Young Gun Silver Fox's music is nothing if not evocative. It envelops you like a warm breeze on an early summer evening and floats over the Topanga Canyon of our minds — a familiar soundtrack for a groovy house party or drive along the coast. It’s timeless in one sense, while also referencing a very particular era.

Over four albums, YGSF reflect "an apex of analog record-making" that occurred between 1977-1982 —  a period of pop radio where groups like Hall & Oates, Steely Dan, the Doobie Brothers and countless less-heralded others created million-dollar records that dominated the charts and remain staples of classic rock radio.

"One of the things that was unusual about that whole West Coast scene was that you had these really talented people, but they all worked together in different capacities. One day they were working on a Michael Jackson record and another day they were doing their own record — or maybe sometimes the same day," says YGSF co-founder Shawn Lee, an American multi-instrumentalist with credits the length of some of his idols. "That's why the music sounds so money, because everybody was at the height of their powers. Everybody had craft."

Although Young Gun Silver Fox nod to an analog era, they make music in a very 21st century medium. Collaborators Lee and Andy Platts – both multi-instrumentalists, with Platts doing much of the songwriting — met on Myspace. And while both live in the UK, they are rarely in the same room. Lee is more of a city guy and lives in London while Platt lives with his wife and young children about 2.5 hours away along  the M25 motorway — they primarily work separately and send each other files. 

"There's an advantage now because you know how things were done and how they're supposed to be done. You have history and you know where the bodies are buried," Lee says with a laugh. "These were records that cost a lot of money to make, and we're making these things in a way that is the exact opposite of that."

The result is era-perfect, and could easily be placed among any of their yacht rock idols. Yet Young Gun Silver Fox are distinct for their medium and messaging; where their heroes were sarcastic or heartbroken, YGSF are wistful and in love, incorporating funk, soul and psychedelia. Their most recent album, 2022's aptly titled Ticket To Shangri-La, is being released as a deluxe version with two newly remixed tracks.

Following their first North American shows in late 2023, Young Gun Silver Fox are preparing an American tour beginning Jan. 23 in Los Angeles. Fittingly, Shawn Lee and Andy Platts sat down over zoom from their respective homes to talk about recreating the sounds of the late ‘70s and ‘80s.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell me a little bit about how you translate what's on the record into a live performance with multiple additional players.

Shawn Lee: It requires a lot of concentration. I think we have a laugh when we play live and it's unscripted. There's a lot of people singing along and dancing around. The choruses will often erupt into big sort of sing-alongs, so it's a lot of fun.

I quite like "Lenny." It's a sort of epic little track and it's always a big sing-along. "Underdog" is quite cool; I love that drop in the middle and everybody claps their hands. Sometimes you can't even hear what you're singing in the chorus. "Mojo Rising" has always been a real massive crowd sing-along and we're trying to get our little vocal blend together and it's like…

Andy Platts: You can't even hear yourself. [At a gig in] Cologne in Germany, [a guy] must've been two meters tops from me, singing every ad lib, every single vocal detail from the record, whilst I was doing it. It was like a double tracking lead vocal thing in the room. He was really on point, really passionate, just singing his heart out. I think after the fourth number, I was halfway through a song and I [mouthed] Really? Is this the thing for the whole show? I think he kind of got the gist of my discreet, please shut the f— up.

Lee: Sometimes people sing the horn parts as well, which always makes me laugh.

I'd love to take it back to just the two of you and learn a bit about the genesis of your group. How did you guys come to develop this distinct but very familiar sounding vibe?

Lee: Back in that time when Myspace was really big and it was a really good networking site for musicians …that's how we met. We tried producing an earlier iteration of [Platts’ band] Mama's Gun, and for whatever reasons that didn't quite happen. So that planted the seed in my head that I wanted to make this kind of sophisticated West Coast music with Andy, and I knew he had all the right reference points and all the right talents that together we could do something good.

It was a good couple of years to make the first record, off and on occasionally doing a tune while we were both busy with our own respective things. And it was very much just a labor of love; we didn't have any big plans for it. It was just let's cobble together a record in our spare time.

