intotheworldofshecky

[intotheworldofshecky]

Becoming a Drummer, Personal Essay

When I was younger, about five or six years old, my dad decided to buy me a bright blue kids' drum set for Christmas. He had noticed that I had been using pillows and bongos as drums in my room by myself and thought it would be a good idea for me to try the real thing. The kit was set up in the middle of the room and after I was done opening my other presents I immediately went over and started playing with it. I wasn’t immediately the best drummer and couldn't really play anything significant, but my dad could tell I was into it and decided to get me lessons.

The first ever drum teacher I had was my barber, who also cut my brother's and dad's hair when we were younger. He was a tall guy with a beard named Mike who was in his late 30s or early 40s I believe, and he was a very simple drummer. He played in a local cover band that played at bars and parking lot venues, and he knew my dad was a musician with a big music background. He taught me the simple foundation of drumming, things that I still think of today, and he introduced me to rock music. I had been exposed to rock music in the past from all of my dad's diverse tastes in music. However, Mike introduced me to the kind of rock music that my dad did not regularly listen to such as Guns N’ Roses, ACDC, Van Halen, Black Sabbath, and more. He was my teacher for probably 3 to 4 years and he and my dad are most definitely the two that influenced my taste in music that is older.

When I began to get better and my dad started to notice, I started playing with other people at concerts or music camps. I still remember the first time I ever played drums live with a band. It was at a beach resort bar called the Naswa that was right on the water at Lake Winnipesaukee. I played with my dad's band known as “Signs of Life” which did a gig at that resort every year. All of the families of the members of the band have always been super close. Me and my brother have always referred to members of the band as our uncles and grew up going to their houses and watching them play live in concert, so it was a big moment for me. I got up with the band to play one song that was called “Shine” by Collective Soul. I practiced the song a couple of weeks ahead of the gig with my drum teacher Mike and was prepared to play it live the day of the gig. The gig was a great success and one of the happiest memories that I have ever had.

Moving forward I played live in concerts with a rock and roll summer camp that I went to, and I was even in a Worcester jazz ensemble known as Joy of Music and we did over 20 different gigs all around the central Massachusetts area. I started to move into jazz because I knew it would make me a better drummer and this is where I switched from Mike as a drum teacher to someone who was more advanced, the drummer from my dad's band. His name was Phil and just like my dad he was a Berklee College of Music alum and toured with Signs of Life and other bands across the world. When I started taking lessons with him I began getting more serious, playing songs and compositions that were challenging and finding new rhythms and beats to learn. My progression and skill as a drummer come mostly from the lessons that I learned from Phil for the 4 or 5 years that I took lessons with him until freshman year of high school when I decided to stop taking lessons.

While I may have stopped taking lessons, I have never stopped drumming and loving to play drums. I would simply play during my free time or on weekends. I learned to teach myself things and continue with the lessons that I had already been taught by Phil. Even these days I will still continue my drumming talents and simply learn songs that I like or challenge myself with something that I can't play and learn it. My most recent accolades are that I played on my dad's fourth album and plan to play on the seventh one. Drumming has been and will always be a huge part of my life because of the talent that I have and the inspiration that my dad gives me.

[intotheworldofshecky]

Review of the Shecky Albums

For this review, I will be looking at some of the best and most notable aspects of the four albums that Shecky and the pimp monkeys has released. All of the albums have eleven songs on them and the albums are about forty-five to fifty minutes long in total with the average of each song being the standard three minutes. Shecky and the pimp Monkeys is a band created by Mark Yurkovic who is a long-time piano player and a Berklee College of Music graduate with a music production degree. The other members of the band are all Berklee alum as well as members of other bands, hence the name “Pimp Monkeys.” Yurkovic was in a band previously with all of these members back in the 80s and 90s known as “Signs of Life” where he was the keyboards and piano player. This band toured all around New England as well as making 2 of their own albums. Signs of Life still does some gigs today, but as the band members grew up and had kids, they had to stop making music of their own and became a cover ban. But Yurkovic's passion for creating music was not finished, hence why Shecky and the Pimp Monkeys was created as a band of his own.

