Cameron Lavi-Jones is the frontman of the modern era – genuine, approachable, genre-welcoming, and passionate about social change.
The 25-year-old is the founder, vocalist, and guitarist of Seattle-based rock fourpiece King Youngblood, composed of himself, drummer Paul “Styx” Stoot, bassist Samy Garcia, and cellist Chet Peterson. Ahead of the group’s August 16 show at Common Fields in Corvallis, Oregon, Lavi-Jones sat down with the Commuter to talk about his band, their mission, and the power of a string section.
“Intersections of art and activism” is how Lavi-Jones described his inspirations as a musician, and that philosophy is exemplified throughout King Youngblood’s work. The band put on a tour in 2018 to highlight the importance of local elections, resulting in thousands registering to vote.
That’s far from the only objective that King Youngblood has. The band isn’t shy about their mission to revitalize and reclaim rock music, with an emphasis on taking it back to its Black-fronted roots and bringing it to a younger audience.
Rock may not be the mainstream cultural force it was in past decades, but the genre as a whole is being reshaped in the underground by a young, ambitious audience. King Youngblood is a name to watch in that evolution.
“I think reclamation as an idea is something that can be highly intersectional,” said Lavi-Jones. “Where, in the same way that King Youngblood has had a real big focus on reclaiming rock music for Black and Brown people… The biggest compliment I ever can get is young folks coming up to me and saying, ‘I didn’t know we could do that.’”
The band’s name harkens back to that very idea: “King Youngblood” combines two terms, according to Lavi-Jones: “Somebody who leads by example, specifically with a youthful perspective and youthful energy for reclamation.”
A big part of King Youngblood’s Gen Z appeal is its straightforward, unflinching approach towards addressing mental health.
The band’s 2022 single “cried in my cadillac” tackled that very issue, with Lavi-Jones singing about a low spot that he’s since turned into an anthem. “It’s a song about me literally having a panic attack and totaling my car,” he said. “But rather than going into that, it really more reflected my reclamation of the experience to the point where it’s something that I’m so excited to be able to sing back with people or have people sing at us during shows.”
In 2018, King Youngblood founded Hold Your Crown, a nonprofit organization with the goal of destigmatizing youth mental illness. Lavi-Jones pointed to it as an alternative to the failures of mental health assemblies put on by public schools, which focus on hackneyed advice instead of actually helping students.
“The reason why they weren’t effective was because there wasn’t any aspect of community or sharing experiences or just truthfully, keeping it real,” said Lavi-Jones. “If you want somebody to feel encouraged, to develop their self support or their support networks, maybe you gotta talk to them in a language that’s showcasing that you’ve been there too.”
The group’s music is as heartfelt and powerful as their message. King Youngblood’s 2022 album “BIG THANK” wasn’t the band’s first release, but per Lavi-Jones, it was their first “real body of work.” It contains catchy, stadium anthems such as the title track and “cried in my cadillac,” snarling, riff-based rockers like “NEW TOMORROW,” and acoustic-led tracks like “all in one room” that showcase the unique sonic footprint of an alt-rock group with a cello as a main feature.
“Funny enough, we had cello in this band before we had drums… it’s not a specialty instrument – it’s a part of what defines us as a band,” said Lavi-Jones.
The addition of strings doesn’t lessen the punch of King Youngblood’s music, however. Tracks like “THREAD” show that heavy, violent riffs are still alive and well as Lavi-Jones half-sings, half-screams the chorus over a driving drum groove.
The band’s versatility and unique sound should continue to develop with new music just around the corner, with an EP scheduled for the fall and their next full-length album expected in the spring of 2025.
Lavi-Jones teased upcoming collaborations on the former. As for the latter, it will take the band’s transparent and emotionally-driven songwriting even further.
“This is going to be the most vulnerable King Youngblood has ever been,” he said. “And I’m as scared as I am excited to share that vulnerability because I believe that’s where real art and impactful art really stems from.”
Fans will get an early look at the new material as Lavi-Jones stated the band will be playing unreleased music on their upcoming five-stop CapCity Cascade Tour through Oregon and Washington.
One of those stops will be in Corvallis, a place Lavi-Jones has fond memories of playing at.
