Kee Hyon was surrounded by music growing up in North Korea. His concert pianist mother and well-known cellist uncle made sure of that. But after picking up both of those instruments, he felt something was missing.
“Growing up in the North, choices were limited,” he says. “I’m grateful for music in my childhood, but the classical structures felt confining and just didn’t stick.” The U2 album The Joshua Tree set him on a new course. “Hearing [U2 guitarist] The Edge for the first time was pivotal,” Hyon says. “I’m not a shredder by any means, but to this day his work redefines how I hear the relationship between chords and melodies.”
The family made their way from the North to the South, then ultimately landed in Fort Ord. Hyon and his mom became members of Mayflower Presbyterian Church in Pacific Grove, and in 2017 he founded his own Dorea Church with a longtime friend.
“I’m a church kid,” he says. “It was a nondenominational place where people could find community.”
Music took a back seat to leading the Dorea congregation as its pastor for the next few years – until Covid hit.
“The pandemic changed everything,” Hyon says. “The church, my belief system and my personal life all disintegrated.”
He also lost his lifelong friend to a non-Covid-related illness at this same time. Spurred on by a musical clip he heard on NPR one day by the Houston-based minimalist trio Khruangbin, Hyon sensed his return to music.
“I’ve always felt that less is more – in art, architecture, fashion, music,” he says. “That snippet I heard was literally no longer than 10 seconds, but it reminded me of what I was missing about playing music.”
This led to Hyon founding Yeobo, a name that hearkens back to his grandparents. “It’s a traditional Korean term of endearment, like ‘babe’ or ‘honey,’” he explains. “I used to hear them call each other that all the time growing up.”
Now paired with bassist Glenn Bell and drummer/keyboardist and videographer Jenn Cain, the trio’s minimalistic bent defies categorization. It sounds sparse but interesting, eclectic but accessible.
“We’re like three little kids trying to find ourselves in a tiny musical sandbox,” Hyon observes.
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