Meet George Geanuracos of Atlanta

Today we’d like to introduce you to George Geanuracos.

Hi George, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Music has been the most consistent pursuit of my life. I began playing violin at age seven, clarinet at age ten, and guitar at age twelve.

In 2005 I moved from my hometown of Farmington, CT to Miami, FL, to study jazz guitar at the University of Miami.

While steeped in musical academia, barely able to keep up with school’s demands, I began attending DIY punk shows, and through these, became heavily involved with Miami’s vibrant independent music scene. Over the years I lived there, my friends and I formed projects that spanned a wide range of musical genres, including punk, metal, and country.

After dropping out of music school in 2007, I formed Yankee Roses as a way to reclaim my love for writing and performing original music. Pursuing music academically had largely sapped the joy from my creative experience, which made songwriting, practicing, and live performance feel dull and frustrating. At the time I desperately needed to feel the joy of individual creative expression again. Originally Yankee Roses was a duo with my childhood friend Paige Borden (who happened to begin attending the University of Miami one year after I did); however, due to our both having conflicting extraordinarily busy schedules, it quickly shifted to a fully solo endeavor.

With this project, my original aim was to pay homage to my songwriter heroes, especially Phil Ochs, Jackson C. Frank, Townes Van Zandt, Billy Bragg, and Stephin Merritt. My friend Nery Quiroz, who worked at Best Buy at the time, was able to extend to me his employee discount on musical instruments (during the six weeks in 2008 that Best Buy sold musical instruments). I got a knock-around Martin acoustic guitar for less than $400, and that is still the guitar I use for Yankee Roses solo shows today. At the time, with little money to do much else, I spent days off sat in my studio apartment (about the size of a supermarket bathroom) and wrote songs.

Having not formally made contact with whatever folk scene may have existed in South Florida at the time, I played gigs in the punk-adjacent clubs, house venues, and DIY spaces I already knew, routinely performing on bills alongside hardcore, metal, and noise acts. My first show as Yankee Roses was at the now-defunct PS14 on Halloween of 2008 (at that time I wasn’t yet confident enough to perform originals, so the crowd was treated (subjected?) to some covers, including Phil Ochs’s “Love Me, I’m a Liberal”). From 2008 to when I moved away in 2014, I kept jumping on eclectic bills wherever and whenever I could. During this era, a frequent ride-or-die collaborator was W.D. Miller, a former band mate and current Kentucky-based country troubadour. Miller and I constantly partnered to write songs together, and our energies were so complementary that we couldn’t help but learn and grow alongside each other as we honed our skills.

Initially, recording was a homegrown endeavor. Every early release was tracked and mixed on my laptop, by me, in my bedroom. While, sonically, this did not work to my advantage (I still don’t really know what I’m doing when I record), it allowed me to track things quickly and post/share them quickly. I’d never win awards as a producer, but through prioritizing my songwriting and playing, and sharing output regularly both live and through the internet, I was able to make contact and form bonds with many earnest songwriters and other freaky creatives of all stripes throughout South Florida. My first EP that I didn’t record on my own, “Dreamless Winter,” was tracked and mixed by Joseph Jedrlinic, a former New-York-based union sound man for ABC and current music educator and children’s musician.

Reaching out to out-of-town contacts I’d established through my time in the punk and hardcore scene, I hit the road for the first time in 2013 (a quick jaunt up the Florida gulf coast), fully DIY-style, selling home-burned CD-Rs out of the trunk of my Honda Civic (complete with merch sign made on the back of a frozen vegan pizza box). I have long since lost count of the number of times I have taken Yankee Roses on the road (although I’m sure a more fastidious soul than I would probably be able to sit down and tally them up). As I’ve gotten older, and my home base has shifted from Miami, to Richmond, VA, and then finally to Atlanta, I’ve continued to tour whenever possible, my most frequent tour-mate to date being Brooklyn’s own musical visionary Brook Pridemore. Most recently, in April 2026, I ran solo for ten days on the road with Gainesville, Florida’s Confession Kids. Today, Yankee Roses is generally a full-band project, and the next big milestone for touring will be to get the whole band on the road with me.

