Yuben Grey is busy writing the soundtrack to his life
The folk artist talks turning his anxiety into art and keeping his creative process simple.
For Rhode Island-based folk artist Yuben Grey, every song starts with whatever is going on in his life at the time. His songs, moody and intimate, are built around stripped-back acoustic sounds with vulnerable lyrics to match. “Whether it’s a tougher time or a happier one, these are soundtracks for my life in a way,” he explains.
But he didn’t start out as a singer-songwriter. In high school, Grey started making beats in GarageBand for fun before a classmate suggested he start selling them. And while this led to working with other artists in his teens, it pushed him to take his own artistry more seriously. “I kind of just would make these beats, and that was the majority of my music before,” he explained.
When Grey started making his own music, he moved through a few genres before landing on folk. As the world around Yuben changed, so did the kind of music he made. “I switched to indie pop before, which I think was perfect for the time of my life, and the guitar stuff really started for me after I got a divorce,” he explained. The shift led to the creation of his debut album, The Moon Room, which dropped earlier this year. “I wrote the whole album during that time. And it was literally just a really cheap mic and a guitar that I was borrowing from somebody.”
Across The Moon Room’s seven tracks, including “The Night You Came Undone,” “Roman's Song” and “Burning Out,” a lone guitar and a bit of reverb set the pace along with lyrics about love, loss, and a life in flux. And that acoustic sound goes back to his earliest influences. Growing up, he heard a mix of his parents’ favorites, from Jack Johnson and Dave Matthews Band to classical music, a genre he says taught him to view music in new ways. “My dad would play classical music and be like, close your eyes and try to picture it,” he explains. “And that’s how I feel like I started using the imagery in my head to figure out songs.”
That’s something that still shows up in how Yuben writes. For him, it always starts with a simple acoustic melody. “Then it’s like I’m in a flow state and 4 hours later, I have a track,” he says. “Now I really try to incorporate newer instruments as well. I have an electric guitar, I have a bass, a banjo, and I try to keep it as simple as possible and not do too much,” he explains.
Digital platforms like BandLab and Reverb Nation have made that way of working even easier. “The one thing BandLab really helped with was that it was so easy to build everything very quickly,” he explains, adding that his routine for finding the right melody involves pulling up a random project, adding reverb, and playing it over his headset and mic to capture the feel. “It’s honestly great. They’ve contributed so much when it comes to the simplicity of my process.”
And Yuben is taking that same approach to define what comes next. With an upcoming project titled Paper Bones already in the works, Yuben still hasn’t decided whether to release it as an EP or full-length album. But one thing he’s certain of is the feeling he wants it to evoke. “I feel like this the last year or so I’ve been feeling very anxious, almost like when you feel too much”, he explains. “And that’s kind of what I want to capture. That feeling like your bones could crumble at any moment.”
On the heels of releasing new music, Grey says his fans seeing themselves in his songs is the most important part. “When I write a song, whatever that feeling was in here, now it’s in [the song] instead,” he explains. “It’s like a place to feel like yourself and be in the moment. It makes me feel super grateful when people can connect with that.”