Blake Christiana, founding member of Yarn, has the music in him
In fact, you could say that Blake is the music and the music is Blake; that’s how deeply he inhabits the songs he writes and plays. You can hear him struggling with his feelings, whether it’s on a skittering country shuffle or on a mid-tempo folk ballad or a straight-ahead rocker. His restless search for the chords and lyrics over the past 20 years has produced a plethora of memorable music, and since 2007 he’s led Yarn, a band that’s evolved from its earliest days as a bar band in New York City to an outstanding roots band that’s shared stages with Dwight Yoakam, Marty Stuart, Alison Krauss, and Leftover Salmon, among many others.
Yarn got their start by playing a weekly residency at Kenny’s Castaways in Greenwich Village in 2007.
“We played there every Monday night for two years. I was writing like crazy, and we’d try out the songs. It was like rehearsing on stage; every night was different, and sometimes we played in front of five people and sometimes there’d be 100 people there.”
Over the years, musicians have rotated in and out of Yarn, but drummer Robert Bonhomme and bassist Rick Bugel, along with Christiana, have remained the core of the band.
17 years and over 10 albums later…
Yarn has a new album, Born, Blessed, Grateful & Alive, out in July 2024, and their exuberance shines as bright as ever; they lay down jubilant songs — even when the lyrics might be a little less than joyous—and play effortlessly across a number of genres. Joining Christiana, Bonhomme, and Bugel in the studio for this he album were guitarists Mike Robinson (Railroad Earth), Andy Falco (Infamous Stringdusters), and Mike Sivilli (Dangermuffin), bassist Johnny Grubb (Railroad Earth), harmony vocalists Heather Hannah and Elliott Peck (Midnight North), and keyboardist Damian Calcagne, who co-produced the album along side Blake Christiana.