Live at PRE: Jake Ybarra's journey to storytelling, songwriting

Jake Ybarra is a singer and songwriter from Greenville, S.C. At age 25, he’s currently on tour for his debut album Something in the Water.

Like a classic country artist, Ybarra’s work focuses on storytelling, from an all-consuming jealousy in “BloodFire” to the slow and soulful “Savannah’s Song.”

Music was not always the direction Ybarra intended to go in, though it kept pulling him back in. He explored public policy and foreign relations while studying at Furman University, during which he landed an internship at the European Parliament in Brussels. There, without his guitar, he realized the important role writing and performing music has in his life.

Ybarra stopped by the studio in early May for an interview with PRE’s Neal Ganaway, host of The Sound. Ybarra performed “BloodFire,” “Savannah’s Song,” and “Late November” live in the PRE studio.

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Neal Ganaway: We’ve got Jake Ybarra stopping in from . . . Well, doggone where do you call home now? You're in Nashville now?

Jake Ybarra: I am living in Nashville. Greenville, S.C., is home. Born in Texas, but now in Nashville. My current resting place.

Neal: That's where most musicians end up these days it seems like.

Jake: It is. It is.

Neal: What brought your family from Texas to South Carolina in the first place?

Jake: My dad's work when I was a kid. He only worked there for a couple more years, but by then me and my little brother were playing baseball, and we had our community and just kind of stuck out there. Thankfully my grandparents on my mother's side were already there. So, it made home easy.

Neal: Oh, right on. Well, speaking of your mother, she’s a professional musician too.

Jake: She's classically trained. She never worked professionally, but she's classically trained and did it from the time she was like 4 to 18. She did concert recitals and things like that.

Neal: And your dad, too, a little bit?

Jake: He was semi pro, and he likes to brag about it. He played horn in a rock band that did a tour of the Midwest once. He’s proud of it.

Neal: Well, he's got a claim to fame. Nothing to be ashamed of there. You said your brothers, too, are all playing. What do they think about what's going on with you right now?

Jake: They love it. They're the only people I bounce songs off of, and I don't change anything typically, but I bounce it off of them. My older brother is 9 years older than me, and he played guitar just for fun. My little brother's a very talented musician. He’s not doing it for a living, but he’s very talented. So, it's nice to have them.

Neal: It's a whole family thing.

Jake: Pretty much, yeah, it is.

Neal: You'll have to get something together, a family band.

Jake: Exactly. Exactly.

Neal: The Ybarra Family Band. It’ll be all right. Mom on piano, dad on horns, couple guitar players, some singers. That'd be great. This is your first full length LP, your debut LP. I know you had an EP out there before, right?

Jake: I did. I recorded an EP in 2020 in my grandfather's basement, mostly to get booked in the upstate of South Carolina, to have a body of work to show that I could at least sing and play guitar a little bit. It did well for me, and people liked it. But this is the debut full length LP and all new songs. No repeats from the EP, and I'm happy with that.

Neal: So, tell us how did that come about, getting into this LP? We got a lot of listeners that are budding musicians. How did that work for you?

Jake: I played a lot of shows around the upstate and got really comfortable doing that. I was doing 2-4 shows a week and making a decent living doing that – being background noise at bars and restaurants. But I actually got lucky. My manager, Michelle Robertson, reached out to me on Instagram. I didn't really believe it at first, but we started talking, and then Will Gawley produced the record. They're actually married. They reached out to me in late April 2022, and the album was recorded in June over 3 days. It was quick.

Neal: That's quick.

Jake: Yeah. I'm happy I had the songs ready. I had been saving up and hoping to pursue the artist side a little bit more seriously for a while. So, thankfully I had some money in the bank to be able to cut a record and it's not cheap.

Neal: It does take money.

Jake: Yeah, it does. So, it occurred by happenstance, but also at the time, I was pretty content just playing shows and hoping it catches – grows at some point.

