DAVE MENIKETTI Explains Eight-Year Wait For New Y&T Studio Album

Y&T mainman Dave Meniketti says that there are "absolutely" plans for the band to release the follow-up to 2010's "Facemelter" album.

The iconic Bay Area rockers, who have experienced numerous personnel changes — also two deaths and two periods of inactivity — have released 25 albums since 1976, but have not issued a full-length collection of new material in eight years.

Asked in a recent interview with The Vinyl Guide if fans can expect to ever hear more new music from Y&T, Meniketti said (hear audio below): "Yeah, absolutely. We just don't knock 'em out like crazy, like in the old days.

"A lot of people are more prolific; they just come out with one or two albums a year even, some guys that I know that are in the industry," he continued. "And that's great. And it constantly keeps them having new material to consider playing. But the problem for us is, even with our two-hour-plus sets that we play every night, we still can't figure out enough time to put in all the songs we wanna play, or that the fans wanna hear. And when we come out with a new record, if we play four songs that are from the new record in a set of a two-hour show, it's okay. But still, the fans wanna hear a lot of the old stuff, and they would love it if we only maybe played two of those new songs and put another two of the classic songs in there. So it's tough.

"It's not that that's stopping us from writing; it's just that we're always touring, so it's difficult for us to carve out a time to take two, three months straight off to just songwrite, record and mix," he added. "And that's been our trouble for the last many, many years now."

Regarding how he knows a song that he writes is meant for Y&T as opposed to his solo project, Dave said: "Well, on 'Facemelter', I wrote a couple of songs that we all really liked playing, when we would do demos of them, and realized that, 'You know what? This is perfect for my solo record, but it's too bluesy for Y&T.' At the end of the day, it's my decision, because if I wrote it, and I think it's too bluesy for Y&T, I'm gonna pull it. I don't care what anybody else says. Because I just know that there's just a certain thing that I want as far as consistency goes. I mean, everybody wants it in the band — don't get me wrong — but sometimes they get caught up in, 'Man, but it's such a good song. C'mon! We've gotta do it.' But I'll sometimes end up saying, 'No, man. We've got so many good songs on this record; we don't need those. Let's just stick with the stuff that's more what I would consider fans wanna hear from Y&T.'"

Meniketti is the only surviving member of the Y&T lineup — then known as YESTERDAY AND TODAY — that recorded the band's self-titled debut album.

Original Y&T rhythm guitarist Joey Alves died in March 2017 at the age of 63. Two founding Y&T musicians — Haze, 61, and bassist Phil Kennemore, 57, who both had left the lineup — died from complications of lung cancer: Kennemore on January 7, 2011, and Haze on September 11, 2016.

Y&T's current lineup is rounded out by guitarist John Nymann, drummer Mike Vanderhule and bassist Aaron Leigh.

Y&T released its first-ever acoustic EP, "Acoustic Classix Vol. 1", in January.