The name of the first album that I will be reviewing is called “Yummy” and it is Shecky’s first ever time releasing music as a solo artist. The album was released in 1998 and was produced right in his home studio in Clinton Massachusetts, as are all of his albums. On all of the songs, all of the piano, sound effects, keyboards, and singing are done by Shecky himself. For the guitar, bass, drums, saxophone, backup singing, and any other instruments, these are done by the other band members, also known as “the pimp monkeys.” The other members of the band that play on this album are Phil Antoniades (drums) Tim Day (backup vocals) Jeff St Pierre (bass) Jim Worcester (Guitar). Personally, my favorite song on the album is called “Tiny Elvis” and it is the ballad of the album. It's a slower song that's about watching young kids grow up and raising a child. This is the last song on the album and when listening from start to finish, I believe this is the best choice to finish off the album as a lot of the other songs are great fast rock songs such as “Nobody’s Laughing at That” which I would put at my second favorite. It is a faster rock song with a great guitar solo in the middle. Overall, this album is amazing, coming out strong with his first release shows how much musical talent Shecky has. 

The name of Shecky's second album is “Itchy” and it was released in 2004. This album has a lot of songs that I would label as some of his best hits. My personal favorite on this album and also one of my, if not my most, favorite Shecky songs ever is called “Didn’t See it Coming.” This is a faster song with great guitar, vocals, and sound effects in it, and yet another great guitar solo in it. The other song that is one of Shecky’s best hits is called “A Little Attention” and it is the fifth song on the album. This is by far the most “rock” song on the album and I would describe it as fitting into a sort of 90s grunge kind of song. It's not the fastest song, but it has a lot of powerful and heavy guitar and vocals in it that explode in the chorus. For the album as a whole, I would personally say that the first album was overall better than the second, however, I think that the second album has better hits and has some of my favorite songs on it compared to the first.

The Name of the third album is “Wiggy” and I think that it is the best album that he has put out so far most definitely. From a personal standpoint, the songs on this album are the ones that I grew up listening to. I was twelve years old when this album was released and it features a couple of songs about me and my brother growing up or being born. I know all of the songs on this album by heart and it is some of the best work that Shecky has done so far in my opinion. One of the songs on the album that is me and my brother's favorite is called “Mr B” and it is about us being born. Mr B was the name of our grandfather and the song is about My dad, aka Shecky, talking to him about how he is going to be a grandfather and how his life is changing. Overall this album is most definitely my favorite of his so far, every song on this album is a hit for me and I could listen to it on repeat all day.

The name of Shecky’s most recent album is “Pinchy” and it was released early this year in 2024. This album highlights the songwriting talents that Shecky has by having some of the most interesting songs and lyrics that he has put out. The big hit on this album would be “She Believes in Us” which is the third song on the album. This song starts off as an acoustic guitar and singer duo and it develops into a great rock tune with a story behind it that listeners can visualize. The imagery that Shecky uses in this song is one of my favorites on the entire album. This album as a whole is up there with one of his best albums that he has released yet. 

The name of the next album that Shecky is yet to release will be called “Cranky” and he has said that it will be the best album he has made. He will also be releasing a Christmas album called “Nippy” in December with a few parodies of Christmas classics done the Shecky way. All of Shecky's music can be found on platforms such as Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, and more!

[intotheworldofshecky]

Music Production, the Shecky Way

This is the earliest picture of Mark Yurkovic, aka Shecky, working in his studio that was found. Throughout the years the studio has changed multiple times with new technology and recording and producing styles. When he moved into his house in Clinton Massachusetts, the studio building started and has been progressing ever since. Every piece of equipment in the studio was collected by Yurkovic throughout his music career and he can utilize every instrument and piece of equipment in the room.

Yurkovic is constantly in search of ideas and phrases which he documents in journals for later use. There are songs written literally from ideas 20 years ago. To this day he still has all of the journals over the years, like a journal of his life, dated, showing when ideas were first created. This begins the music production process, notice the notebook and pen on top of the red keyboard, all of the songs that he writes begin with a thought that he writes down such as a lyric or a topic. He has been writing music for over thirty years now and this is how it all starts. Once the lyric or idea is written down, Yurkovic prefers the old-school style of writing where you use an instrument with your song to help you write melodies and choruses. But in the end, it all starts with a pen and paper, then it moves to an instrument, and then the process takes off.

In his early albums, Yurkovic did a lot of his songwriting by himself. His first two albums “Yummy” and “Itchy” were written mostly by him with a couple being co-written with band members. This has not changed, but these days a lot of songs are co-written by Yurkovic and the band's amazing guitar player Chris Ledbetter. They will meet once a week on Thursdays or Wednesdays and go to the studio and start writing. Whether it is from one of Yurkovic’s ideas that he writes down or a guitar riff that Ledbetter wrote or came up with, the songwriting process continues and they utilize all the equipment in the studio to the fullest. 

