O.A.R.
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O.A.R.'s saxophonist Jerry DePizzo wants to give a shout out to George Bomamoase and Ray Zitullo, who were his first music teachers. He was lucky, he explained in a phone interview, that "they gave me the opportunity to do what I wanted in high school," music which encouraged him to think about a career in music. It's one of the reasons that the band created and supports Heard the World, an organization dedicated to supporting kids, music education and sustainabilty.
While that's how DePizzo got his start, he joined O.A.R. at The Ohio State University, which got it's start when the four other members (Marc Roberge, Chris Culos, Benj Gershman, and Richard On) were in high school. They recorded their first album then and, DePizzo explained, they "were lucky enough to go to high school somewhere that lots of kids went away to school" and when they did, they took that first CD with them to colleges around the country.
The band started touring within driving distance of their college -- they were essentially going around "connecting the dots" between colleges. They were so successful that when they were sophmores, "we had a tremendous opportunity -- we could have easily left school and toured around. But we had promised to give school four years" and they did, though not everyone ended up graduating.
At that point they were well on their way to success. They work together on writing and all of their various influences play a role in the music they create. "Whatever rises to the top" out of everyone's ideas is what they go with. Eleven albums later, it's clearly working. For the new album, King, the took the idea of group influences a step further -- they wrote and recorded a part of the album in the city where they each live which gave everyone a chance to be at home as well as letting a particular city, and studio, influence the music. "Every time we make a record we want to make it better than the last one -- which gets harder as you get older but it's also more fulfilling. We also challenge ourselve to connect to our audience," meaning "people are still disovering our music."
As for connecting, the band that benefited from that original social network when everyone was going off to college, is all about the social media. They even wrote one of their recent tracks, "Light Switch Sky" by inviting their Twitter followers to contribute lyrics. Is it the first song ever written on Twitter? We're not sure, but we like the collabortive spirit. You can hear more of that on the tracks "Gotta Be Wrong Sometimes," "Fire" and "Gotta Live" from the new album, available here.
While that's how DePizzo got his start, he joined O.A.R. at The Ohio State University, which got it's start when the four other members (Marc Roberge, Chris Culos, Benj Gershman, and Richard On) were in high school. They recorded their first album then and, DePizzo explained, they "were lucky enough to go to high school somewhere that lots of kids went away to school" and when they did, they took that first CD with them to colleges around the country.
The band started touring within driving distance of their college -- they were essentially going around "connecting the dots" between colleges. They were so successful that when they were sophmores, "we had a tremendous opportunity -- we could have easily left school and toured around. But we had promised to give school four years" and they did, though not everyone ended up graduating.
At that point they were well on their way to success. They work together on writing and all of their various influences play a role in the music they create. "Whatever rises to the top" out of everyone's ideas is what they go with. Eleven albums later, it's clearly working. For the new album, King, the took the idea of group influences a step further -- they wrote and recorded a part of the album in the city where they each live which gave everyone a chance to be at home as well as letting a particular city, and studio, influence the music. "Every time we make a record we want to make it better than the last one -- which gets harder as you get older but it's also more fulfilling. We also challenge ourselve to connect to our audience," meaning "people are still disovering our music."
As for connecting, the band that benefited from that original social network when everyone was going off to college, is all about the social media. They even wrote one of their recent tracks, "Light Switch Sky" by inviting their Twitter followers to contribute lyrics. Is it the first song ever written on Twitter? We're not sure, but we like the collabortive spirit. You can hear more of that on the tracks "Gotta Be Wrong Sometimes," "Fire" and "Gotta Live" from the new album, available here.
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