Pete Yorn Is Thinking Of: Give And Take

Pete Yorn has been surprisingly prolific of late. Consider that it was three years between his sophomore outing, 2003’s Day I Forgot, and 2006’s bracingly eclectic Nightcrawler, the latter largely restoring the potential of his brazenly accomplished out-of-nowhere debut, 2001’s Musicforthemorningafter. Another three years between releases, and Montville, N.J.’s favorite boho chick magnet suddenly had a lot more to say. Last year saw the release of Back & Fourth, followed by Break Up, a wispy collaboration with Scarlett Johansson inspired by Serge Gainsbourg’s duets with Brigitte Bardot. Now Yorn has ditched his smokin’-hot muse for Frank Black, who encouraged the confessed perfectionist and overdub junky to strip away the studio varnish and rawk out for the new Pete Yorn (Vagrant). Yorn will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with him.

Yorn: Let’s say you’re in a vintage clothing store, you’re looking through the old threadbare T-shirts, and you come across a Comic Relief shirt from the ’80s. The design is great, but it’s a bit of a bummer that by buying it you’re not really helping out the charity anymore. That’s where Give And Take. What they do is pretty great: They partner up with a bunch of charities like Autism Speaks, Stand Up To Cancer, Boys And Girls Clubs Of America, etc. Then they reproduce T-shirts based on a vintage design from a benefit or event that originally raised money for each charity. So, say you buy a We Are The World T-shirt from them; they give a portion of the proceeds to USA For Africa. They’ve got all sorts of iconic benefit shirts like Hands Across America, the Freddie Mercury Tribute and then other stuff like a Yellowstone shirt that benefits the National Parks Foundation, designs for old jog-a-thons, bowl-a-thons and the like. A great concept for the great cause of your choice.

Video after the jump.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNG2z4wWkhA