All of the equipment in the studio is assembled and hand-crafted by Yurkovic. The synthesizer board on the right is his own custom design that he uses when recording. All of the woodwork in the studio such as the shelves that hold up his CDs and keyboards, and the custom woodwork for his equipment is all crafted by Yurkovic himself. One of his earliest jobs right after graduating from Berklee College, with a music production degree, was helping to construct, set up, build, and wire recording studios for the company he was working for. This is what eventually led to him building his studio.

The studio is complete with different types of keyboards and guitars that are used for different sounds in all his songs. A lot of the equipment in the studio is a little old school, aside from the new additions that are constantly being made, the studio's foundation was made from the old-school style of recording that Yurkovic learned from his time at Berklee.

After the songwriting and recording process, creating an album takes a lot more steps. From mixing to mastering, putting together an album takes a lot of effort and time. After all of that comes the performance, this image is from a Shecky and the Pimp Monkeys album release party in 2016. His band members are former Berklee graduates and friends as well as bandmates. This band not only helps record and perform with Shecky, but they also do shows of their own with Yurkovic. In October of this year, they are holding there annual 80s show where they practice, produce, and finally perform popular songs from the 80s.

Back in his college and post-college days, before Shecky and the Pimp Monkeys existed, Yurkovic was in a band known as Signs of Life where he and his bandmates would do the whole writing, recording, and performing process too. They also used to do a lot of cover songs at venues all across New England.

The Drummer for Shecky and the pimp monkeys as well as Signs of Life, Phil Antodiades. He does all the drum recordings for Shecky and is also a Berklee alum. Antodiades was Yurkovic’s son’s drum teacher and has hosted a lot of the concerts for the band at his barn.

Other band members include singer Tim Day, lead singer for Signs of Life backup for Shecky (white shirt). Bass player Jeff Saint Pierre (Black shirt), in the Signs of Life days he and Yurkovic did a lot of the writing for the band. Guitar player Jim Worcester (Blue Shirt) was not a member of Signs of Life back in the day but has played guitar with the band for a long time and has played on multiple of Shecky’s albums. While not in the picture, another member of the band is Mario Parrett who plays saxophone on all of Sheckys albums and was in signs of life as well as being Yurkovics old college roommate.

Shecky is expecting to release a Christmas album this December and has just released his fourth album called “Pinchy.” all of his music can be found on Apple Music, Spotify, and many other platforms, just search “Shecky and the Pimp Monkeys” and it will come right up. He continues to create and enjoy creating amazing music and has said that his goal is to get to at least 13 or 15 albums before he is finished so stay tuned in!

Here is the link to find all things Shecky! : 

[intotheworldofshecky]

Q and A with Shecky

Shecky and the Pimp Monkeys is a band created and orchestrated by a Massachusetts local, Mark Yurkovic. Yurkovic graduated from Berkeley College of Music in the 80s with a music production degree and currently has 4 total albums out with a 5th Christmas special album on the way in the coming year or 2. Yurkovic goes by the name of “Shecky” and the “Pimp Monkeys” are the backing band for the music. The reason they are referred to as pimps is because they are all a part of other bands but he utilizes their talents for his music as well. On his records, Yurkovic can be found playing keyboards, piano, and guitar. The other instruments are played by other band members who he has met throughout the years. In his college days and after, he was in a band known as “Signs of Life.” The members of this band later became some of the “pimp monkeys” in his band. Signs of life played all around New England and even warmed up for Van Halen once in the parking lot. His style of music is most comparable to bands like  The Beatles, XTC, Jellyfish, and Robyn Hitchcock. Shecky does his songwriting with his close friend and the band's guitar player Chris Ledbetter. They meet once or twice a week to go through the creative process, see what works, and find and write songs that could potentially be on an album. They have content for over a hundred songs and while he only has 4 albums out now, he has said that there is enough written content for another 2 to 3 more albums. His albums take you on a journey from the first song to the last so you won't want to miss out on any of it!

What is the full process of writing a song like from coming up with lyrics to recording, and how long does it usually take? 

