{"id":2736,"date":"2013-09-02T04:25:37","date_gmt":"2013-09-01T22:55:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/metalassault.com\/Interviews\/?p=2736"},"modified":"2013-10-20T03:36:54","modified_gmt":"2013-10-19T22:06:54","slug":"ovvl-talk-family-upcoming-record-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/metalassault.com\/Interviews\/2013\/09\/02\/ovvl-talk-family-upcoming-record-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Ovvl Talk Family, Upcoming Record & More"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Avinash Mittur<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Since 2011, the Bay Area’s Ovvl have been entertaining audiences all over with their classic rock and punk inspired style of heavy metal. The band was founded by guitarists and brothers Axell Baechle and K. Baechle. The two recruited elder sibling Clint to man the drums, and soon after found bassist Melanie Burkett, thus completing the current lineup. The band has steadily toured the states since their inception and released their self-titled debut record in Fall 2012. I caught up with the band after seeing them play a house show in Concord, CA- we got to chat about their current three week tour of the western United States, the making of their debut record, the family dynamic and their upcoming second album among other topics. Enjoy the conversation below, and be sure to catch the band on tour over the next three weeks as they trek across the western half of America.<\/p>\n

So first thing, you guys have apparently changed your name slightly, from \u201cOwl\u201d to \u201cOvvl\u201d. Care to explain that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clint: Yeah, we were trying to be sneaky about it. Apparently, people noticed it anyway. We kind of changed our name for legal reasons to \u201cOvvl\u201d, we still pronounce it like owl the bird. We also did it to distinguish us from the other crappy owl-related bands that are out there, because there are a lot and most of them suck. We don\u2019t want to be associated with any of the wrong \u201cOwls\u201d.<\/p>\n

Melanie: It also sounds more kvlt with two v\u2019s.<\/p>\n

So you guys released your self-titled album about a year ago, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Melanie: Yeah, we put it out almost a year ago.<\/p>\n

Axell: We recorded it starting in 2010.<\/p>\n

Clint: We did it in pieces here and there, we finished the basic tracks in a few days and then we went back in and did subsequent guitar and vocal overdubs over the course of a year.<\/p>\n

Are you happy with the record looking back?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clint: If I was to hyper-analyze it, I would criticize the musicianship. Basically for me, the first Ovvl album is a time-capsule of what we were doing at that time, which was making a band that would be awesome and fun. It\u2019s more playful than our second album is going to be. You can tell that we were having fun in the studio, just using all the stuff we could get our hands on. That\u2019s why there are all the interludes and the sound effects-<\/p>\n

Melanie: The swordfights.<\/p>\n

K.: We\u2019re about to do a tape only re-release of our first album though, probably in time for November.<\/p>\n

I believe I saw somewhere that the second album is well underway?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clint: Yeah, mixing is pretty much complete for the second album.<\/p>\n

Was the recording a little more concise this time?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Axell: It was definitely less stretched out.<\/p>\n

Clint: But it was still stretched out. [Laughs]<\/p>\n

Did you go back to Earhammer Studios for recording the second album?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clint: We actually went to a new one. We had this idea that we want to record every album we do in a different studio, if not that than at least with a different engineer. That way all our albums sound a little bit different from each other. We went to Lucky Cat in San Francisco and recorded it with Kurt Schlegel. We tried to be heroic and record the whole album-<\/p>\n

Axell: In just three days!<\/p>\n

Clint: Yeah, right after we got home from our full US tour. We didn\u2019t schedule ourselves a day off in between the tour and the recording. It turned out we weren\u2019t able to finish recording the album in the three days though.<\/p>\n

Melanie: There are a lot of epic songs that needed different parts, different harmonies, keyboards and synths. We needed a couple extra days to track.<\/p>\n

K.: We ended up spending seven days total on tracking.<\/p>\n

Axell: We did it in a week, which is pretty good. \u2018Master of Reality\u2019 took two weeks! [Laughs]<\/p>\n

