Minneapolis adult alternative rock band Oceans play their EP release show tonight at O’Garas in St. Paul.
Here’s a couple tracks off the new EP, Endurance:
Oceans : “Tall and Bulletproof” (mp3)
Stream “The Nightingale” at Localtone Radio
We had the opportunity to chat with the band this week, talking about their new concept EP, how the band formed and how they fit into the Minneapolis music scene…
Who is Oceans?
We are a 5-piece band hailing from Minneapolis, With Rhea as lead vocalist, Paul Pederson for guitars, vocals and keys, Pauly Hansen for Bass, Mark Jacobson for drums and percussion, and then myself, Dave Raso for guitars and backing vocals.
How long have you been around? What’s your story?
Oceans was conceived by “mistake” almost. 3 Years ago, Dave was looking to put a U2 tribute band together and one guy responding to the ad was Eric which was also a guitarist. So Dave and Eric felt that they could work together on an all original project, instead of the U2 project. Eric then knew some people from the Area 52 musicians cooperative and Pauly Hansen (bass) and Chris Hagen (drums) were there from the beginning. It was a rough start for us and members started to leave, first Chris when he announced to leave the States for Panama and later that year Eric left as well.
To replace Eric and Chris we found later Paul Pederson (guitars, vocals, keys) and Mark Jacobson (drums) and we finally started to work on songs which ended up later on our EP “Endurance”. But the new year was as tough to go on as the previous one and due to differences with then singer Danny Melgarejo, everyone in the band left except for Dave. At that time we just moved in a new practice space and so it was hard for him to keep going except he convinced Paul and later Pauly and Mark to continue this journey and keep going with writing.
Six months later Oceans or what was called back then SH/VR found in Lorenzo Michelutti the new vocalist and main lyricist. Almost all the lyrics on “Endurance” are penned by Lorenzo. We had a few show with that line up, but right before we started with recordings for “Endurance” Lorenzo obtained the opportunity to front the well known local band Concentual and left the band. So we were again without a singer. In the mean time we moved like another 2 times our practice space….and we were in the brink of disbanding and let the project go…After several auditions and a short stint with Robert Powers it took us 8 months to find our current vocalist Rhea. So we resumed recordings and finished our EP 18 months later.
How would you classify your music?
We believe that our music is hard to classify, due to our influences such as Pink Floyd, U2, Muse, Coldplay…so it’s hard to say we are rock, alternative or progressive….but Paul likes to say we are Powerpop. But maybe a good fit would be melodic rock/pop.
How do you guys fit into the Minneapolis music scene?
With a shoe-horn! The Minneapolis Music scene is huge to say the least. There are lots of cover bands, and the hard-rock and metal community is pretty big as well. While what we are doing isn’t groundbreaking by any means, we feel that our sound is something that not many bands are doing currently. We draw our influences from a more classic-rock background (U2, Pink Floyd, Journey…etc) and we put a lot of thought and craft into the songs arrangements and structures. It’s not “bubble-gum” pop music by any means, but it has hooks and enjoyable melodies.
The people in the scene are all good people and always try to help each other even with bands that are starting right now. They try to put bills together and support each other with going to their shows. We mentioned Area 52, which is a musician cooperative in Northeast Minneapolis. This is a place where musicians come on each Friday night and jam together, network and socialize!
Endurance is a bit of a concept album, right?
Well, very loosely. It didn’t start out that way as a “goal”, but after looking at the song subjects, we picked a select bunch and saw they could carry some cohesive themes and ideas.
As we were working on “Endurance” we discovered that it would be eventually a concept EP, about “Mr. and Ms. Nightingale”’s disturbed and estranged relationship. The first track, “The looking Glass” is an instrumental intro to the second track, which represents the sunrise and the early morning of Mr.Nightingale, where he wakes up next to Alice, his wife…..The story continues on “The Other Side” where Nightingale looks into Alice ’s eyes as he wakes up and sees himself through a looking glass, with the meaning that he looks at himself through his wife’s eyes and all he wants is to look into the looking glass from the other side so he could see his wife again…… “Blueprint for Perfection” reveals the compulsive obsessive Nightingale, where he drives to work everyday, taking the same route, even though he passes many crossroads and dreams of taking one of those roads one day…..so he can just break through… “Tall and Bulletproof” tells about Nightingale’s confidence and arrogance at the same time. He thinks he’s the top of the office that nothing could take him down…
In “Heaven” Nightingale walks into a bar for happy hour, and the songs reminds him how good we have it here while we are kicking back and toasting to our friends, while our soldiers are fighting a war……..In “Blood from a Stone” Mr. and Ms. Nightingale decide to seek counseling and look to save their relationship……but they both give up…..the story ends with “The Nightingale” a self portrait of the man , who was letting himself go, night after night, falling asleep in front of the TV……knowing that he won’t wake up next to Alice ….because she’s long gone….but his schizophrenia allows him to see Alice through the looking glass on the other side.
Ever think of acting out the plot on-stage?
It’s not THAT epic of a story! We’re not The Who presenting “Tommy” by any means! But if there is a Film maker and a screenwriter we would sure working with them…HAHA!
I saw one of your songs made it to Australia. What was that and how did that happen?
Well the contact emerged through our Myspace site. Andrew has a Myspace site of his “3rd ear” weekly show on FM 97.9 in Melbourne Australia and he liked our music so much that he decided to play it on his radio show. So we were thrilled that he did it. We haven’t heard back since then but he was trying to get us outside of his show as well!
You guys have a couple of shows coming up. Tell me about them.
Well tonight we are playing our CD-Release party at O’Garas in St. Paul. We are so fortunate and thrilled to have the following supporting acts to celebrate with us: The Dregs, The New Monarchs, Owen Sartori and NemoJoe. After this show we are going to open for Stellar Vector and the Godddamn Gallows on October 25th at Club Underground.
What does the future hold for Oceans?
Well it took us 18 months to record and finish “Endurance”. Rhea is a brilliant songwriter and she wasn’t able to show that on our CD, because the songs were already written and mostly recorded. We started to work on new songs already and we finished two which we will play tonight as well. There are already several demos and bits that we already have worked on and we are looking forward to work on the follow up of Endurance. In the mean time we hope to play shows in the Cities and going out to Mankato, St.Cloud and Duluth.
