When San Diego-area musician Mitchum Yacoub was planning the release of his latest album, “A Way In,” he knew that he wanted to get it in the hands of his true fans before anyone else as an acknowledgement of their support of his career.
So, he decided to release the album in physical form first, then allow it to go up on streaming services about a month later.
“A big part of it was showing appreciation for fans and friends that do buy the record,” he explained to Times of San Diego in an exclusive interview. “I’m sure you’re aware of the impact that streaming has had on the industry and for artists, especially smaller artists, to make incomes is interesting.
“The glaring issue is that so many people listen to streaming instead of making purchases to artists or labels or anybody,” so a big part of releasing the album early for fans “was to say ‘thank you’ to the people who still go out of their way to make purchases from us.”
The vinyl version of “A Way In” was released to record stores on April 24, and on the same day, the digital version went up for sale on the Bandcamp account for Yacoub’s label, San Diego-based All-Town Sound.
The album will be available on Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming services on May 26.
“It’s a little weird to not just go straight to streaming because that’s how the most people are going to be able to hear your music immediately, right? That’s why you want to do streaming – it gives you access to the biggest audience in the world, really,” he added. “So, it’s kind of possibly not smart in some ways to do what I’m doing. But as I keep explaining to people, the people who are streaming are not buying my music. They’re just not.”
His approach, while different, isn’t unprecedented. In March, country music artist Sturgill Simpson, under his Johnny Blues Skies & the Dark Clouds recording alias, released his latest album, “Mutiny After Midnight,” solely on vinyl, cassette and CD, and in the process landed at No. 3 on the Billboard album chart, despite zero digital sales and no availability on streamingplatforms.
The cover of Mitchum Yacoub’s latest release, “No Way In,” which was released April 24. (Photo courtesy of Mitchum Yacoub)“A Way In,” which is Yacoub’s second full-length album, is hard to categorize, as was his first, “Living High in the Brass Empire.”
His music is a combination of sounds from across the globe, as well as Ethio-Jazz, Afro-Latin, soul, cumbia, salsa, funk and other genres. He plays drums, percussion, guitar, bass, keys and congas, while members of his band, the Brass Empire, play the saxophone, trumpet, flute and other instruments.
“For me creatively, I really just try to make music that I’ve never heard before,” he explained of his sound. “It’s tough to explain what we do, really.”
Half of the album’s 10 tracks are instrumentals, while the other half features guest vocals by a couple of up-and-coming San Diego singers: Divina (also known as Divina Jasso, who has collaborated in the past with the local band Boostive) appears on three songs on “A Way In,” and Panamanian-American vocalist Lourdes Iri makes her recording debut on two tracks.
Yacoub, a Fallbrook resident of Egyptian-American heritage, grew up in the Santa Cruz area before moving to San Diego. Over the years, he traveled the world as a musician, including supporting Afrobeat band Seun Kuti and Egypt 80, before releasing his debut album in mid-2023.
Yacoub recorded, produced and mixed that first album himself, as he did with “A Way In.” He’ll perform his latest music with the Brass Empire at an album release show set for Saturday at the Quartyard; tickets remain available.
“We’re a large band, and I try to use each player wisely,” Yacoub in explaining what people coming to the show can expect. “It’s a lot of energy. We try to keep people moving in the crowd. It’s definitely a night for dancing. We’re probably going to have 10-11 people on stage that night which, especially these days you don’t see many people doing or touring with, because it’s not exactly cheap and it’s not easy to keep that many people together in a band.
“I feel like we’re fortunate to have a good crew and you kind of see that on stage,” he continued. “We’re all really a family and we just we bring that to our shows. It’s really like a village on stage. There’s a community, and we’re on stage just having a great time together.”
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