Neal: So, the name of this LP is Something in the Water. We're going to be playing the “BloodFire” track here. I hear that song was a long time coming, that you started out with a little bit, shelved it for a while, and kind of came back to you. You want to talk a little bit about that?

Jake: It’s funny because it's probably one of the least complicated, lyrically, songs on the whole album. I had the riff – it sounded a little bit different, but it was more like a guitar riff – for a long, long time. And I had that first sign “She was a redhead, daughter of a brown eyed son /Nothing to lose and hand on the gun” for a long time. But I didn't know where I wanted to go because I write a lot of slower, more contemplative songs. I wanted a rocker. I wanted something to be able to rock out on, and the album it rocks really, really hard. I'm happy with that, but I wanted the lyrics and the storytelling to still match it and get a story across, not just rely completely on the music. So, it took me a while to write the feeling in a song as opposed to writing the story and then getting the feeling after the fact.

Neal: Tell me about your guitar. I like that Gibson you got there.

Jake: Thank you!

Neal: It looks like it's had some road miles on it.

Jake: It has, long before me. It's a Gibson J45. The serial number is hard to read, but when I got it, we shined a light on it, and we think it's a ’61. My brothers organized and got the family together – the entire family together – to get it for me. I'm super grateful to them for that. I guess some old lady – her husband was a folk singer, and you could tell by the cigarette burns on this thing, it has had some work done to it – but she knew what she had, and she wanted to get rid of it.

Neal: You can tell – I'm an instrument guy too – that that's a fine good fiddle you got there.

Jake: I love it. The third fret needed to be glued down, and that's kind of it. It just needed to be set up a little bit.

Neal: So, have you got a name for her?

Jake: I don't. I need to. I've had her for a couple of years now, but it'll come at some point. I'm sure I'm going to let her pick it.

Neal: That's probably the best way. You got quite an interesting educational background too, going to Furman University and going into political science. I find it interesting that you spent some time with the European Parliament in Brussels. That's not something everybody's got on their resume, especially a young man like yourself. How does that come about? And how do you get away from that? I mean, somebody who goes into that realm seems to usually have passion for that sort of thing. To go down there, and then take a hard right and get into music seems kind of a stretch.

Jake: It is. I grew up doing music, and I got into garage bands when I was in high school. I had knock-down, drag-out fights with my mom about going to college because I wanted to go to Austin to be the next Stevie Ray Vaughan. I'm glad I went to college. I went away from music for a little bit, and I really found the major I did interesting.

To get to the degree you had to do a year of research or do an internship. By chance, they had a couple people drop from the program at the last minute and I applied, and they wanted to fill it and I got in thankfully. It was a great experience and I loved it. I still read about it. I find it really interesting, particularly foreign policy and international affairs, things like that. That's what I focused on. It was a lot of work. We were doing 30 hours of work, four classes, and trying to be a 20-year-old traveling in Europe on top of that. Thankfully we scheduled our work to be Monday through Thursday, and we also didn't have class on Friday, so we could leave Thursday night and be back Sunday night and wake up at 7:00 a.m. for work the next day on Monday.

That’s really when I started to come back to music though, because I was a little homesick, in hindsight. I wish I hadn't been homesick, but I was. I didn't take a guitar with me, but I got a $90.00 classical guitar just to work on stuff, and that's when I really started getting into songwriting. That's when I realized, “Man, this is my passion.” I felt I started to have a bit of a knack for it. I'd get home from work, and that's what I would do all night.

In the same way, when I was in high school and when I was done with school, I would play guitar all day. I had found myself doing that with songwriting. By the time I was done with the program, my major was pretty much done, so I stuck it out and kind of partied the rest of my time. I still find it interesting. I find the research part of it fun – the policy aspect of it.

Neal: Right on.

Jake: But not as much fun as writing songs.

Neal: Yeah. Not as much fun as busking, huh? Give us another taste of this new LP you got. I'll let you pick. How’s that?

