Emmy Award-winning composer Adrian Younge brings orchestra to The Everyman 

I meet Adrian Younge virtually in his studio – analogue studio, he is proud to point out – as he adjusts the laptop camera to give me a view. It is but one impressive achievement by the multi-talented, Emmy-Award winning musician, composer, producer and bandleader as he built it all himself. It is morning time where he is in Los Angeles, but the always suave-looking Younge, dressed in a dark open-neck silk shirt, silk paisley cravat and tweed golf cap, looks ready to head to a beachfront soirée. Even if he does, you feel he’s still going to put down the sort of creatively productive day most of us can only dream about.

Driven, talented, charming, and something of a polymath, Younge is the sort of self-made man who makes most look folk like sackers. As a teenager, Younge was trying to make his own beats with a tape recorder and sampler. But in 1996, when he was 18, he had an epiphany, and he proved more than a match for his ambitions. While he was reasonably satisfied with the beats he was cooking, he knew they paled in comparison to the records he was sampling.

“I was listening to a lot of, like, Ennio Morricone and just a lot of cool European soundtrack stuff, and I just got so deep into the records and loving the records that I made a decision, a clear decision, that in order to be the artist who I’m supposed to be I have to learn how to play instruments and I have to learn to record music the way they did, analogue,” he recalls.

So, he put the sampler down and started buying instruments: drums, piano, bass and guitar, and started teaching myself

“And it just got to the point where I could play every instrument in my studio,” he says matter of fact. “And I just started making a lot of albums. So, a lot of the stuff that you hear from me, if I’m not playing all the instruments, I’m playing 90% of the instruments. Or sometimes, I write charts for everybody, and we all go in and play, and that’s what it is.”

On his current album, Something About April III, which is part of a long ongoing series, Younge is not only playing all the instruments, he’s also writing for the orchestra. “And I write charts for them and conduct that in the studio. Too,” he adds. “So, my dream was to become what I guess I became. And now I’m there, I’m trying to be better.”

There is a beautiful closing of the circle for Younge, given his humble beginnings in trying to sample other records, he has now been sampled by hip-hop masters like Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, Common and DJ Premier, while also producing for the likes of Snoop Dogg, Cee Lo, Rakim, Wu Tang Clan and Roy Ayers.

While Younge is clearly self-possessed, self-confident, but, crucially, open-hearted, having not measured up to the standards he felt he needed to reach as a young electronic producer, was he not daunted by the idea of having to learn real instruments? What, I ask him, if it turned out that he had neither talent nor ability?

After considering that scenario for the briefest moment, his response is priceless.

“To be honest with you, the one thing that kind of separates me from a lot of people is that I really don’t give a f**k about what other people think, man. I mean, you have to understand how much I don’t care. So because of that, my dream in life – and this is what I try to teach my kids and my friends and family – is that you could be anybody you want to be if you believe yourself. And the things is that if it doesn’t happen, if you know you tried your hardest, then that’s okay. And that’s really what it is. So, everything that I’ve become, there’s so many people that told me I couldn’t do this.

“There’s so many people that told me I couldn’t run a vintage studio. Or, like I cut vinyl here in my studio, that I could never cut vinyl. Or like, I have a law degree, that you would never be a... Just everything I’ve done, there’s so many people that say no, and there’s a few people who say yes, and I think one of the most powerful things you could give to somebody is your faith. That you believe in them.

“So, I gave that to myself because I shamelessly do things. I don’t care about falling flat on my face and messing up. I don’t care if I mess up on stage. The reason why is because if I put the work in to be my best, then there’s nothing else that I can control, and whatever happens, happens. And I’m okay with that. Like I just don’t care. I appreciate when people like what I do, but I don’t care falling flat on my face because I’m going to be on my journey until the day I die. I’m going to keep trying to improve and get better and better, so people are going to see me on different parts of my journey.

“I just don’t really care, you know,” he adds, perhaps a tad unnecessarily, because one could only achieve what Younge has achieved by caring deeply. This is evident when he talks about the live show he will be bringing to Cork, which will feature a 10-piece orchestra.

“I’m very okay with people seeing my vulnerable side, because I love it,” he reveals. “It’s all about my journey to become who I am right now. The show is really like a cinematic, psychedelic soul show. Every night I want to perform like it’s my last performance. When it comes to performing, I really care about people coming. Like it really makes me happy because no one has to come. Because of that I want to give it my all.”

When Younge describes his band as a family, you know he means it. The sweet, soulful voiced Loren was in high school with Younge, and the grizzled, enigmatic presence of guitarist Jack Waterson has been by his side for 20 years, having first met the former member of 1980s psychedelic blues outfit Green On Red at his vintage instrument store in 1999.

“And as soon as I met him, I just fell in love with this dude,” he says smiling. “We are literally 20 years apart, but spiritually we are so connected.”

• The Adrian Younge Orchestra play the Everyman on Sunday, October 26. Doors 5.30pm.