“We have a couple of cool tour memories in Corvallis,” he said. “Some of the most impactful experiences we’ve ever had have been on the road playing, honestly, kind of smaller towns.”
“This feels truthfully like a chance to reconnect with the people that have been rocking with us and riding for us off rip, when we were doing our very first tours and going out and seeing not just familiar faces, but seeing some new ones too,” he said.
Lavi-Jones highlighted that King Youngblood’s August 16 show should be yet another great Corvallis memory for the band and fans alike.
“We’re here to show you that our authenticity is something that’s consistent with everything we do and we’re so, so grateful for the chance to share it… Show’s going to be a good time. I promise not to light anything on fire.”
Read the conversation below:
Editor’s note: this transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
My introduction to your band was ‘BIG THANK,’ the album. I really loved it. And obviously, I’m gonna write about it in the article, but I figured since we have you here, why don’t you tell our readers a little bit about that album: its themes, its sound, what it means to you guys.
Yeah, for sure. ‘BIG THANK,’ for me, it is such a documentation of my experiences. While I was in college, I went to the University of Washington. And for King Youngblood, we cut our teeth in the UW show scene. And I think a lot of the headspace that I was in when I was first writing that album was trying to poke a lot more fun. I think I was definitely in a headspace of trying to practice laughing off my mistakes and big, difficult moments. I think the easiest example of that is ‘cried in my cadillac’ on that album. It’s a song about me literally having a panic attack and totaling my car. But rather than going into that, it really more reflected my reclamation of the experience to the point where it’s something that I’m so excited to be able to sing back with people or have people sing at us during shows.
I think the thing with ‘BIG THANK’ is it was our first actual real body of work. And it’s the first time we had an opportunity to put together something that had a cohesive thought, a cohesive idea, which was jumping through not just all the different experiences you have when you’re in college, but the experiences that were formative for who I am today, especially as somebody where offstage, I’m lighthearted and I remind everybody to drink water and you know, my therapist is paid. It’s those experiences that I had in college that we really share and reflect on in ‘BIG THANK’ – both from the poking fun angle but also in the keeping it real angle like with ‘too late, too soon.’
It was a good documentation of a lot of very important and core development. And especially considering that we’re in the works of working on our next album, there’s a good home base of recognizing that what ‘BIG THANK’ set out to do was document that point in time and all the parts of it: the good, the bad, the messy.
That’s awesome. And you know, it’s funny, my next question was actually going to be about ‘cried in my cadillac.’ I just loved how straightforward it was about mental health. There’s a point at the end of the song where it cuts to you guys playing it live and the crowd singing it back to you, which is so great.
My man did his homework! Yeah, I sampled that from a video that a friend of mine took at a house show. It’s out on our YouTube – the music video during that section of that song, like when we get to the bridge. That’s the actual clip that it fades into. It’s the actual clip that we use for the audio for the album.
That’s great! Have you guys found that the focus on mental health has been important to not just you guys, but also your fans?
Absolutely. You know, mental health has always been something really important to me and important to King Youngblood. So much so to the point that we have our own 501(c)(3) nonprofit under the Allied Arts Foundation, Hold Your Crown. It’s centered around dismantling youth mental illness stigmas. We originally had gotten the idea because – before the dawn of time, yada yada when King Youngblood was first coming together – the original inspiration for it was from seeing the intersections of art and activism, like the bands that really got us started. For me, I grew up on the music of the SongCatchers, which showcases that indigenous voices are not relics of the past, but doing so in a way where they have powwow songs and also 80s bops.
And then after that, it was System of a Down through middle school that really put me on to how distinctly political music was. But it really put me on to being able to recognize that you don’t have to sacrifice your genre or your identity as an artist or as a person in order to communicate your art in an accessible way.
And so we, I think it was in 2018, we did this tour we put together called the Make Your Voice Heard Loud and Vote Tour. Now presidential elections, there’s, you know, the electoral college is bulls***, blah, blah, blah. But local elections really do make a massive impact, especially in communities that we’re immediately proximal to let alone the representation side of it.
And so in 2018, there was a lot going on politically at the time. We set out to – I think it was either 11 or 12 different high schools and colleges in Washington state, and we had a friend who had a flatbed truck and a PA system bolted down with ties and duct tape. And we partnered with the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, and the Washington Bus and we would throw shows at these different schools and get people who were old enough registered to vote. We got over 3,800 people registered to vote for local elections before the cutoff date. And it was a massive example to us of like, ‘Oh, music can be a way to create those more open conversations, those accessible conversations to talk about s*** that really matters.’