Platts: The A&R guy for the label we went with in Holland, he was a guy called Jacques de Bruin, who I'd worked for years, and we got the record to him initially and he was like, "I love it. I grew up with this s—, but I don't know who's going to buy it." And then two months later he called and said, "I want to put it out. F— it. Let's have a go."

There was a DJ that picked up on a track called "Long Way Back," the very last track on the first album, which is like this six minute 50 BPM, really slow soul jam. And he started playing the s— out of it, over and over, and that really caught fire. So it was a real natural, slow-burning word-of-mouth thing that has put us on this journey. 

What does a typical collaboration look like for you guys, if there's such a thing as a typical working pattern?

Platts: It’s one of three things. Shawn will make a perfect sounding record and play almost everything on it — maybe not the horns. It'll sound finished and it's just waiting for some songwriting, some lyrics, melodies, perhaps some backing vocals; a few extra bits of sugar on it – synths or whatever.

Another way is that I'll start and I'll send all the multi-tracks over to Shawn. He'll add or replace whatever needs replacing. Invariably if I try and play drums on the track, Shawn will replace that because he is a master drummer. The third way is your old school get it together in person, which has happened on a few tracks. 

More often than not, we kind of like being masters of our own domain and using the technology and the internet for speed and bottling stuff and getting s— done. A Young Gun Silver Fox record doesn't take that long to make usually. It's just having the time set aside to do it.

With all that in mind, it's pretty incredible that you guys managed to make these records that sound like million dollar Los Angeles productions from the '70s. And in reality, you're just emailing back and forth. What is the secret sauce?

Platts: Before it turns into ones and zeros, we're actually playing this s—. It's all these same instruments from back then, same analog processes.

Lee: I think it's one of the gifts of modern technology to not have to go into some expensive studio. It's basically working with really strong materials and then putting it together. There's a saying in the studio world: You can't polish a turd. You need to have good ideas, and good execution of ideas. 

Platts: When people say you can't make a record like that for $100,000. What they're talking about is a $100,000 musical idea. They think that they're talking about the studio and all the bells and whistles and the Star Trek Enterprise, and that's the vessel through which all this brilliance seems to work and come out sounding how it should. They're not attributing that to the source material.

Having those shared reference points and just deeply understanding the language of what you are trying to reference, probably goes a long way in creating something that sounds authentic.

Lee: I think the magic in record making is in the people; in the musicality and what they put into it. There is magic in the process, and it's just about being open to that and letting it happen. I work really fast and I always have. Working fast really ensures that the magic gets in there because I'm discovering it at the time that I'm recording it. 

When you're being intuitive and noodling along, there's a sort of innocence. There's a sort of not pushing too hard thing, which has an energy and a magic to it. It hasn't become stiff and sterile, or I haven't been obsessed by the technical delivery of it.

Platts: It’s a bit more chin stroking for me in that department. I'm happy to gestate on stuff. [Lyrics are] probably one of the big gold standards of the time period in which we're referencing. And for me, that's all about songwriting craft. There's a certain duty of care that is less prevalent in the mainstream to my ears these days in terms of lyrical integrity. You've got to be able to look at something and want it to stand up. 

Is there an underrated, a AOR/yacht-rock group that each of you feels has really influenced your sound?

Lee: I feel like everybody is highly rated amongst the aficionados [of this music]. But I think there were definitely people at the time of inception that didn't really have the hits. You had your Steely Dans and your Doobie Brothers with Michael McDonald who were getting the big hits, and the Christopher Crosses and people like that.

At the same time those records were coming out, there were other bands that weren't really setting the charts on fire, but there were records that I was listening to and enjoying at the same time. There was a record called Single by Bill Champlin, which came out in 1978, which had all the same people working on it.

Pages was another band; they didn't really have any hits, but they've become this sort of musicians' band now. And they were very involved in the whole scene as backing singers. They sang on so many hit records, everybody from Michael Jackson, to Al Jarreau, to Kenny Loggins. 

You had these guys who were obviously really, really amazing at what they did, but they were friends and they had fun and they were making music all the time. Those guys are doing it every day, day in and day out. With all the talent that they had, and all the great people that they had to work with — the great studios, and the great engineers, and the great arrangers — that's why the music sounds so money, because everybody was at the height of their powers.

