O.A.R.: Not Just a Jam Band!

On Saturday, Nov. 15 at 5:15 p.m. PT/8:15 p.m. ET, Yahoo Live will live stream O.A.R.'s concert from the Mizner Park Amphitheater in Boca Raton, FL. Tune in HERE to watch!

Not long after emerging from Rockville, Maryland in the mid-'90s, the band known as O.A.R. (Of A Revolution…) got lumped in with the burgeoning jam-band scene that included such acts as Phish and Widespread Panic. But the jam-band thing is just one side of O.A.R. More recently, the quintet has been just few degrees away from pop princesses Taylor Swift and Meghan Trainor, as well as the Nashville music scene.

That link to the jam-band scene is just fine saxophonist/guitarist Jerry DePizzo, who hooked up with high school pals singer/guitarist Marc Roberge, drummer Chris Culos, guitarist Richard On, and bassist Benj Gershman in 2000 while they were all attending Ohio State University.

"There's a number of different factors that come into that," DePizzo says of the band's links to the jam-band scene. "Someone who has known us for quite a while would put us into that scene, but someone that knows us just from the radio would have no idea that we were ever even remotely associated with the jam circuit and things like that. Me personally, one of my favorite bands in the world is the Allman Brothers. We all came up going to live concerts and sneaking into [Grateful] Dead shows, so I wear it as a badge of honor that we can be sort of talked about in the same breath as the jam community, but we also take a lot of pride in the fact that we teeter on that line, where we certainly have a more commercial and broad presence than just that."

To that end, O.A.R. scored a legitimate Top 40 hit back in 2008 when "Shattered (Turn the Car Around)" reached No. 36 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the band has fared even better on the Adult Top 40 chart, where it has scored several hits, including its most recent entry "Peace," from The Rockville LP. That album was produced by Nathan Chapman, best known for his work on Swift's first four albums.

A link between O.A.R. and Swift might seem odd on the surface, but DePizzo says working with Chapman made perfect sense. "I take it as a positive," he says. "She's had a heck of a career. Who could deny that, and I also see how much my [now 9-year-old] daughter loves her. That's the beauty of Nashville. You never know who is working on what and where it comes from."

Roberge met Chapman when the two were doing some work in L.A. for the Grammy Foundation and vowed to one day work together. "He's a sweetheart of a guy. I love him to death. He's just so nice and he's super-talented," DePizzo says Chapman. "He's kind of been our gateway into the Nashville world. He's a great ambassador for us."

Chapman also co-wrote several songs with the band, including the song "Peace," the first song written for the Rockville LP, which set the tone for what would follow. "It's basically like a reset button," DePizzo says of the song. "A fresh start — what centers you in your life, take hold of it, appreciate it and start over."

While "Peace" may carry some serious sentiments, the guys let loose and their its more fun-loving side on "Favorite Song," a tune that name drops several classic titles and artist names in lyrics that include, " You're my 'Stairway to Heaven,' you're Freddie Mercury/You've got a 'License to Ill,' and girl it worked for m /You're Johnny Cash singing to a penitentiary/You're 'Graceland,' the Band, and Petty falling free."

"That one's just about rolling your windows down in your car, singing your ass off and looking like a dummy," DePizzo says. "There's certainly an element of that to us, but the writing is always about personal experience and most of the time when you write, you do it because you're trying to get through something or get something out of you. Sometimes that's heavy stuff, sometimes it isn't."

They also show off their fun side in a recent video shot to promote the fall leg of its Rockville LP tour. During the downtime between tour legs, Gershman starred in a humorous clip called "The Bassing," featuring Trainor's "All About That Bass" as its soundtrack. Kevin Kaddish, who co-wrote the Rockville LP's opening track, "Two Hands Up," also co-wrote "All About That Bass" with Trainor.

Along with the pop instincts, O.A.R. has also retained the ability to stretch out and, well, jam. The Rockville LP closes with "Caroline the Wrecking Ball" and "I Will Find You," which clock in at nearly seven minutes and just over nine minutes, respectively.

DePizzo freely admits that the band wouldn't mind another Top 40 hit. "Absolutely, I think everybody deep down, whether they say it or not, wants a hit song," he says. "We certainly work towards that with a portion of what we write, but it's not of all what we write. We can write a song like 'Peace' or 'Shattered' and still write a nine-minute, three-part song like 'I Will Find You' or be able to go weird and have sax solos in songs like 'Caroline' or 'The Architect.' I'm glad we're able to do all those different things and that our audience embraces us."

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