And so we founded Hold Your Crown where we do different events and host things like panels with a bunch of different people from different walks of life and different ages and experiences to talk through their different relationships with mental health. We don’t tell people what resources to use – we’re not a medical company or something like that. But what we do focus on is encouraging people to take the journey to figure out what’s best for their mental health, to take that extra step that might be kind of daunting, or like researching therapists or starting with a new therapist, or figuring out if medication might be the right call for you and the right way to go about that based on the experiences of others.
I remember all through high school there were all of these, you know, f***ing mental health assemblies, where they bring in some old white dude, or BMX bikers for some reason, and just tell us not to kill ourselves as if that solved everything. When I went to UW I got a communications degree, and if there was anything that I really got out of that, it was learning that the message is the medium. So, if you want people to hear what you have to say, you have to speak to them in a language they understand.
With Hold Your Crown, we have a specific focus on the youth angle especially, not just because you can really nip a lot of these issues in the bud ahead of time, but truthfully, the thing that makes the difference in vulnerable conversations, especially topics as vulnerable as mental health can be, the big difference is peer-to-peer conversations. When we would have those assemblies when I went to high school, the reason why they weren’t effective was because there wasn’t any aspect of community or sharing experiences or just truthfully, keeping it real.
The thing that made the difference, the thing that saved lives, helped people stop self-harming or got them encouraged in their own mental health journeys – or in some cases even stopped suicide attempts – was peer-to-peer conversations. It was conversations that I would have: phone calls that would run from like 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. of just talking s*** through with my friends or being on the phone and being supportive and things like that. And it really showed us that if you want somebody to feel encouraged, to develop their self support or their support networks, maybe you gotta talk to them in a language that’s showcasing that you’ve been there too.
And that’s what we really focus on with Hold Your Crown. So yeah, sorry, long-winded answer. But all of that to say mental health has definitely been one of the things really important to me and to King Youngblood, both in our music, but also in how we try to operate with our platform.
That’s awesome. And you know, my next question was actually going to ask you to do a quick rundown of Hold Your Crown.
I promise I didn’t read anything [laughs].
To move on from that – and this is the question I was most looking forward to asking about – when I got the email from you guys, I listened to some of your music and then I went down to your Spotify bio. And there’s a real emphasis there on reclaiming, revitalizing rock music and bringing it to a Gen Z audience. And as a Gen Z person myself – are you Gen Z too?
I’m ‘98 and I feel like I never f***ing know.
Close enough [laughs]. I feel like there’s been a lot of talk about how rock is dead, or only for older generations or just something that isn’t pertinent to Gen Z, which obviously I don’t really agree with, but it’s still something that’s there. Tell me a bit about your mission, which you guys seem pretty passionate about: bringing rock to that younger audience.
Yeah, well, for me, when I first put King Youngblood together, I was like, 11 when I wrote the first song for this band, and I’m 25 now. I first really wanted to have a band because I didn’t see anybody that looked like me being into the kind of music that I was into. And so for us, the original form of reclamation was definitely in reclaiming rock music for my Black and Brown identities. As you know, the band expanded and this lineup that we have right now with Paul ‘Styx’ Stoot on drums, Sam Garcia on bass, and Chet Peterson on cello. Three out of the four of us are people of color. Paul and I are both Black. I’m a Middle Eastern Jew and Sam is Puerto Rican and El Salvadorian. And so, Chet is our one white ally – love him. But he came up in the classical world, but always was very into hip-hop, very into soul music, very into a lot of different genres.
And so, to varying degrees on the spectrum, all four of us have a very acute understanding of what it feels like not to belong. All of us have a very acute understanding of what it means to be an outcast or what it means to be on the outside looking in for some things. For all of us, it makes it that much more important when we get on stage because it’s really the only place that we are able to be our most authentic selves. And we really bonded over that.
As far as reclaiming from a generational standpoint, I think reclamation as an idea is something that can be highly intersectional, where, in the same way that King Youngblood has had a real big focus on reclaiming rock music for Black and Brown people. And just showing, you know, the biggest compliment I ever can get is young folks coming up to me and saying, ‘I didn’t know we could do that.’ And, you know, it’s a privilege and a joy and an honor to be able to be what I wish I had when I first started this career.
