yewknee
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An internet waystation.

it me - michael eades

👋 Hi, I'm Michael Eades; a long time Internet dweller, design dabbler, dangerously amateur developer, online social experimenter and frequent curator.

Currently working as VP of Product at Smarter Apps. I also keep the lights on at a boutique record label called yk records, a podcast network called We Own This Town and a t-shirt shop called Nashville Galaxy. Previously, I built things for Vimeo OTT, VHX, KNI and Spongebath Records.

This site is an archive of ephemera I find entertaining; tweets, videos, random links, galleries of images.

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find me elsewhere

 

contact

Reach out via threads or good ole email if you have anything to discuss. I do my best to reply in a timely manner.

for the record: "yewknee" is a nonsensical word with no literal meaning but a unsurprisingly nerdy etymology. It is pronounced, "yoo • knee."

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ongoing projects

yk Records →
started in 2009 as a conduit for music that friends had no plans on releasing. now it's a full fledged boutique label focused on releasing quality music from a variety of styles. you know, like a label does. Here's a sampler on Soundcloud and a different one on Spotify. Options.

We Own This Town →
Originally a Nashville area music blog, this site has grown into a full blown podcast network as of 2018. It's an attempt to bring together creative folks about a variety of interesting topics.

I host this show all about Nashville local music outside the expectations of the city. I'm biased but all the shows are good.

Nashville Galaxy →
An online t-shirt shop featuring beloved and defunct Nashville area businesses. Very niche audience on this one but I tend to think niche is good.

some noteworthy other things

Chris Gaines: The Podcast →
published along with co-host Ashley Spurgeon; a limited series podcast that takes an absurdly researched deep dive into the time that Garth Brooks took on a fictional personality named Chris Gaines.

Garth Brooks Chris Gaines Countdown →
to celebrate the 20-year anniversary of the time Garth Brooks took on the fictional personality Chris Gaines and appeared on Saturday Night Live in character, I GIF'ed the entire episode. It's a lot of GIFs; please use them.

Whiskerino →
a social network built around communal beard growing for four months. yes, it was as weird as it sounds but equally fascinating and enjoyable.

Moustache May →
an offshoot of the beard growing contest mentioned above. equal amounts of oddball fun but only a month long.

Summer Mix Series →
before all music was streaming everywhere, Internet music fans would swap zip files of music. it was truly a strange and wonderful time.

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For those not interested in a long writeup, here's the TLDR: DM Stith has joined the roster of artists over on my lil label yk Records. He built out his home studio and mined his archives for a variety of songs; the first of which is "Gravity" - a track recorded with Richard Swift circa 2012. It's streaming everywhere right now, so please go enjoy it.
Here's the longer version of that, from a more personal perspective:
I met DM Stith at a sidewalk bar in Manhattan, having a cocktail with friends of mine from Tennessee that he had recorded with on complete happenstance. Though I likely should have thought better of it, I gushed at what a fan of his work I was. His history touring with Sufjan Stevens and collaborating with the likes of Son Lux or Sarah Kirkland Snider were unknown to me; I was simply a fan of his solo albums Pigeonheart and Heavy Ghost. The musical elements of both albums paired with his completely haunting vocal performances always captivated me. I had always wondered why there wasn't more of it.

Over the ensuing years, we struck up a proper friendship and could spend hours together without a chaperone of common friends. Through this experience I learned that there was more DM Stith, plenty more. There were songs recorded in various studios with noteworthy collaborators like Richard Swift. There were new tracks in half finished states born from his learnings recording Pigeonheart that took the expansive state of "My Impatience" even further. There was even an entire album of songs crafted, recorded and prepared for release that lived between the two official albums that met an unfortunate, and undeserved, fate. With a little coaxing, we decided that the fate had not been sealed for these songs.

Over time, Stith moved into a new apartment and built a small studio in his bedroom. This space allowed him to mine through the archives of works we'd discussed and cull together a collection of songs never meant to be lost. Some needed nothing more than a gentle touch, while others are reworked into entirely new arrangements.

This collection of revived compositions will be released over the final months of 2018 and throughout the early part of 2019. To speak a bit metaphorically, sometimes you must sacrifice your creations into the river of time to let them come back to you, ready to be pulled from the mire and given a fresh breath of proper life back into them. I'm humbled and extremely excited to be a small part of that process.

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