Jake: I'll do whatever, I'll do a little bit slower of a song.

Neal: You've got a lot of variety on this LP.

Jake: I'm happy with it. It's funny because the BPM doesn't change a whole lot. This one’s called “Savannah’s Song.”

Neal: So that's the song about the one that got away?

Jake: To a degree. It's that and it really is about a time in my life that kind of got away. It's about a lot of people, friends and folks that I've missed a lot. I wrote it a couple years ago, and I just missed a lot of folks.

Neal: I can see this little trip being lonely: you, your guitar, making the rounds. How's that going for you? Where did you come from to get here, where you headed next, and how long are you going on this little trip?

Jake: I'm almost done with this little circuit. I drove in last night from Charlottesville, Va. I got in at around 1 a.m. I’ve done Louisville, Ky., Indiana, Ohio, New York State, Vermont, New York City, New Jersey. I'm missing some places. After this, I'm playing a show in Raleigh, then a show in Asheville. The back half has a lot more live shows, which is nice.

Neal: Right on.

Jake: I did a lot of radio up until now. I’ve got a radio show and a live show – I think it's both – in Knoxville, and then I'll be home.

Neal: So, you've been on this whole rigmarole all by your lonesome. Just you?

Jake: Yeah.

Neal: Doggone! Not even a dog?

Jake: I know, I know. I don't have one. My roommate has a dog, and he does great on the road. He would have been good.

Neal: It could be a lonely experience being out there.

Jake: It’s been to a degree. I've gotten to see some friends from college that I haven't seen in a long time. I've gotten to see parts of the country I've never seen before, so it's been great, but I'm getting close to wanting to be home.

Neal: What does success look like to you? A full-length LP is a good start with getting out there, making a living, doing what you're doing. It’s a big part of that.

Jake: If you had asked me this time last year, my goals and aspirations would have been probably a lot bigger because it's a lot more real now. I would have told you my wildest dreams. Now it feels a little more real. I have an LP out, and it feels really good to have that.

It's more kind of short term, but I'd like to just get on somebody's tour opening and being able to keep making albums. Honestly, if I get to a point where I can have a tour bus, that's making it – even if I'm not the most famous person in the world. If I can afford a tour bus, I think that's making it honestly, and being able to pay a band and make a living. That sounds pretty good to me.

Neal: Yeah. With as much competition as there is out there, as many artists, as much stuff that's going on, as many formats as there, if you could just make a living. That's pretty successful.

Jake: I say that, but even if I can make a living doing a lot of these solo tours. -- maybe I could take my girlfriend with me or a friend or another guitarist or somebody and just kind of live on the road – I'm happy with that too.

Neal: Speaking of girlfriend, I saw a music video that y’all done. Is that your significant other?

Jake: That is. That is Annika Conlee. That is her in flesh. She's wonderful. She really wanted to be able to come for some shows. I think she's going to meet me in Nashville for the show, but she’s had to work, just like a normal person.

Neal: Tell you what. I'm going to give you another opportunity to give people a better taste of this LP. We're really excited to have you here. We don't get a lot of people down east here. We're on the end of the map, so it's a real pleasure. Now we hope when you’ve got your tour bus, you make your way back down.

Jake: Definitely. Absolutely.

Neal: We've got some nice little venues here that I think would be appropriate for what you got going on. So, don't forget us here in the good old New Bern, N.C., when you find the success that you so strive for.

Jake: Yeah, I absolutely want to. I grew up going to the beaches in North Carolina, so I definitely will. I appreciate you having me on. Now let me do one more. It's called “Late November.”

Neal: Jake Ybarra. “Late November.” One of the 10 tracks available on the brand-new LP, Something in the Water. Thank you so much for stopping by The Sound and giving us a taste of what you're doing. You're doing a great job, and we look forward to hearing from you for many, many, many years to come, man.

Jake: Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me.