Eli Yacinthe and the Pursuit of Patience

Eli Yacinthe has been playing guitar for over half his life. 15 years, to be exact.

When he was young, his mom would play him James Taylor, Jim Croce, Biggie Smalls, and The Beatles. “I was always singing when I was little,” Yacinthe said. “I had no streaming or anything like that, essentially. So it was like, whatever I could kind of remember in my head was what I listened to. CDs from my mom's car, whatever music was immediately accessible to me.”

After seeing one Tommy Emmanuel as a young, burgeoning guitarist, Yacinthe made the decision to devote himself to music. “That was definitely a pivotal moment where I was like, ‘Oh, well, I want to take guitar really seriously,’” he said. 

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Yacinthe was raised in the city of Statesville, North Carolina, where downtown consisted of just four square blocks. The size of Statesville, however, did not stop it from becoming its own little musical hotspot: “You could see 12 different musical acts within those four square blocks,” he noted. Growing up in such a music-oriented town had an impact on Yacinthe’s interests. “I'd be hanging out with the older kids in the bars downtown, hearing whatever they were hearing. Whatever they thought was cool, I thought it was cool,” he explained.

Now, as an accomplished musician and Berklee College of Music graduate, Yacinthe is carving out his own path.

His new album, Patience, was released this past July. The 15-track-long project, which includes demos from over 5 years ago, is Yacinthe’s first album and his biggest body of work so far.

The album's most prominent theme is the idea of patience in relation to Yacinthe’s work as an artist— how, “Sometimes I'm gonna be in seasons where I'm putting out a lot of stuff, or getting a lot done towards this project, and other times I'm not,” he explained. “Patience is sort of like an acknowledgement of that being okay.”

The album's diversity in sound and genre can be attributed to Yacinthe’s tendency to take inspiration from the music that he’s most connected to at the moment.  “I have a song in there called ‘Falling Apart’ that has more amps on the vocals and some big electric guitars and stuff. That was when I was listening really heavily to Tame Impala,” he said. He also cited D’Angelo, A Tribe Called Quest, and The Pharcyde as big inspirations for the more R&B/hip-hop elements of his work.

Patience also focuses on the power of speaking up. "One of the themes within the album is how it’s better to speak up and say the truth, as opposed to just sitting back and not doing anything,” Yacinthe explained. The track “Borrowed Time” tackles this theme head on, with lyrics like “There’s so much pain in silence // And so much love in truth // That my time is borrowed // And these chords are too.”

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Yacinthe mixed the entire album himself– a feat that he admits was “kind of greedy.”

“For smaller artists, the ethos is sort of to not necessarily be at the end of each point of your work. So like, if you produce it, have someone else mix it and have someone else master it. Have another ear on it. This album I was kind of greedy with, and I just really wanted to do it myself,” he said.

Patience is an ironic subject matter for a recent Berklee College of Music graduate; the school’s culture often encourages students to produce as much art as possible with little time to breathe. 

“You just have so much work and you're just constantly trying to put stuff out, and that can do weird things to creative people. Because, at least for me, I found it to be true that there's a sort of a natural flow of things as to how I create,” Yacinthe said. “At times that just hits me really heavily, and I make a lot, and at other times I can't seem to make anything. And I'm pretty okay with that.” 

The central theme of Patience is almost an antithesis to the Berklee experience.

Despite the environment of Berklee putting so much pressure on students to create, Yacinthe has always been content with his motivational ebb and flow. “I know some artists struggle with that feeling. They want to create all the time, you know,” he remarked. 

Yacinthe’s time at Berklee allowed him to build strong connections with other artists; his live band has grown to an impressive 7 people, who he still manages to play with semi-regularly. 

“I love the guys that I play with. They're just some of the most talented musicians I've ever come across. And for me, just the fact that I get to play in a band with some of my favorite players respectively on their instruments is such a huge blessing,” he exclaimed. “They just all have impeccable ears. They have like 2000 terabytes of musical knowledge in their mind about any record ever. You ask them, they know who played drums, they know who played bass, they know.”

Yacinthe recently made the move to New York, which he describes as more “industry-based” compared to Boston, which is more education-focused. Even though Yacinthe burst the Berklee bubble when he graduated last Spring, he clarified that the bubbles don’t stop after college. 

“There's a scene here in New York, and that scene is a bubble too. I think that bubble is just a bit more tapped into external sources. There's still a bubble. I just think that bubble can be a little more intimidating,” he noted.

The so-called New York bubble seems to be plagued with a lot of the same issues as the Berklee bubble. “There's so much ego. I noticed that about Boston when I went there too, and that's always like a weird thing to navigate. But I always think it makes me stronger to work through that, being in the big city with all these artists who are very confident in what they do,” he explained. “And if they're not confident about what they do, then they wear that confidence 10 times more to compensate.” 

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The move to New York has been positive for Yacinthe overall; It’s allowed him to meet new creatives and further explore some of his favorite music. “That kind of music that I love lives here, like jazz, hip hop, you know? … It's like a different scene of people, different vibes,” he said.

Since moving to New York, Yacinthe and his roommate Aaron have been working on establishing their new record label, 1526 Records. Owning a record label has always been a dream of Yacinthe’s.

“When I met Aaron, Aaron Lerer, who's one of my best friends in the world, we kind of shared that dream and thought it would be a really cool project to go into New York with,” he explained.

Now that he’s out of school, Yacinthe is making his dreams a reality.

“I'm excited for the first time to consistently release music every few weeks or at least once a month. I've never really done that,” he remarked. “I'm really inspired right now, and I have a lot of energy to work with these artists. I think I'll make some of my best stuff right now.”