Storytellers takes a glimpse into an artist’s inner psyche through a story of their choice.

In this edition, Yung Life tell us about their first time playing New York City and the surprising kindness and generosity that ensued post-show.

Last summer we played our first New York date at Pianos with some cool bands (Beacon and Night Panther). Being a few dudes from Knoxville, Tennessee, we rolled into the city like a couple of turds in a punch bowl. We we’re in our 17-passenger tin can on wheels scrambling through the city to find a spot to get out and cool the hell off (thought the AC was broken, later we found out it wasn’t). We found some benches to chill on and lit up a couple of cigs to kill some time. At least 20 people came up asking if they could bum a smoke, but the outrageous price of tobacco in NY had us sayin’ no way. Eventually one dude came up, knelt down and said, “Excuse me fine sirs, could one of you spare a smoke?”. Given the Shakespearean quality of his dialect we had to bum him one. The dude (Dave) said he was on the way to the bank and he promised he’d find us and give us $1.

The night progressed and the showcase we played by I Guess I’m Floating was pretty awesome. Immediately after playing, we realized the five of us had no place to stay for the night. A couple of us were pondering our dilemma outside of Pianos on the curb. The block was overflowing with people and we started thinking of ways to meet people and then somehow stay at their places. Meeting girls seemed like one of the stronger bets ha. We had an interesting time trying to coerce people to let us crash but no luck. We found our place again on the curb and realized we would be sweating the night away in the van when some random dude sat in front of us pulled out his wallet and handed us $1.

It took us a minute to realize what was happening but we saw it was Dave, the random dude that we bummed a cig to about 12 hours ago on the other side of the city. Everyone had a mutual feeling of shock and we all started laughing because the dude actually found us in NY on a Friday night in the midst of tons of people and stayed true to his word. One of us had the balls to say “Instead of that dollar, you think we could stay at your place!?”. Without a second of hesitation Dave said sure, no problem, I live in Bushwick, here’s the key to my apartment and the address, head there whenever you want and make yourself at home.

If this doesn’t kill the cold-hearted, impersonal stereotype that people affiliate with New Yorkers then I’ll be damned. We were pretty suspicious about the situation and whether the dude sent us on a mission to a non-existing address our to a desolate street corner where someone would be waiting to mug us. We said screw it and drove about 20 miles to his apartment where we found the complex, got our bags, walked into the building, up the stairs and could not believe it when the key actually fit into the knob and opened the door.

Dave informed us that we could actually sleep on his badass roof under the stars. After admiring his awesome place, we took the stairs to the roof where there were queen size mattresses and a couch. This was absolute utopia, a paradise looking out over Manhattan that we had an otherworldly chill sesh on. Dave eventually got home and introduced us to his roommate Tucker. These had to be two of the coolest dudes in existence. We found out they were aspiring actors that previously attended NYU for theatre which explained the general no-care, free-spirit attitude, I guess. These two dudes were now our good friends and we ended up staying there, showering, and chilling for 3 or 4 days while we played a few more shows around NY. They even wore Yung Life T-shirts to work!

Read about “Solarbeats” here.