Clint, you\u2019re the veteran road warrior in the band. When you\u2019re all on tour, do you try to impart advice and wisdom to everyone? Do they listen?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clint: I try! I\u2019d love to give them advice and have them not make mistakes that I made in the past, but in the end they have to make and learn from their own mistakes too.<\/p>\n

Axell, what was touring like for you since you were pretty fresh out of school when you hit the road?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Axell: Yeah, I had been six months out of school at that point. Touring was fucking great man. I traveled the US as a child-<\/p>\n

Clint: He was in a circus.<\/p>\n

Axell: Hitting the road as an adult gave me a whole new perspective of the US. It\u2019ll continue to do that with every place I go.<\/p>\n

With you three, Clint, K. and Axell, being brothers in the same band, did you guys grow up in a musical household?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Axell: It was our dad mostly.<\/p>\n

K.: He\u2019s always been really into rock and roll, and he saw a bunch of shows back then. He tripped on acid back then, so he\u2019s cool.<\/p>\n

Clint: He definitely took me to a couple of Grateful Dead shows as a child. [Laughs]<\/p>\n

Melanie, what\u2019s it like for you to be jamming with well, a family?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Melanie: It\u2019s interesting\u2026 I don\u2019t know, it isn\u2019t really anything different compared to any other band. When you\u2019re in a band, I feel like you\u2019re in a relationship or a family anyway. I grew up with two brothers, so it\u2019s kind of like being a child with my brothers all over again.<\/p>\n

Clint: For us, it\u2019s kind of like we have a sister that we never had before.<\/p>\n

So this tour is Ovvl\u2019s second really extensive US tour, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clint: It\u2019s not a full US tour, it\u2019s just the West Coast and the Southwest.<\/p>\n

Melanie: We\u2019re just doing a half-donut of the western United States.<\/p>\n

So being that you guys have been everywhere by now, what part of the states has been the most receptive to Ovvl\u2019s music?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clint: The Pacific Northwest in general.<\/p>\n

Melanie: Everywhere has been great for us really, the Midwest, Austin, Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Madison-<\/p>\n

Axell: Even the goddamn South.<\/p>\n

Melanie: We seem to be a pretty welcome crew wherever we go. It\u2019s nice.<\/p>\n

This weekend Ovvl played a dive bar in SF, a warehouse in Oakland and this house show in Concord. Of all these different kinds of places, what has been your favorite setting to play a show?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Axell: As far as bars go, our friends\u2019 bars are the best places to play. House shows are always fun unless you have to sleep on a couch full of cockroaches.<\/p>\n

On the first album, a few songs are really long and stretched out. How does the material on the second album compare?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alex: We did more math before writing the riffs.<\/p>\n

Melanie: We learned how to do calculus. [Laughs]<\/p>\n

K.: The second album is a little more technical maybe. It\u2019s a bit more Maiden than Sabbath.<\/p>\n

Clint: It\u2019s a bit more serious in tone.<\/p>\n

This tour has you guys going as far as Tijuana and Boise, ID. When you\u2019re booking a tour, is the strategy to just plug in as many dates as possible? Or do you perhaps go with a specific routing in mind?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Axell: We never want to take a day off.<\/p>\n

Melanie: Well, that\u2019s not always true.<\/p>\n

Axell: Okay, we want <\/em>to take a day off but our work ethic doesn\u2019t allow for it.<\/p>\n

Melanie: We did take a couple days off in New York last time, but even on our days off we\u2019re practicing and writing songs.<\/p>\n

Axell: Days off tend to happen when the van breaks down. [Laughs]<\/p>\n

That kind of touring contrasts heavily with what say, Bolt Thrower did where they flew all over the country and cherry picked dates.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Axell: There\u2019s no reason for us to go to a different continent and play just a few shows. That seems pretty ludicrous to me.<\/p>\n

