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player ready...At this point, the expression “jam band” is likely to elicit howls of derision from not only certain listeners, but sometimes from the musicians considered to make this kind of music. It’s a shorthand term used to describe mainstream rock bands with a distinct ’70s influence, somewhere between the Grateful Dead and the Dave Matthews Band. However, O.A.R. guitarist Richard On seemingly has no issues with the label.
“When I hear the term ‘jam band,’ I think of probably some of the most amazing musicians playing in ‘jam bands.’ To be grouped into that, and to be looked at as someone that can carry a song past four or five minutes and make it exciting by speaking through your instrument for different solos and different arrangements, I’m honored that people would think that about our band,” he says.
O.A.R. (Of A Revolution) has been hitting the road and playing music for nearly 20 years. Besides On, the quintet also includes lead vocalist/guitarist Marc Roberge, drummer Chris Culos, bassist Benj Gershman and saxophonist/guitarist Jerry DePizzo, who have all been around since the beginning. On Sept. 6, O.A.R. plays Ravinia Festival as part of the Back To Rockville tour. The tour’s name is an acknowledgment that four of the five band members hail from Rockville, Maryland. They met fifth member Jerry DePizzo while in college at Ohio State University.
Like most acts on the jam-band circuit, O.A.R. has a positive reputation with the tape-trading community. Privately-taped shows of the band’s concerts are passed around on cassette, CD and various media.
“We grew up in the time when Napster was just getting started,” On says. “That was when digital music was being traded; that was the beginning of it. We would play small clubs in different cities that we’d never been in before and they’d all be sold out. Everyone would be singing along; how is this even possible? Because we’d never been there before. It was really because of Napster that kids were able to record our shows, which we were totally fine with. The best way to get stuff out there is word-of-mouth. You’re more likely to listen to that than some advertisement you see in the newspaper. Kids were trading our music, and Napster was a way for them to not have to receive a physical product. It was funny because Napster wasn’t regulated back then. The name of the band, the name of the song was based on whoever uploaded that song into the server. That’s how names of songs became mislabeled. People were saying ‘this band Oar’ when it was actually O.A.R. We were just excited that anyone was talking about us.”
The band didn’t foresee the paradigm shift that would result in CD sales dropping. “We spend a lot of our lives in the studio, away from our families…all of a sudden it’s given away for free. It hurts the artist,” laments On. “It’s tough to swallow sometimes. That’s just the times that we live in now.”
Despite being saddled with the “jam band” moniker, On says that the bands members “all listen to very different music, and we’re all influenced by a lot of different artists. I think when you come together and play music with other musicians, you don’t sound like an imitation of something, but you can tell someone in that band is a Pearl Jam fan, or somebody in that band is a big Bob Marley fan. All those little greens get thrown into the pot.”