But in the ways that reclamation can be intersectional, I think that there are a lot of people that are seeing the power of what happens when you let yourself enjoy something without worrying about what it makes you look like or if it makes you an old head or something like that. I see so much of how a lot of generations right now are truthfully running things back to the f***ing early 90s of like, being in fashion or more of a focus on underground spaces or even as simple as, like, I’m seeing people take photos and intentionally stretching them so they look like the first time you ever had to go to Rite Aid to go get a scan back after a disposable camera.
Stuff like that, which showcases that there’s a real return of not just a lot of things from that time period, but I think a return to the philosophies of upholding and reclaiming authenticity. And I think that for us as a band, that’s what we’ve been about even before we were able to see other people turn the wave along with that too. And we’re really grateful that a lot of those people are now discovering King Youngblood and we get to go along on that journey with them too.
To build on that a bit, how did you guys build your sound towards making the kind of music that you make today?
Well, funny enough, we had cello in this band before we had drums. I’m not playing around – it’s very obvious that a pretty defining feature of King Youngblood is the cello. And it’s not a specialty instrument – it’s a part of what defines us as a band. I think truthfully, the way that we’ve really come about our sound and this lineup of the four of us that we have right now. We’ve been playing together for a little bit over a year since Paul joined. Chet’s been playing for three years, Sam for two, and I’ve been here since the inception.
We were coming back from this show that we played at the Bainbridge Art Museum of all places, and they set us up inside of their museum’s auditorium, a beautiful space. We had our string section with us which is always a pleasure and like, truthfully dude, if you will talk about that later, that’s the coolest – oh, never mind. I’ll come back to it later – but we just finished playing the show, and something that we all really love, because we love music, is we try to watch our game tape where it’s like we’ll look at video or our recordings of shows and things like that.
Sometimes it’s just to, you know, be like, ‘Wow, we did that.’ And other times, it’s to be kind of critical and look at it like, ‘Okay, what things worked, what things didn’t work, what things might I want to try next time or what things do we need to maybe focus on in rehearsal?’ Things like that.
But after this gig we played what might be the title track for the new album. We’re all kind of leaning towards it. We played this song called ‘outrun your shadow.’ And the only place you can listen to it now if you haven’t heard it is on our YouTube. We did a Tiny Desk submission with it that came out really beautiful. It’s got the string section with it, too. You might dig it.
We were listening back and just getting a chance to see how distinct each artistic identity on stage was, especially between the four of us. You know, we’re playing through this song that has really big rock elements, really big, even classical elements, switching to a vocal part that is nothing short of like, haunting soul, almost R&B, and then getting to a guitar solo section where the rhythm section is throwing in f***ing gospel. The front dude is throwing in synagogue and the string sections are bringing cinema – it was one of those moments where we were listening back and genuinely finding not just so much joy from each other’s parts, but seeing how each artistic identity and our musical backgrounds explicitly showed themselves in a way that didn’t offset the balance of chemistry that is super critical for a band as a whole. Having an identity.
You know, Sam and Paul are both PK’s – pastor’s kids. They came up in the church, Chet had a very big classical background but also did a lot of shadowing with his family of production work and things like that and for me and my folks, I came from a lot of pop and R&B artists and a lot of jazz artists. And it’s just blended in this way that has become so beautifully unique. And so undeniably King Youngblood.
Love it. To switch gears a bit, your band’s press release mentioned that the cities you’ll be visiting on this upcoming tour were handpicked in a way. What excites you guys about coming to Corvallis in August?
Well, first of all, we have a couple of cool tour memories in Corvallis. I apologize because I can’t remember the name of the venue off the top of my head, but we played this show in Corvallis and I’ll put it this way: it’s like this year, King Youngblood has played a lot of really big shows. We’ve done really big festival gigs. We’ve gotten a chance to go to Vegas to Kansas to Nashville. And those are wonderful experiences. But some of the most impactful experiences we’ve ever had have been on the road playing, honestly, kind of smaller towns.
