Biography
Born to counterculture parents in northern California, Nico Yaryan enjoyed a classic western upbringing throughout the 1980s. As a boy he skateboarded, took retail work, and hunted dollar bins for records he could sample into his own hip-hop productions, which at the time reflected the styles of J Dilla and DJ Premier.
Direction arrived when his high school acquaintance, blues-rock guitarist Hanni El Khatib, asked him to drum on an upcoming tour. Nearly two years of worldwide travel followed, during which Yaryan built solid guitar ability. He also began seeing a woman in Amsterdam. Once his time with Hanni El Khatib ended, Yaryan rushed back to the Dutch capital, yet visa rules forced him out of Europe after only a month, despite the couple having fallen deeply in love. The year that followed consisted of shifts on a marijuana farm in Humboldt County, California, where he saved for the next flight to Amsterdam and then repeated the cycle upon his return.
Geographic and financial pressures ultimately ended the relationship, and Yaryan wrote his debut full-length, the 2016 album What a Tease, against this backdrop of instability. Drawing on the storytelling traditions of soul and blues figures such as Bill Withers and Al Green, together with the solo work of John Lennon and Neil Young, the songs deliver candid accounts of hope, persistence, and final heartbreak.
Direction arrived when his high school acquaintance, blues-rock guitarist Hanni El Khatib, asked him to drum on an upcoming tour. Nearly two years of worldwide travel followed, during which Yaryan built solid guitar ability. He also began seeing a woman in Amsterdam. Once his time with Hanni El Khatib ended, Yaryan rushed back to the Dutch capital, yet visa rules forced him out of Europe after only a month, despite the couple having fallen deeply in love. The year that followed consisted of shifts on a marijuana farm in Humboldt County, California, where he saved for the next flight to Amsterdam and then repeated the cycle upon his return.
Geographic and financial pressures ultimately ended the relationship, and Yaryan wrote his debut full-length, the 2016 album What a Tease, against this backdrop of instability. Drawing on the storytelling traditions of soul and blues figures such as Bill Withers and Al Green, together with the solo work of John Lennon and Neil Young, the songs deliver candid accounts of hope, persistence, and final heartbreak.