Michael Yonkers

Michael Yonkers (born 1947) is an American rock musician from Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. His work has been praised for its groundbreaking and highly experimental nature. His most well-known work is the psychedelic rock record Microminiature Love, recorded in 1968 but not released until 2002, which became a cult success and brought Yonkers new attention.

Early life
Yonkers grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His parents were a stay-at-home mom and a supermarket worker.

Career
Cole Alexander of psychedelic-rock band Black Lips has said that Yonkers “kind of invented noise and drone guitar techniques," stating further that "when you think of how The Who, Jimi Hendrix and The Velvet Underground were pushing feedback at the time, he was more extreme than all three combined in terms of what he was doing.” However, his work did not reach a wide audience until decades after he began recording, due in part to a debilitating spinal injury that kept him in constant, lifelong pain.

Yonkers was inspired to become a musician in 1963 when he heard the surf-rock song "Surfin' Bird" by Minnesota garage-rock band The Trashmen. Inspired also by the distorted sound of old blues records, Yonkers began experimenting with ways to alter the sound of his guitar, including taking a razor blade to his speakers.

His early bands included a surf-rock combo called The Vectors and Michael and the Mumbles, a psychedelic-rock group with whom he recorded Microminiature Love in 1968. The album was recorded in less than an hour of studio time. The band played each song only once. Sire Records showed an interest in releasing the album, but contract negotiations broke down in part because Yonkers was still only 20 years old and not legally able to sign without his parents' permission. The Mumbles broke up shortly afterwards. Yonkers was then drafted into the army, but was discharged and did not have to serve in the Vietnam War because of a medical issue.

In 1971, Yonkers was badly injured when about 2,000 pounds of computer equipment fell on him at the warehouse where he was working, breaking his back in two places. A subsequent severe allergy to a dye used during his back surgery left him in chronic pain for decades afterward. He continued to record music and continue his electronic experiments in a home-built studio. He self-released four albums, including 1977's Lovely Gold, and collaborated with Barry Thomas Goldberg on his 1974 record Misty Flats. None of his work attracted a wide audience at the time.

Yonkers' groundbreaking work with guitar distortion was rediscovered in the early 2000s. Microminiature Love was released on vinyl by De Stijl Records in 2002, and later Sub Pop, who released it on CD in July 2003. This led to re-releases of other early albums, including the psych-folk album Grimwood, originally recorded in 1971 and reissued in 2007, as well as the early 1970s works Michael Lee Yonkers and Borders Of My Mind, both reissued on Drag City in 2014. Yonkers' most recent work includes three collaborations with Minneapolis indie-rock group The Blind Shake, Carbohydrate Hydrocarbons, Cold Town/Soft Zodiac, and Period.

In 2015, Mystra Records released a limited-edition set of Yonkers' experimental work from 2003-2007, Neverending Light Beam From Planet 00s/Deep Within Home Pianet/Plan A. Shindig! writer Jeanette Leech called the music "great: scratchy and uncompromising, but by no means untuneful or unstructured."

Legacy
Musician John Dwyer, leader of San Francisco garage rock band The Oh Sees, paid tribute to Yonkers by covering 10 of his songs on the 2020 album Bug On Yonkers by his solo project Damaged Bug. Dwyer told the magazine American Songwriter about meeting Yonkers: “He was kind and seemingly a pretty regular guy, but he was also a weirdo, a rare bird, waving the true freak music flag, and it didn’t matter what kind of music he made, I loved it all.”

Discography

 * Michael Lee Yonkers (1972, reissued 2014)
 * Goodby Sunball (1974)
 * Borders of My Mind (1974, reissued 2014)
 * Microminiature Love (2002, Sub Pop)
 * It's Only the Yonkers (2005)
 * Grimwood (2007, De Stijl Records)
 * Carbohydrate Hydrocarbons (2008, Farmgirl)
 * Cold Town/Soft Zodiac (2009, Learning Curve)
 * Bleed Out (2009)
 * Lovely Gold (2010)
 * Period (2011)
 * Neverending Light Beam From Planet 00s/Deep Within Home Pianet/Plan A (2015, Mystra Records)