We’re doing this CapCity Cascade Tour, where we’re hitting Corvallis. We’re hitting Centralia. We’re hitting Olympia. We’re hitting Kalama. We’re hitting Ashland, Oregon. And in these spots, truthfully, there are very tightly-knit and small communities, but those tightly-knit and small communities have a real passion for new experiences. There’s a real passion for wanting to discover something that not just breaks monotony, but very clearly is focused on preserving that authenticity.
You know, we had this one show in Corvallis. Man, it must have been like 2019, maybe 2020. But we had the show where after we were just talking to somebody who was telling us about how a lot of the bands that they get a chance to see are neighborhood bands – they’re bands that are just like their friends or different people in their communities. And those are important – you need to support the local arts. But they were talking a lot about how they felt very overlooked with a lot of bands, especially if a lot of bands – you know, if you’re a national artist and you’re going on tour, you’re probably hitting Seattle or Portland before you’re hitting Corvallis. And they just talked about how meaningful it was to have a band put emphasis on still reconnecting with the people that build them up in those small towns in the first place.
For us going on tours where we’re getting a chance to do these things and go to cities that are outside of the major metropolitan, like, f***ing massive urban areas, truthfully, it gives us an opportunity to really connect with people that value authenticity as much as we do. And a big and important thing to us is still staying connected with the people that give us our flowers before we’ve done the Nashvilles or the Kansases or anything like that.
So this feels truthfully like a chance to reconnect with the people that have been rocking with us and riding for us off rip, when we were doing our very first tours and going out and seeing not just familiar faces, but seeing some new ones too. We’re stoked for August.
That’s great! For fans who, this might be their first show with you guys, what can people expect at a King Youngblood concert?
We have a couple of mottos that circle through in the King Youngblood camp, but the one that we really pride ourselves on is we do the same show for three people that we do for 3,000. So, if they are seeing us for the very first time, be prepared to experience the same level of intentionality, energy, and raw expression that we would do not just in our home state or our hometown, but on the biggest stages that we’ve played this year.
We’re here to show you that our authenticity is something that’s consistent with everything we do and we’re so, so grateful for the chance to share it and amplify your authenticity with it, too. Show’s going to be a good time. I promise not to light anything on fire.
I love it. So, I know that you wanted to talk about it and I know that I wanted to talk about it: With that string section that you guys have, is that going to be coming on the road with you guys? And what’s it like having that string section to back you guys up?
Unfortunately, the string section is not coming with us on the road. But I will tell you this, I am so excited for the point where budgets are not a factor in deciding what kind of art we get to make. This King Youngblood quartet is incredible. Truthfully, it is such an expansion on what we really try to do with our songs to a point where it really elevates things from being songs to just, whole f***ing IMAX movie theater cinema, where it’s, man, it’s hard to put into words fully, simply because it feels like one of the most powerful and beautiful forms of King Youngblood.
Like, when I think about the kind of shows that I want to do when we’re playing f***iing Safeco Field, those string players are the ones that are playing with us. And the last show that we had a chance to have our string players was we headlined at the Neptune back here in Seattle, the Neptune Theatre. And it was just such a factor that really, really elevated the foundation that the four of us already have as the core band, now taking things from being shows to performances.
That’s what we really focus on doing with the four of us and having our string section with us. Makes it that much more freeing because it takes care of doing that cinema or that soundscaping and lets us really focus on the parts that we do best, which is telling the story. I will say if anybody from this tour, or even just reading this, or listening – whatever we’re doing – would like to come to hear our string section, the next time that we’re having our string section play with us is at Black and Loud Fest on September 14 back here in Seattle.
It’s a music festival that we put on in partnership with Jack Daniels that is all Black-fronted bands. And this will be our third year of getting a chance to do the festival and the strings will be on full display on the main stage.
That’s awesome. What I’m kind of hearing is it’s like, when you write a song, you hear it in your head. And then there’s the process of getting it to sound as good as it sounded in your head. And it sounds like those strings are the missing piece towards, like, ‘Oh, this is what King Youngblood is supposed to sound like.’
I’ll put it this way, I don’t know if I can say that it’s the missing piece. But what I will say is that their addition has made it the most accessible for me to emotionally return to where I was when I first wrote the songs. And I think that says something about not just proper ways of playing support, but how powerful their inclusion is when we get a chance to do those. You know, those big-deal shows whenever we’re pulling all the stops out, strings are coming with it.
