to pay anyone and it was cheaper to get student versions of some professional programs and I just learned the software, making tons of mistakes as I went along. I have mixed, recorded, and mastered all our releases. At one point we worked with Fat Mike of NOFX for a song and he saw that I could effectively run the programs needed so I’ve gone on to work for him recording, mixing, playing on, and mastering songs for NOFX. Finally, I also do most of the marketing and social media for our band, including directing and editing our music videos and posts. I again just learned the programs and through trial and error am figuring out what works and what doesn’t. I guess the overarching lesson here is that in all that I do, I just do it. No one teaches you this stuff and if you want to create just go for it. I wasn’t born knowing any of this so you just have to want to do it, take a risk, don’t worry about making mistakes because you learn from them. I am by no means anywhere close to where I want to be so I get to continue making mistakes and learning more!
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My mom had read research showing that people who learned music at a young age did better at math…so she gave me a choice of playing whatever instrument I wanted. I started around age 4 playing keyboards which I didn’t really like. I next went to flute but the teacher was kinda odd which made me not want to learn it. We were listening to the Irish Rovers in the car and I liked their guitar so asked to learn that. We found a performance based rock school and that was it! I have never put the guitar down since. I started my own band, Paper, the summer before going into high school. When people searched our name they’d find great deals on office supplies but would have a hard time finding us…I knew we needed to change our name so it would stand out and be more unique. We decided Sitting On Stacy worked. I think what sets us apart from a lot of bands is our live shows and the community we’ve built that enjoy our music. We have so much fun ourselves when performing that our fans feel it and carry that at each performance. Truly our fans are the coolest, most fun loving people out there…you can just feel that everyone just loves to be in the moment. And they’re all open to each other and have made friends amongst themselves and get to see each other at all the concerts. It’s so cool seeing that people from all walks come out and support us; it’s a big party. I think that another thing that sets us apart, that some may see as a negative, is that we have explored different genres of music. An industry person once told us we needed to stick with one, and maybe he’s right, but we love all sorts of different types of music and get inspired to write our own takes. So on one album you’ll get punk, ska, surf, alt, and rock…maybe that’s why we have such a diverse fan base because we have different songs that different people like. Writing different genres of music keeps it interesting for me too. Oh and yes, it worked I am pretty good at math!
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Covid came and changed everything about performing….here we were, a band that thrives on live shows with no outlet to play. We had been gaining tremendous momentum at the time, selling out our shows, planning a tour, being asked to open later in the year for a large band (who ultimately had to cancel too)…it had all come to a screeching halt. Of course we understood why this had to happen but that was the effect it had on the band. I turn to writing and performing as an outlet and while I continued to write I couldn’t share anything because I couldn’t perform and our manager didn’t think it a good idea to release anything if we couldn’t support the releases with performances. We still wanted to perform though. Someone suggested we open a Tiktok account and “peform” there. We did by doing cover songs which absolutely took off and we got such positive input from the artists we covered. Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit reached out. Brian Wilson, Al Jardine, and Mike Love of The Beach Boys all separately contacted us complimenting us, Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray told us we broke the first rule of doing a cover by doing it better than the original, high prraise! Modern English gave us a shout out. It was crazy! We grew our audience exponentially. Record labels were contacting us. Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers reached out to see if we were signed. We weren’t. He was also trying new things out during Covid and had started his own record label under the Republic Records banner and ultimately signed us and five other artists. When the world started back up again he had us open for the Jonas Brothers for part of their tour which was amazing. But as things got back to normal he decided to not pursue his label and we fulfilled our contract with Repbublic and we too moved on to another label. We learned so much from all this experience…and mainly to keep going doing what you love; that everything will sort its way out! We thought that having the main thing for our band, performing, cut off was going to stop us from reaching an audience but we found a way to pivot which ended up helping us in the long run.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
I think what many people who don’t create don’t know is that if you want to be successful how much work is involved. You have to put other aspects of your life on hold or decline personal things because something for the band came through. Writing, recording, mixing, rehearsing take so much longer than people think. I know people have expressed how fun it must be to do what we do and for sure it is a lot of fun once you get a gig or a song is released but the hours of time it took to get to that place are incredible. Missed meals and sleep, missed family and friend events, pouring every dime you make back into the band so you can inch along. Often times it seems an artist comes out of nowhere but in truth they’ve been working on their craft for years
Contact Info:
- Website: https://SittingOnStacy.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sittingonstacy/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=sitting%20on%20stacy
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/sittingonstacy
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@sittingonstacy8647
- Other: Spotify
Apple Music
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/sitting-on-stacy/1215320357
