gabriel o'brien
If Ryan Adams and Josh Ritter had sex and then, by some miracle, one of them could host a baby...they'd have Gabriel.
Having played world percussion in other area bands for years, Gabriel started teaching himself guitar so he could write songs of his own. His background in improvisational jazz fusion and jamband still leads to lots of on stage fun, as well as constant experimentation with chord voicings and capoing techniques, but it was his love of story-songs that led him to write in the first place.
Over the next few years he devoted him himself to crafting songs of substance, drawing on experiences ranging from growing between North Carolina and Ohio with one parent in each state, to relationships past and present, and the larger life questions we all wrestle with each day.
Songs From 3am is a mix of those stories, some of them his own, some absorbed from friends, some made up - all woven together into a collection of story-songs written in the hours before the morning comes. Sit back and listen - see if you find some of your own stories in there.
joe porter - lead guitar, backup vocals
Every band has it's share of strange meetings and fortuitous circumstances, and this one is no exception.
"I met Joe at the open mic night I host at CW Burgerstein's in Wooster every Thursday. He was playing all this great traditional music that I just totally loved and he had this great fingerstyle technique that was so fun to just watch. But more than that, I just couldn't get over the guy's sense of rhythm. He's doing all these really complex fingertyle techniques, all while keeping perfect time. It still blows me away."
One fine night after the open mic portion had ended Gabriel was toying with a new song idea and Joe picked up his guitar and started picking along.
"It just fit together so well. The whole thing came alive for me right then. So we started playing together a little every week, which began our weird tradition (of Gabriel dropping a new song that no one's ever played on the band during each show), which still carries on to this day. And then came the first album sessions, and the Musica show, and we've just never looked back."
andrew simms - percussion
"I stole him. That's how I found Andrew. He'd been playing with another open mic-nighter a little bit - playing the cajon, which is this great box drum that you sit on - and i just thought he had a great sense of feel. He can sit in with anyone and just pick a good rhythm out of thin air. Andrew's a great percussionist; he shows up to play, and he loves the music."