 That's a loaded question. Sometimes they come in full waves and other times you might have just a verse or a chorus. There are so many ways to approach writing a song. I think the old method of writing has gotten lost in computers and I can say the best songs are the ones when you limit yourself to writing with a single instrument or a guitar, and only use the computer to enhance the process. It seems a lot of young artists start with computers and you can tell. The songs sound very "linear" in their approach. So it's a balance. Tough question to answer because there are so many different ways to approach it. The upside for old-school writers like myself is using technology to streamline the process. I think if you ask most “writers” outside of the music genre, the successful ones write every day. It’s a discipline. You have to constantly catalog ideas and keep track of them. My entire songwriting career is located so far in about 6 different “journals”. You can go back and see the date I came up with the idea, and then watch how it developed over time. Songs are an interesting format. If you’re writing within the pop and rock elements, it’s literally like writing a mini novel. You have to convey imagery in very few sentences as well as develop a story. I would imagine most songwriters if they tried would be amazing short story writers or mini novelists. They have to be compact in their ideas. People might hear it when they listen to a song but don’t always think about why they like it. Like an iambic pentameter, there is a link to the rhythm with the words and you have to marry the two and make them symbiotic. The proof is in younger songwriters when they hear an obvious lyric or if that lyric sounds forced against that rhythm. So it’s a dance between the two. Add harmonic structures and melody, and now you’ve added two more aspects or partners to that dance. When I work with artists as a producer, I zero in on what they are trying to convey and make suggestions without changing the ownership of the idea. This is a very delicate dance in itself. Sometimes, you’ll hear a songwriter accentuating a word that has no weight to the context of the idea and since the format is limited, you have to point out that you can’t really afford to waste the impact of that moment on a non-critical word. I think some songs fall out of the sky and into your lap, but what I’ve noticed more is that if you’re disciplined with your structure, your production will increase dramatically. One last thought on this subject. You have to constantly evolve your approach. Using different instrumentation, core instruments, and groove creation is critical. Otherwise, you’ll never progress in your writing and the listeners will know.

What is the most challenging part of creating an album? 

I think for most artists "arranging" and instrumentation is the biggest struggle but as you evolve and get better at it, it becomes more of a pleasure to complete that aspect of it. If you really get that right, then mixing an album is easy because all the parts make sense and it's not cluttered. It seems most artists fall into a trap, myself included, where you think adding more parts is the solution. I can confirm wholeheartedly that it’s never the case. The comment I have here is it’s better to come up with one guitar part that’s really good and recorded really well, with the tone that works for the context of the song, instead of layering three guitar parts to try to achieve the same results. The latter never works and you can validate this by listening to some of the best albums ever made. The space between the music is as important as the music itself.

After writing a bunch of songs, how do you make the decision on which ones go on the final album? 

That's interesting with the resurgence of vinyl. You can put up to 22 mins per side on vinyl. In the old days information on CDs was large so you could have over 20+ songs which to me is simply too many. In a popular format, most people I believe get bored with more than 45 minutes of music. I still make albums like the old days, assuming the listener will listen from start to finish. When you take this approach you have to look at the beats per minute to determine the "pace" of the album. To me, that's a very critical part. I like an album to be a journey from start to finish so you have to use the tempo of each song to pace the album. I would also go back to my earlier comment about discipline. I’m about to release my first Christmas album and there is a song on there that is more than 25 years old. It was always a good song, so like many songs on my albums they resurface years later, but you have to catalog them. I have a song of which I wrote the music more than 20 years ago and to this day I still don’t have a single lyric. Recently I was going to work on a title called “The Song That Never Was” just to see if it might fit! Will it make it on a recent album? I don’t know. It's a bit of a jigsaw puzzle for me. I will find songs that are the right tempo, and fit in the right spot in the flow of the album. I will say, there is a bit of a formula, especially for a rock album. You can’t bore the listener, so where you put the songs is critical. If you look at any of my albums, they all have only 11 songs. Why? Besides the ongoing Spinal Tap joke, that this album goes to 11, most of my albums, based on tempo, are less than 45 minutes. I feel like the listener is done with the journey by then. This seemed to work out tremendously over time, now that vinyl is back in vogue as a format

What are some of the best-recorded albums that exist? 

