The concept of Secret Six was devised by Jay Youngless. He is the drummer, keyboardist, primary vocalist, and chief songwriter for the project.

     Jay drummed for a number of loosely organized bands during high school (none of which made it out of their respective members’ basements) before setting aside his drumsticks for a few years upon entering college. By the fall of 1997, Jay was anxious to get into a band setting again and answered a musicians classified ad in an area entertainment weekly. Guitarist George Ferritto was seeking a drummer to form the nucleus of a progressive rock outfit that would combine the energy of Rush and the melodicism of Pink Floyd. The duo rehearsed for more than a year-and-a-half, compiled a collection of nearly 20 originals, and set out on what seemed like an endless search for a bassist. Finally, Jim Rieke, a guitarist and an acquaintance of Jay’s, joined the group as its bass player. With a trio finally in place, the never-named band rehearsed for three months before landing a regular weekly appearance in the Cleveland Flats in the summer of 1999. After just six performances the group imploded and went their separate ways. Disappointed in the turn of events, Jay and Jim set aside their respective instruments for six months.

     By March 2000, Jay had moved his drum set into a rehearsal space shared by a band fronted by his brother Chris (who contributed bass and vocals to Secret Six) and was again practicing regularly. After some goading, Jay convinced Jim to join him for some informal jam sessions. What came out of those sessions were a handful of original songs and the core of a new band. Over the next several months Jay and Jim continued to rehearse as a guitar-and-drums duo before bassist J. Kloss (who assisted in the studio for the Secret Six project) joined the fledgling group, which named itself Tic. A lead singer floated through the band briefly before departing, leaving the remaining members to split lead vocal duties between themselves, with Jim handling the majority. Over the next two years, Tic regularly played a variety of Northeast Ohio venues and recorded a three-song demo. During this time, Jay began experimenting with keyboards and began composing bits of music on his own. Although Jim emerged as the most proficient writer in the group, Jay was soon collaborating with his band mates on some lengthier pieces of music that were markedly different from the hard rock/punk flavor of the majority of Tic’s songs. By May 2002, priorities in each of the band members’ lives were changing. That, coupled with increasing disagreement over the band’s musical direction, led the members of Tic to call it a day.

     In the winter of 2003, Jay was spending much of his spare time in front of his keyboard sacrificing sleep and composing pieces of music, some of which became the first Secret Six songs recorded. Two songs written earlier by Jay were revived for Secret Six—“Heidi’s Eyes” dates back more than a decade; and “Charade (In Your World)” is a holdover from Jay’s time in Tic that was never fully realized and consequently rewritten with guitarist Nate Nieding. Jay soon recruited his brother Chris and Nate to flesh out the crude demos he’d put down on a small hand-held recorder. In June, the trio entered Track_Six_Recording and laid down tracks for three of the original five songs Jay composed during his winter writing session—“Remote Control,” “Frogs In Winter,” and “I Will.” The remaining eight songs on the Secret Six CD were rehearsed and recorded over the next year-and-a-half. Finally, in March 2005, recording, mixing, and mastering were completed and Secret Six debuted.