Melanie: If we had the money and someone wanted to fly us down wherever and we could hop across the country, we\u2019d be down. It would be super fun to hit up different areas of the continent within days of each other. As a self-sustaining band, one that we don\u2019t have funding for, it makes more sense financially to go from town to town.<\/p>\n

Clint: We book our own shows and we don\u2019t have receive any guarantees, so it\u2019s actually a better strategy to play a show every single night than try and take a couple days off in between. We don\u2019t know which shows are going to pay at all really.<\/p>\n

Axell: Every night it\u2019s a gamble.<\/p>\n

Clint: But the more times we roll the dice, the more times we might win.<\/p>\n

For the three brothers, do you guys have a kind of special onstage chemistry?<\/strong><\/p>\n

K.: For me it\u2019s definitely true.<\/p>\n

Axell: It\u2019s been described by each of us on different occasions as nearly telepathic. Brainwaves going through the air, transmitting riffs in the night sky!<\/p>\n

When it comes to band stuff, do you ever run into situations where you have to say \u201cOkay, we\u2019re family now, bandmates later\u201d or vice-versa?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Axell: Well you know, we argue about every song and we argue until they\u2019re the way we want them. It always works out.<\/p>\n

Is that what songwriting is like for you all? A lot of back and forth?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clint: There is arguing sometimes.<\/p>\n

Axell: There are things that need to be worked out, but it\u2019s always for the best.\u00a0 It\u2019s always better to have more than one opinion.<\/p>\n

K.: We\u2019ve had a lot of songs that came in mostly completed, but they kind of morphed as we played them as a band.<\/p>\n

Clint: We thought they were done, but we went back in, found out that some people weren\u2019t actually happy with how the song was written the first time and changed things.<\/p>\n

So does Ovvl write as a group?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Axell: Absolutely. Things will come in from person to person, but they always go through the filter of the four of us.<\/p>\n

Clint: Generally, any riff that ends up in a song is something that everybody liked.<\/p>\n

Anything else you all want to add about the tour or the upcoming album?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Melanie: Buy our shit! Get us to Europe.<\/p>\n

Axell: We\u2019re going to Europe and it\u2019s going to be fucking crazy.<\/p>\n

Melanie: Yup, we\u2019re going in November.<\/p>\n

Oh, so it\u2019s all booked up then?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clint: It\u2019s the first tour we haven\u2019t booked. Someone else is booking it, that\u2019s being worked on right now. It\u2019ll be five weeks long, so we\u2019ll be all over the place.<\/p>\n

Axell: We\u2019ll be sticking to the mainland and working our way to the UK.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Links:
\nowlbrotherhood.bandcamp.com<\/a>
\nfacebook.com\/owlbrotherhood<\/a>
\nowlbrotherhood.net<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ovvl US Tour Dates:
\n<\/strong>9\/3: San Antonio, TX @ The Mix
\n9\/4 Austin, TX @ Hotel Vegas
\n9\/5: Dallas, TX @ Taqueria Pedritos
\n9\/6: Albuquerque, NM @ The Launchpad
\n9\/7: Denver, CO @ Lost Lake
\n9\/8: Salt Lake City, UT @ Burt’s Tiki Lounge
\n9\/9: Boise, ID @ The Red Room
\n9\/10: Olympia, WA @ Track House
\n9\/11: Bellingham, WA @ Cabin Tavern
\n9\/12: Tacoma, WA @ The Fifth Dimension
\n9\/13: Seattle, WA @ The Black Lodge
\n9\/14: Portland, OR @ The Alleyway<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Avinash Mittur Since 2011, the Bay Area’s Ovvl have been entertaining audiences all over with their classic rock and punk inspired style of heavy metal. The band was founded by guitarists and brothers Axell Baechle and K. Baechle. The two recruited elder sibling Clint to man the drums, and soon after found bassist Melanie … <\/p>\n

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