The Dream Of The 90s Is Alive In Oh!No?Ok
Fuzzed-out power chords, angst about girls and stomping through shopping malls, oh!no?ok. brings us back to the 90s. Taking influence from groups like Weezer to the Presidents of The USA, they want to rekindle that alternative sound that has aged well over the past few decades but then bring it up to date with few twists of their own. Having formed roughly a year ago - the group consisting of Ryan Osborn, Cole Miller, Jackson Ludlow, and Nick Storey - they’re already working on getting their first album out and have found themselves in a steady gigging circuit. With a couple singles trickled out by the band thus far, Salt Lily caught with them to see how it’s all been coming together.
Q; How did you all start playing with one another?
Jackson: Cole, Ryan and I met in high school jazz band and started doing rock projects because our band director wouldn’t let Cole and I switch to bass and drums, our preferred instruments.
Cole: That bastard.
Jackson: That rat bastard. So we were forced to play saxophone and we bonded over hating it together.
Ryan: And then I met Nick through guitar camp, actually. A small group of musicians went to a mansion in Park City and we bonded over the sweet sounds of acoustic jams, campfire s’ mores and celebrity guest appearances.
Cole: When Ryan got back from his mission he started dating this chick, and, you know, return missionaries kinda hit the gas on those relationships.
Ryan: [laughs] I testify.
Cole: So, yeah. Ryan broke up with this chick after a little while and he and I started just to, you know, get the angst out, right? And then after that, we were like, “Hey! This actually has a little traction to it.” So we invited [Jackson] to come play with us. We started to play some shows. We decided the vibe we were going for wasn’t… it was too 2000s pop punk; [an] All-American Rejects type vibe, and we were like, “let’s switch it up.” We switched it all up. We got ourselves a handsome lead guitarist, [Nick] … And we’ve been going at it since that.
Nick: Yeah, Ryan invited me to jam with the band back in August 2018. He invited me to come jam with them when they were Hello Vertigo … It never lined up. Eight months later, I was doing an open mic for my work and he showed up and he invited me to jam with them again. I was actually supposed to move to Japan in July. I had a job lined up there. But I played our debut show with them and I [had] a great time so I decided to stay.
What made you guys want to pursue sound a sound similar to Weezer and The President’s of The USA?
Jackson: I don’t think any of us listened to those bands before we met with [music producer, Nate Pyfer]. He made a playlist on Spotify and said, “You guys need to know all of these bands before writing any ideas down. So we listened to that playlist pretty religiously.
Why those bands specifically then?
Jackson: One could argue those were all his favorite bands growing up. Another could argue it’s a style of music that isn’t at all in the pop scene. It kind of died out in the late-80s, the mid-90s.
Cole: Originally, the band that we had before was like an alternative-indie-rock-pop type [of] sound, right?... We met with Nate, showed him all the stuff we had from that vein and he was like, “yeah... no, [I’m] not really vibing with any of this.” And we dug into it and asked him why, and we all came to the conclusion that that synth-pop-alternative vein was way too congested and there’s much more room to expand in other areas. Nate had been personal friends with some other bands from California that had started this weird, new-wave punk type vibe, and he was like, “You guys should look into this.” And we were like, “Oh, this is actually really cool. We like some of these bands.” That’s what inspired that particular vein, and then he collected a bunch of music for us to listen to.
How did you come to start working with Nate Pyfer?
Ryan: I’ve seen a lot of his work throughout the years- what he did with the Moth and The Flame; the Flame, Kaskade, other cool bands. And every time I’d see him at shows I’d always be like, “One day I’m gonna make a record with you. I hope you know that.” [laughs] And he would just kinda pat me on the back and I’d be on my merry way … We were figuring out who we wanted to record with and what we wanted to do, and I always had him in the back of my mind and one day I just shot him an email, “Hey, are you interested in maybe producing us?” And he shot me back with an email, “Yeah. Send me some ideas.” And I started sending him some demos. I met up with him at his house. We talked and figured some things out. The rest is history.
Why do you value his opinion so much?
Cole: He’s produced a lot of bands we all liked in high school.
Ryan: As far as the local scene goes, he was our preference. Every record that came from a local band at the time - our favorite records from the local bands - came from him … I mean, he co-wrote a song with Kaskade that got nominated for a Grammy. He’s got a pretty phenomenal track record.
Jackson: All of his production ideas have been great. Off the top, he said, “You guys are paying me for my opinion and I need you to listen to that opinion. At least give it a chance.” And on every little, subtle detail on the record, whether it is lyrically or instrumentally, he hasn’t been wrong once. After listening to it and having an open mind about some of these ideas, Nate’s opinion has never been wrong … He produced every song on our 12-track record that we’re slowly releasing in chunks until we decide we have more than three people on Youtube to listen to us.
What’s the story behind one of the tracks you’ve released so far, “saw her first”?
Ryan: So, “saw her first” was... I mean, if I’m being honest, my life is pretty boring. When I try to write about myself it ends up being really cliché and really uninteresting. So I decided it’d be more interesting if I wrote songs through narratives. It was a song that was inspired by this idea of this phrase, “Dude, I saw her first.” … The song follows a narrative, it has a character, it has a story and has a little bit of a climax to it.
Cole: It’s like a one-sided love story, where the guy-
Ryan: Don’t get too much into it. Let them figure it out.
Cole: Ok. It’s a one-sided love story, and it’s not staking a claim or anything, it’s like you and your buddy are walking through the mall and you see a cute girl, “I saw her first!”
Ryan: Or is it?
Is there a big enough infrastructure in Utah for a rock band to be successful?
Jackson: Well, as of a week ago, yeah. Out of some straight [luck] … we’ve got invited to play eight shows within the span of a week. Out of total luck. It’s been amazing. We’re doing shows in Idaho, a couple in Provo, a few in Salt Lake. Just up and down, seemingly out of nowhere.
Ryan: Utah’s got a great scene to start out with and a lot of people have found some great footing here, and that’s what we plan to do- really grow our legs and see where it takes us from that point.
Jackson: Utah’s not such a bad place to make it, per se, being that the internet has such an important role in how people listen to music.
Yeah. I don’t think people consider that enough. You don’t have to be on one of the coasts anymore for someone to hear your music.
Jackson: That’s the only way to get famous. You can tour forever and ever but you’re going to reach so many more ears if you can market [your music] correctly online. Getting on some Spotify playlists is huge. That’s one of the biggest things we’ve been looking into lately with getting our singles out and trying to get on those playlists ‘cause they’ve statistically shown that’s the best way for success. Cole is our latest expert in this.
Cole: I don’t know if we wanna talk about it in the interview but… [laughs] We were thinking since the cost of living in Utah is so cheap and we already have families here and stuff like that, it’s easy to just stay rooted here for the next foreseeable while and we can just book tours around when we need to go tour- if we have enough fans in a certain city, you know? But Utah is a nice home base ‘cause we’ve got some good contacts here. We’ve got venues that have a decent reputation.
Their singles “Candy Crush” and “saw her first” are out now and be sure to catch the group February 28th with Drakulas @ Kilby Court.