There was never pop music that was so musical and accomplished, and that sophisticated, that was on the radio. Steely Dan is the perfect example: They made this really, really sarcastic music, almost like they were the smartest people in the room and maybe had a slight bit of contempt for you. But their songs were on the radio and you were singing along and they had the best musicians. And that's a rare thing. It doesn't exist anymore.

Andy, are there any records that really inspired you, particularly from a songwriting perspective?

Platts: Young Gun Silver Fox was started by Shawn. I think he harbored a desire to start making music that referenced this time at some point because it's so deep within him. He came up when that s— was on the radio. One of the great exciting things about this project is that I've been introduced to a whole load of s— that was kind of second nature to Shawn. I hadn't heard, for example, "Biggest Part Of Me" by Ambrosia. And when Shawn played me that, I was like, f—ing hell that's awesome. Absolutely awesome.

I read that "Moonshine" from Ticket To Shangri-La  was co-written with prolific songwriter/Heatwave member Rod Temperton. How did that come about?

Platts: In 2005 I got to score my first ever publishing deal, and they were keen to develop me as an artist. They're like, "We like your songwriting style, we like what you're doing, but you just need to put in the hours and do some wood shedding. Is there anyone you want to work with?" 

I'd spent the previous three years going around the world working with loads and loads of pop people. There are people who are really good at doing that and write fantastic songs, but that's just not the environment that I wanted to be in. I knew that I wanted to be educated in a different way, I think by osmosis.

I spent two days and nights with [Temperton] at his place in Topanga, just hanging out, smoking a lot of Marlboro Reds. Talking and listening, and working on a track together. We created this horrifically sounding '80s demo; it epitomized the worst of the '80s in one production. I knew it was a wicked song, so some 20 years later, Shawn had heard it and he said, "Look, this could work."

He came back with this whole production around my vocal and Rhodes that really did justice to the song, to the spirit of Rod's writing, to where we were with Young Gun Silver Fox. We quickly released it as a little limited edition seven inch, and it just flew. 

Lee: It was an amazing opportunity to be part of that legacy in my own way just to put myself into that scenario. And I definitely felt the responsibility that I had to do it justice. 

As somebody who writes about revivals quite a bit, I cringe asking this question: How do you not exhaust this fairly specific sound, both as performers and with audiences?

Platts: It's a narrow timeline and pool of music and style if you're looking at it from the outside in. [But there's] the fact that it can cross from white bread, straight-down-the-line pop rock to deep gospel and everything in between. It gives you a lot to play with. But we do just sound like ourselves.

Back then — whether it's Michael McDonald or Hall and Oates or whoever — there was a lot of angst, heartbroken love songs. There's a lot of men baring their feelings, which is fine, but I don't think we're treading a lot of those same lyrical things. The first song on Ticket to Shangri-La is capturing a portrait of an old couple who is still in love after all these years. "Sierra Nights" is a song which tries desperately to capture the novel Don Quixote in a song.

Lee: I think it's an interesting thing that happens when you understand you've cultivated the sound which is yours. There's a structure now, and that actually frees you up because you concentrate on other things. You are augmenting what you've already done. And it's great, man. It's like having some stability. It's a strong anchor to work off of.

I think now we just have to sound like the best versions of ourselves, to write the best songs, make the best records. And I think that's the kind of thing that Andy and I really thrive on, always doing something better than we've done before.

Are you working on anything right now that you can detail?

Lee: It's in progress. We don't really talk about what we do. We just kind of do it. The first record, we almost didn't talk the whole time that we did it. It was completely autonomous. 

I think four albums in, we kind of understand what we're doing now and that's a double-edged sword. Sometimes it's like, I feel like we could always make a good record without putting a lot of effort into it. It would take care of itself. But I think the idea is that you want to feel like, hey man, we broke through another wall with this.

You [have] got to aspire to greatness. Whether or not you ever achieve it, even if you achieve it for a moment.

Platts: If you're not trying to kick it with the very best who've ever done it, what's the point? You absolutely want to go shoulder-to-shoulder with anyone who's ever done it. That's definitely a big part of the criteria. To be able to keep doing it is one, to get better at doing it is the other. And between those three criteria, you've got success. 

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