{"id":293599,"date":"2026-04-30T19:11:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T19:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/293599\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T19:11:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T19:11:14","slug":"mitchum-yacoub-is-charting-a-unique-course-in-the-music-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/293599\/","title":{"rendered":"Mitchum Yacoub is charting a unique course in the music business"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\tMitchum Yacoub performs<\/p>\n

Who: Mitchum Yacoub & the Brass Empire with opening act \u00d6L\u00dcM.
When: 5 p.m. Saturday, doors open at 4 p.m.
Where: The Quartyard, 1301 Market St., San Diego.
Tickets: From $24.41, available at Eventbrite.
Ages: 21 and up.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>Mitchum Yacoub, front right, with his band the Brass Empire. (Photo courtesy of Mitchum Yacoub)<\/p>\n

When San Diego-area musician Mitchum Yacoub<\/a> was planning the release of his latest album, \u201cA Way In,\u201d he knew that he wanted to get it in the hands of his true fans before anyone else as an acknowledgement of their support of his career.<\/p>\n

So, he decided to release the album in physical form first, then allow it to go up on streaming services about a month later.<\/p>\n

\u201cA big part of it was showing appreciation for fans and friends that do buy the record,\u201d he explained to Times of San Diego in an exclusive interview. \u201cI\u2019m sure you\u2019re aware of the impact that streaming has had on the industry and for artists, especially smaller artists, to make incomes is interesting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe glaring issue is that so many people listen to streaming instead of making purchases to artists or labels or anybody,\u201d so a big part of releasing the album early for fans \u201cwas to say \u2018thank you\u2019 to the people who still go out of their way to make purchases from us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The vinyl version of \u201cA Way In\u201d was released to record stores on April 24, and on the same day, the digital version went up for sale on the Bandcamp account for Yacoub\u2019s label, San Diego-based All-Town Sound<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The album will be available on Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming services on May 26.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a little weird to not just go straight to streaming because that\u2019s how the most people are going to be able to hear your music immediately, right? That\u2019s why you want to do streaming \u2013 it gives you access to the biggest audience in the world, really,\u201d he added. \u201cSo, it\u2019s kind of possibly not smart in some ways to do what I\u2019m doing. But as I keep explaining to people, the people who are streaming are not buying my music. They\u2019re just not.\u201d<\/p>\n

His approach, while different, isn\u2019t unprecedented. In March, country music artist Sturgill Simpson, under his Johnny Blues Skies & the Dark Clouds recording alias, released his latest album, \u201cMutiny After Midnight,\u201d solely on vinyl, cassette and CD, and in the process landed at No. 3 on the Billboard album chart, despite zero digital sales and no availability on streaming
platforms.<\/p>\n

\"Art<\/a>The cover of Mitchum Yacoub\u2019s latest release, \u201cNo Way In,\u201d which was released April 24. (Photo courtesy of Mitchum Yacoub) <\/p>\n

\u201cA Way In,\u201d which is Yacoub\u2019s second full-length album, is hard to categorize, as was his first, \u201cLiving High in the Brass Empire.\u201d<\/p>\n

His music is a combination of sounds from across the globe, as well as Ethio-Jazz, Afro-Latin, soul, cumbia, salsa, funk and other genres. He plays drums, percussion, guitar, bass, keys and congas, while members of his band, the Brass Empire, play the saxophone, trumpet, flute and other instruments.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me creatively, I really just try to make music that I\u2019ve never heard before,\u201d he explained of his sound. \u201cIt\u2019s tough to explain what we do, really.\u201d<\/p>\n

Half of the album\u2019s 10 tracks are instrumentals, while the other half features guest vocals by a couple of up-and-coming San Diego singers: Divina (also known as Divina Jasso, who has collaborated in the past with the local band Boostive) appears on three songs on \u201cA Way In,\u201d and Panamanian-American vocalist Lourdes Iri makes her recording debut on two tracks.<\/p>\n

Yacoub, a Fallbrook resident of Egyptian-American heritage, grew up in the Santa Cruz area before moving to San Diego. Over the years, he traveled the world as a musician, including supporting Afrobeat band Seun Kuti and Egypt 80, before releasing his debut album in mid-2023.<\/p>\n

Yacoub recorded, produced and mixed that first album himself, as he did with \u201cA Way In.\u201d He\u2019ll perform his latest music with the Brass Empire at an album release show set for Saturday at the Quartyard; tickets remain available<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re a large band, and I try to use each player wisely,\u201d Yacoub in explaining what people coming to the show can expect. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot of energy. We try to keep people moving in the crowd. It\u2019s definitely a night for dancing. We\u2019re probably going to have 10-11 people on stage that night which, especially these days you don\u2019t see many people doing or touring with, because it\u2019s not exactly cheap and it\u2019s not easy to keep that many people together in a band.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like we\u2019re fortunate to have a good crew and you kind of see that on stage,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe\u2019re all really a family and we just we bring that to our shows. It\u2019s really like a village on stage. There\u2019s a community, and we\u2019re on stage just having a great time together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mitchum Yacoub performs Who: Mitchum Yacoub & the Brass Empire with opening act \u00d6L\u00dcM.When: 5 p.m. Saturday, doors…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[5314,10629,330,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-293599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-east-village","tag-fallbrook","tag-music","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}