Creativity Quote by James Young

There is a stubborn kind of pride packed into that plain sentence: not “we’re from Chicago,” not “Chicago shaped us,” but “the studio that we mix in is still in Chicago.” Mixing is where the song becomes the record, where choices harden into identity. So James Young isn’t just naming a place; he’s claiming authorship and control, grounding the final say in a city that’s historically treated as flyover by coastal tastemakers.

The word “still” does most of the emotional work. It implies temptation and pressure: to relocate, to chase prestige rooms in Los Angeles, to buy proximity to the industry’s gatekeepers. Keeping the mix in Chicago reads like a refusal to let success rewrite the band’s map. It’s an assertion that you can be professionally serious without performing the usual migration story.

There’s also a subtle flex here. Plenty of artists talk about roots when it’s convenient marketing, then outsource the crucial parts of making the work. Young points to the least glamorous, most technical stage, which makes the loyalty feel real. Chicago isn’t being used as a vibe; it’s being used as infrastructure.

Contextually, it lands as a snapshot of how American music has long been made: regional scenes feeding a national audience. Young’s line pushes back against the idea that legitimacy is located in a zip code. It’s not nostalgia. It’s a strategy: keep the center of gravity where the band actually lives, so the sound doesn’t get laundered into something more “industry-friendly.”