i’m sitting here at this coffee shop in downtown la trying to figure out what the final summation of all of this is. trying to figure out how to best verbalize what this has meant to me, what it has done for me, what i owe to this, what i owe to all of you. i like to think of myself as somewhat prolific & to be honest i’m (finally) not quite sure what to say. so:
i started making “solo” music under the name “The Next Macbeth” when I was 15 or 16. it was something i always did outside of the bands i was a part of, outside of playing drums. i changed the name when i lived in santa barbara & was going to community college to “Oliver”. i had always wanted that to be my real name, so i went to a courthouse to have my name legally changed. i found out it costs money & i was pretty broke at the time so, instead i made it the name i would make music under. i made my first ep with my friend matt at his parents house. the feeling i got when we finished that first EP “Catharsis” was euphoric, it was in all senses of the word cathartic. i owe a lot of my courage to make that ep to my dear friend & poetic soul-sister katya who started our poetry club with me in high school.
when i moved to new orleans to go to university i met my ethereal friend Body Cheetah. we made some songs & he convinced me to change the name from Oliver to Olivver with two v’s, just to add something unique to the name. we made the broadway sessions for a class project (we were in a music program) & i had my first test of singing with just a guitar for people. recording guitar & vocals together into one mic, one take. it was scary. i felt vulnerable, i felt self-conscious. i started playing at this local coffee shop in new orleans to build up my courage with singing & playing. shout out to the 5-10 people who ever saw me there.
shortly after, i dropped out of school (with 3 weeks left) to play drums in the neighbourhood with some of my best friends at the time. although i had a lot of fun with the band, making records & touring the world, i always longed for something more. i felt the song-writing in my bones, the melodies i needed to sing, the words i needed to say. i tried to do some olivver stuff on the side (i would occasionally put out demos on my tumblr) but it never seemed to be enough to quell the artistic longing inside of me. i expressed interest in having more of a central role in the band with song-writing, melody-creating & lyric-building. unfortunately, that was where we came to a cross roads & parted ways.
i became depressed & suicidal after this had happened. i owe a lot of the reason i’m still here to my best friend dan. he told me that he’s ‘never seen me fail at something i’ve tried to do & that he believed in me’. it might not sound like much, but it was exactly what i needed to hear. so, i started making music with my friend nicholas to distract myself & to jump in head first & start to try & verbalize some of the ideas floating around in my head. i reached out to one of my best friends jake to play with me and help write on some stuff & he’s been here ever since. my true musical brother. i later met my writing partner daniel braunstein. he helped me put the finishing touches on the “Freak" EP. he made “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” with me from scratch & we have worked on numerous projects for ourselves & others since then. truly the yin to my yang in terms of song-writing & production. my guru in a sense. before we put the “Freak” EP out i was advised by my lawyer to change the name so that i didn’t get sued by any other artists using the name Oliver or things like it. i always regretted changing the name & adding ‘the Kid’. but, my paranoia got the best of me. it ended up growing on me, but it never felt true to my self. who knows, maybe it was the right move. but i digress…
we’ve toured the U.S. a couple times. we’ve played a couple festivals. we toured Russia for god’s sake. but i think it’s finally time that we put ØV to rest. maybe forever. maybe for a long time. maybe a short time. but it’s time to give something else a chance. as much as i love writing, i also love collaborating with others. i think there is a balance to be found in life with spending time alone & being social, something i struggle to find the right mix of. there is so much baggage in my life with this project, with this alter ego. so much of my happiness & sadness has been directly derived off of olivver. i will always love this project. i’ll never say i won’t put out another ØV record. but, for now, it is time to move on.
so, tomorrow it all ends.
but, tomorrow it all begins.