Through Yankee Roses’ lifespan, I’ve met and collaborated with numerous personal and musical heroes (many not mentioned above), and these opportunities have only ever served to push me to want to make my next record (or whatever creative output) better than the last one I made. It has afforded me countless unique opportunities for creativity, meaningful friendship, and catharsis. I know that I will never stop making music, and the decision to start this project in 2008 is the reason why I stand firm in that truth today.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It is rarely a smooth road for any fully independent musician, but a hard road comes with its own advantages at times.

With no manager, no agent, and no label, I need to manage all the recording, live booking, promotional, and distribution logistics myself. I know that I am not particularly good at these things, because I am a deeply disorganized person; however, by forcing myself into situations where I have to make it happen regardless, I have been able to challenge imposter syndrome, and often, the outcomes are better than I expect.

On tour, I am normally in my personal vehicle, driving long distances by myself, sleeping much less and eating much worse than I would at home, while still striving to be “on” at every show. While all of this comes at a physical toll, and carries a degree of risk, I feel a persistent sense of freedom in exploring new places by myself, and I have come to view long solo drives as a time for quiet introspection. Touring is the closest thing I’ll get to asceticism while living in a terminally material society like the US, and what are we here for, if not to try to commune with our higher selves?

Promoting individual live shows has changed from blasting off fifty streaky black-and-white flyers from your home printer and stapling them to telephone poles, to essentially a never-ending game of “trick the algorithm into sharing your post enough times that people actually see it.” Like many people who have a creative discipline, I absolutely despise social media, and resent the fact that promoting performances through it seems to be the only way to actually get events in front of people anymore; with that said, by being on social media less often lately, I feel less subjected to outside influences, and thus less prone to falling into the trap of comparing myself to other artists, or chasing (even if subconsciously) memetic virality. This ultimately makes me more confident that my work will speak for itself to those who find it, even if it’s a little harder to find for them than other artists.

I won’t even touch on specifics of the interpersonal drama that inevitably arises between creatives, because 1) I find it boring to wallow in, and 2) as I have become the proverbial “old person at the show,” it admittedly affects my life far less than it used to… but suffice it to say, this stuff can also sometimes make it hard to navigate being an independent musician. Even then, though: if you keep showing up as your authentic self and showing kindness to everyone, you’ll eventually find the people with whom you actually feel at home, and once you do, you will never have more rewarding creative partnerships.

Boil it down to this: there’s always going to be something that sucks about anything you choose to do with your time. You know you truly love doing what you’re doing with your life when you keep enthusiastically showing up every day to do it, in spite of the thing that sucks about it, and never lose your sense of fulfillment.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
The most recent Yankee Roses release is a full-length, full-band studio album from July 2025 called “Pluto in Scorpio.” It was recorded between spring of 2022 and winter of 2023, via many short studio sessions which typically occurred on a weekly basis. I performed the main vocals, guitars, bass, and violins on all tracks where those instruments were featured (the only instruments I outsourced, aside from the noted guest appearances, were drums by Matt Hendler of World’s Greatest Dad and keyboards by my bandmate Tommy Livingston, in whose studio we also tracked the entire thing). Through taking my time and involving myself personally with every aspect, I am confident that I was able to execute on the vision that I had.

Most importantly to me, every person involved in the creation of this record – from the tracking (Tommy Livingston), to the mixing (Peter Allen of Palomino Blond), to the mastering (Christopher Jeffers), to the artwork (Christina Michelle of Gouge Away), to the distribution strategy and promotional photography (Amanda Killian) – is a dear friend. The love and mutual respect felt between all parties, I feel, translates into the finished product on every layer. We create from love, in joyful defiance of industry norms, and because of this we are free to create on our own terms.

https://yankeeroses.bandcamp.com/album/pluto-in-scorpio

What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
Love and joy are everywhere, if you know how to spot them.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://yankeeroses.bandcamp.com
• Instagram: @yankee.roses