Young the Giant Roll Out 2012 Spring Tour Dates : November 16, 2011

California alt-rockers Young the Giant will hit the road in 2012 for a headlining tour. Currently finishing up the last few shows of this year, the band will kick off [...]

Concert Review: Young the Giant at Music Midtown in Atlanta : September 26, 2011

Ah its good to have Music Midtown back in Atlanta. The revival of this music festival that ran from 1994 to 2005 is a welcomed thing. It originally shuttered in 2005 due [...]

young the giant Biography

Young the Giant is an alt-rock outfit based in Irvine, CA. Formed in 2004, the band formerly fashioned themselves as The Jakes with Sameer Gadhia on vocals, Jacob Tilley on guitars, Ehson Hashemian on keyboards, Eric Cannata on guitars and second vocals, and Jason Burger on drums. After recording the EP ‘Shake My Hand’, Burger left the group to be a freelancer and was replaced by Francois Comtois. It was also during this time when bassist Payam Doostzadeh joined the band. The EP was never released, but the band managed to score some noteworthy gigs such as an appearance in the South by Southwest music fest in Austin, TX in 2009.

After releasing a couple of singles - ‘Texas Tea’ and ‘Cough Syrup’ - which appeared in the MTV show ‘The Real World: Brooklyn’ and the A&E show ‘The Beast’ respectively, the band signed under Roadrunner Records in August 2009 and changed their name to Young the Giant before the turn of the new year.

By 2010, Young the Giant is composed of Gadhia, Tilley, Cannata, Comtois and Doostzadeh, after Hashemian left the band in late 2009. In October 26, 2010, Roadrunner released the band’s self-titled debut online. The Joe Chicarelli-produced set includes the tracks ‘I Got’, ‘My Body’ and ‘Strings’, all of which were leaked on the internet months prior the album hit the digital market. Despite this, ‘My Body’ still charted remarkably at the Billboard Alternative Songs chart at no.5, propelled by the single’s exposure on primetime TV shows such as ‘American Idol’ and ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’, in addition to being offered as a free downloadable track on iTunes.

In spring 2010, the band returned to Austin’s South by Southwest this time, as the fest’s headlining act. They also went on to appear in more festivals and TV shows stateside and across the pond, from the Sasquatch! Music Festival to the BBC show ‘Later…with Jools Holland’, to The Great Escape Festival in Brighton, and back home in American soil as a headlining act for the Lollapalooza festival and by the end of summer, they finally took the world stage via a live performance at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. By this time, their second single ‘Cough Syrup’ was already pounding the airwaves. All these exposures catapulted the band to mainstream recognition, with their album charting its highest position at the Billboard 200 at no.42, while their third single, ‘My Body’, peaked at no.65 at the Billboard 100. November 2011 saw the release of their ‘MTV Unplugged’ set containing live versions of their debut album material, which they recorded live in October.