St Pepper (Beatles), Pet Songs (Beach Boys), Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd) , Back In Black (AC/DC), Nevermind (Nirvana) , Spilt Milk (Jellyfish), Skylarking (XTC)...... impossible question to answer...could go on...Kind of Blue (Miles Davis).....it's a rabbit hole. There’s one where the space is equally as important as when Miles plays. An album like “Rumors” by Fleetwood Mac is right up there with Sgt Peppers because they rewound the analog two-inch tape so many times, that they had to transfer the tracks to new tape because they were wearing out the magnetic slurry on the base coating of the tape. So it’s an interesting subject that part of the journey for me is to be more efficient from start to finish without having to take forever to mix and master an album. When you’re a writer, engineer, and producer there are advantages and disadvantages. You have to be able to let certain aspects of the process go if you want to evolve.

How different is it when playing in a studio versus playing live at a venue?

The studio is a controlled environment, you can make adjustments and control more aspects of sculpting your sound. Live, you're at the mercy of the venue. The acoustics, how big the audience is. Very different situations. You tend to microscope your approach in the studio, and if you do this too much, you take away the essence of the performance. I used to think it was funny when I would hear people say that certain bands don’t sound good in the studio, they sound better in a live environment. There is the element of energy in the audience, but good musicians will capture that in the studio and feed off of each other’s energy. Take a band like Little Feat, I simply don’t hear the difference. They sound like their records and convey that energy in both environments. So is it different, yes, very different, but it’s a different approach each in environment.

 What music artist inspired you to start playing?

The Beatles were the real jumpstarter for me. But what's typical is when you have an older brother and he buys vinyl in the 70s, you have a tendency to sneak in and listen to what he had. So bands like Little Feat, Boston, and Styx. Another long list. My top influences are the Beatles, XTC, Robyn Hitchcock, Thomas Dolby, and Jellyfish. In 1968, when I was 3, I had a “close and play” plastic 45 record player. I used to sleep with it. Never let it out of my hands for years. So I had a lot of 45 singles at a very early age. This probably shaped my pop sensibility more than I realize. Then my parents bought an 8-album vinyl that was all 50’s music. I wore those out over time as well. But in general, I was always interested in what made a song a hit and to this day will push co-writers working with me to define a strong chorus. I won’t even waste my time on a song unless you can deliver something strong.

 Which of your albums is your favorite, and why?

Right now, to date “WIGGY” is my favorite, but there is an album after the current Christmas release called “NIPPY” that I think is my Sgt Pepper. I started co-writing a lot more and now have a songwriting partner where we push each other. So I’m looking forward to an album coming out in 2025 called “CRANKY”. To me, it’s a masterpiece from start to finish. From the song structures to the melodies to the lyrics. Closest I’ve gotten to a Sgt Pepper. I will always continue to write and try to recreate Sgt Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour. I look for albums with zero "filler" songs. The albums have to have brilliant songs from start to finish, brilliant arrangements, and intense detail in production. This is the core of what Shecky & The Pimp Monkey albums strive for. And for the most part, you can hear this success in the recordings. I felt this was revived in an album by Jellyfish called “Spilt Milk”. So I set a high benchmark to create similar albums. It’s what keeps me pushing to strive for better production and better songwriting. I’m also blessed with extremely talented musicians who are at the top of their game. So I can achieve performances similar to Fagen and Becker on Steely Dan albums. Another big influence in my writing. Being accepted to Julliard by shifting gears to go to Berklee was one of the best decisions of my life. The four years of jazz instruction, with no prior knowledge, coming from a classical background really changed my life. It was a big leap and pushed my overall ability to achieve what I do now with all of the Shecky albums.

 How has your approach to music production evolved over the years? Are there any significant changes in the way you create music now compared to when you started?

I grew up in the ear of analog two-inch tape machines. Nobody recorded back on computers when I was a kid. So this means there were things we couldn't do today. You had tape saturation as part of the recording process. But you never had ways to manipulate the material, or fix mistakes. So it's a completely different world. I try to go old school on products and record the old way but only use the new technology to streamline the difficult things we never had control over. This is lost in the new generation. They seem to want to fix things, instead of asking the artist to record the take again and get the musical dynamic organically. So as an old-school musician, there are some great habits and techniques that give us an advantage over the upcoming generation. It’s fascinating right now to see a brand new generation struggle with the element of AI in both art and music. So many use music they didn’t create. I’m not knocking the core element morphing into a new and original piece of music, but I feel like everyone in the younger generation is starting here as a crutch. Where I’m at now is the best of all worlds. I use the technology for the convenience of writing anywhere and having the ability to really capture the sonic element of an idea instantly. You can tell if that idea holds up when you get back to it, but now, you don’t have to re-record it. If you got the element right the first time, it gets incorporated into my final tracks.