ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 15, 1996 TAG: 9609140001
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 14 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: WHAT IS ART?
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
When Mike Kirby talks of art and his place in the world, he likes to quote Frank Zappa and to recall what inspired him to first pick up a guitar when he was 11 years old, the rock band Kiss.
``I'm so embarrassed,'' he confessed. ``When I heard them, I went bananas.''
Kirby, 31, has come a long way since then. Now, he fronts his own band, the funky Yams From Outer Space, which are about as far from Kiss as a rock group can get, although Kirby isn't opposed to wearing the occasional outrageous costume on stage.
He recently played a show in Blacksburg in a cow suit, including udders.
But when he talks of art, Kirby quotes Frank Zappa, not Gene Simmons.
```Art is a snapshot of where you are at the time.' I guess it is sort of a documentation of an emotional or mental state of being.''
Kirby strives to capture those moments in his work with the Yams, he said.
``It very often is a source of ventilating whatever I feel at the time.''
Although Kirby is the band's primary lyricist and songwriter, he stressed that the Yams' creative process is very much a collaborative effort. The other Yams are drummer George Penn Jr., bass player Dylan Locke and guitarist Mark Gibson.
Their sound is a hybrid between Sly and the Family Stone and Van Halen, or Frank Zappa meets Aerosmith, according to Kirby. It's funk with a crunch; silliness that packs a sonic wallop.
Besides Kiss, Kirby cites Van Halen, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, Ted Nugent and Jimi Hendrix among his early influences. Then he discovered funk music and jazz and Frank Zappa, whom he calls one of his three musical heroes, along with the king of funk, George Clinton, and jazz great Miles Davis.
These are``people who had an original thought in their heads.''
He said he has written several hundred songs.
``The melody will come first, then I cram words into that,'' he explained. And he tries to make the lyrics deliberately ambiguous. ``Usually, most of my songs are about something, but they are masked in my own little coded language.''
Kirby said his lyrics and singing also work on another, equally important level: They work almost like another rhythm in the song, or another instrument added to the mix.
A Floyd native, Kirby majored in classical guitar at Radford University. He graduated in 1988. He formed the Yams with his drummer and best friend, George Penn Jr., for a one night gig in 1986. The name for the band was more or less a joke.
But it stuck. Today, the Yams perform up to five nights a week in nightclubs along the college circuit from New York to Florida to Mississippi. The group also has a self-financed CD out, titled ``Rug Fiber.''
Kirby and the other Yams don't take themselves too seriously.
One of the songs they perform is ``My, You're Fat.'' They also play a cover of Helen Reddy's ``I Am Woman,'' the ``satanic death metal version,'' according to Kirby. And Kirby, in addition to the cow suit, has a variety of props and clothing accessories he likes to use on stage, including a pair of oversized bedroom slippers that look like feet, and a McDonald's bib.
He's also famous for his Vienna sausage guitar solo. This is where he plugs his amplifier into a Vienna sausage link. ``I like to think I have a sense of humor,'' he said, ``and certainly I consider humor an art form.''
Maybe that's why, even now, he has a fondness for Kiss.
``I mean, you know they suck, but for some reason it just hits you in that place.''
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Alan Kim. Singwriter/musician Nike Kirby (in cow suit)by CNBsays his musical influences include Frank Zappa, George Clinton and
Miles Davis. color.