Love it. So it also looks like you guys will be previewing some new music on this tour. You kind of touched on that already. I don’t want to make you spoil too much, but can you provide just a quick idea of what this upcoming album will be like? And I think that I saw you guys have a comic book and soundtrack coming out a little bit before that, too.
I have so much f***ing music I need to record. There’s so much s*** written that I just need to lock my door from the outside, sit on my f***ing guitar and amp and some microphones, and just get busy. We have a lot of new music coming out: we’ve got some singles coming, we’ve got a new single called ‘I don’t care’ coming out at the tail end of next month. We just shot the music video for that which is really exciting – going for a summer bop, because we don’t get enough sunshine. So, we gotta make it work while we get it.
We’re going to be sprinkling singles through as we go. Also, working on the next, probably a four or five song EP, which is going to be the ‘AFROTHUNDA’ soundtrack, volume two. This time we’re focusing a lot more on doing songs and singles with friends. So there’s going to be a lot more features. I can’t say exactly who they are just yet, but this whole EP, we really wanted to take a moment to share and make something with people that really inspire us. Those being people we’ve been able to share bills with or write with or anything like that. But there’s going to be a lot of very cool features coming up on that EP.
And then after that we’ve got the next full LP. The next full album. What I can tell you right now because there’s a great deal I can’t, is on this tour, we’re going to be playing a lot of stuff from that new album, especially doing shows in these places where we’re able to be a lot closer and a lot more naked and vulnerable with people.
We really want to give people a sneak peek to this next chapter of what we’re really going to be focusing on saying with this. The current title right now is ‘outrun your shadow,’ in all lowercase. This album is definitely going to be different from ‘BIG THANK’ in a way that ‘BIG THANK’ was about documenting those college experiences and things like that, but ‘outrun your shadow’ is focused on not change, but coming to terms with what you gain and lose in the process of changing. And that can be kind of a complicated thing to navigate. As far as from a self accountability standpoint, truthfully this is going to be the most vulnerable King Youngblood has ever been. And I’m as scared as I am excited to share that vulnerability because I believe that’s where real art and impactful art really stems from.
So yeah, they’re gonna be in for a really good rock record. And also, if you cry, my therapist is paid, like, I’m happy to refer you.
One last question. This is one I always like to ask bands: What is the story behind your band name?
Oh, easy. So, ‘King Youngblood’ is kind of a combination of two different ideas put into one thing. For me on my dad’s side of the family, in African American Vernacular English, Youngblood is a term that typically refers to, from an elder to somebody younger, it’s a term of endearment typically. It’s like a title, not ‘young buck,’ but it’s like ‘yute,’ you know, somebody young, somebody that’s up and coming, something like that. Typically they have some kind of energy about them.
And my uncles on my dad’s side used to call me ‘youngblood’ coming up all the time. And so it was something that I just got used to responding to and things like that. But the ‘king’ side really came from seeing that there’s always been a really big focus for me on reclamation and also this idea of trying to lead by example, you know, in the same way that the biggest compliment I can get is when little Black or Brown kids come up to me after shows and say, ‘I didn’t know we could do that.’
I feel a great deal of pride being able to show people and lead by example, that living their authentic lives and speaking with authenticity is not just so empowering, but something that they’re able to do. When I think about the kind of mentors and leaders that I’ve had a chance to experience, they are the people that inspired me to do that as well. So yeah, kind of putting those two ideas together: have somebody who leads by example, specifically with a youthful perspective and youthful energy for reclamation.
That’s great, thank you! Is there anything else that you’d like to add?
That’s kind of it. I think the biggest thing probably is just, we f***ing want to see everybody come out to Black and Loud Fest – it’s a massively important project. And it’s something really near and dear to our hearts, especially as far as being one of those bands that have experienced a lot of the things that went into why we wanted to put this festival together in the first place.
If anything, buy your motherf***ing tickets to Black and Loud, come see the string section! Come be a part of cool authentic s***! You are welcome. We love you. It is a music festival to celebrate Black-fronted bands that everybody of all identities is invited to come catch some good f***ing music.
King Youngblood will play at Common Fields in Corvallis, Oregon on August 16. To learn more about the band, visit their website here.
