Back in Orlando… Otown

The boys were back in town this past Saturday (May 2nd) at the House of Blues. Otown was back in their old stomping ground and phones were lit like a town power outage.  With Orlando being this weird hub for all the Original (American) boy bands it was only natural that the Millinium Boy Band (Making the Band) reunited on the stage of House of Blues Orlando once again slowly and without warning bringing out the tween girl in every 30 year old in the audience. Beyond the basic point of pure nostalgic power their voices were not dubbed over or lip-sync’d they sang, they raged the crowed and brought back the year 2000. But they also sprinkled in bits of acoustic sets showing off their still vibrant vocal skills with four voices and Jacob on Guitar. They bring back the memories I will give ’em that, but the guy’s have a new sound sneaking out, mature, funky and full of flare but not neglecting those powerhouse vocals we all remember.

My photographier (Sam) and I met up with the guys (Erik, Dan, Jacob and Trevor) before their show backstage of HOB,  they were an absolute comfortable blast to chat with and down to earth, although Sam she was not intending to do the interview:)

Mandi “Hey Guy’s”

Dan,Jacob, Trevor,Erik “oh Hello!”

Mandi “How you like being back to HOB?”

Dan “This is Where it all began for us.”

Sam ” Ya’ll are all looking good by the way.”

Dan “oh you haven’t said that haha.” Jacob ” you should come here more often.”

Mandi ” Alright guys I did your interview back in July before the Hard Rock show was canceled/postponed so I already picked you for all the nerdy questions Jacob “Oh yeah yeah I remember that..”  Mandi “so since it is an update to that article Sam is going to do the Q&A, my reason  it’s Sam’s Birthday( our photographier) and she is going to be doing the Q&A its her first time but she’ll do good, if she does not kill me haha” Jacob ” oh ok haha, alright Sound’s good.”

Dan “Well Happy Birthday, Jacob “yeah Happy Birthday.”

sam “Thanks!”

Sam “I actually saw you about 14 years ago…” Erik ” Yeah, I feel like we’ve met..”

Sam “For your album Lines and Circles how/who came up with that?

Erik “the title lines and circles is something I conjured up, I had a lot of other definitions for it as a metaphor for us as a band and over the last decade just creating differnt lines to circle back and do this again and that is really what the song talks about in a sence. Each lyric, every lyric in the song relates to one of the guys because I know them so well, when performing they can probably relate to us more than any other song.”

Sam ” Whoa, I keep loosing my breath every 2 seconds.” Jacob ” every  6 seconds. ;)”

Dan ” Sam you’re doing good,? Trevor “yeah, your really good for my ego.”

Sam “What is your favorite throw back song to perform?        Jacob “my favorite- ‘All or Nothing’ it’s my favorite because it’s their favorite and it is the energy, like a majority of the people are here because they love that song and you can feel it- the phones lit .”

Sam “I still Keep it in my Car, and put it on that song.”

Mandi  “hmm,  yeah just the other day she pulls up with the speakers pumping and it’s ‘All or Nothing’!”

Jacob. “Haha, really that’s great haha”

Sam “How is it performing with four guys instead of five?”

Trevor ” It has been seemless actually oddly enough from four to five lines to circles

because there was so much time between, it was easier to transition from the four to five so i wasn’t like it was 5-5-5 and he was gone and then we strated right away, that would have been a little bit more weird because there ws so much time in between tis just kinda felt like a new band getting back together, but we knew each other this time, we got to write the songs and do every thing ourselves so the thing has been an awesome experience, like I said it has been seemless.”

Sam “What song off this album do you really like performing live the most?”

Erik “Well, I don’t think these guy’s would even believe me…” Dan “it’s probably my favorite one haha ‘Playing with Fire’?

Erik “Yeah, it comes at a part in the show where we need something big to happen

and it really does that, you know get the crowd jumping and you know it’s just so funny because Jacob he wrote that song and he didn’t want it for us and we tryed to convience him that we wanted to do it…      “ Jacob “We played it on a whim , like heres one of the things I have been working on and I wasn’t pitching it to Otown because it’s poppie and we were going in a different, so yeah NO we gotta cut this! haha”

Eri!k “you know Trevor is a pop purest like me and it just has a great melody and it is kinda of a throwback song, to me thats just one…”

Sam

“How has your sound changed or progressed through the years?”

Dan ” Well I don’t know, it’s all stuff that we are very connected too and when we were getting  material together for the album we were having a conference call and were talking about songs and we said ‘Oh man it just doesn’t feel like an Otown song and it kinda snapped in for us, Wait A Second! and like Erik wrote this and Trevor wrote this, we wrote this how is it not Otown, you know? and we never had to come to grips with that before because we had such a big machine behind it and frankly they weren’t that open to letting us writing our own material..so…”

Trevor “it was weird because when we when we were getting material from other writers when we were looking for songs for Otown and we are getting back all these songs that people think are Otown songs and we don’t really like any of them, all they know is ‘all or nothing’ so its just all these different types of ballads, it’s like dude, we need to write these songs they need to come from us, we did and we say this is like our first real Otown album that’s really us.”

Sam “Well, I’m excited to see you guy’s!”

Mandi “Me too, I’m excited because it brings me back to my childhood /middle school  and way back during the TRL days.

Jacob “oh that’s awsome thats what we want that.”

Mandi” yeah but mention TRL today and you feel old real quick.” Jacob ” Don’t worry believe me I know that.”

Sam “What CD are you into right now?”

Trevor “right now, Jessie J ‘Who You Are’ ’cause I’ve never listened to that album before and I’d heard how awesome she is and just never listened to her so I went and bought it and haven’t stopped listenning.”

Jacob “I chew ’em up pretty quick, I’ll go through an album in a week straight through its good, right now it’s Awolnation.”

Dan “I’m on some serious Raffi right now, so like… Jacob ” like some Paddy-Cake”

Dan “Nah, thats too young.” Jacob ” Oh that was last year!”    Dan” anything from the Original soundtrack of turbo or Cars, oh yeah!

Erik ” oh, I am on an Artic Monkeys Kick, like the last week before we went on tour I just had that in my Pandora.”

Mandi ” Well thanks guys for the interview, it got a little wacky but thats always memorable. Jacob “oh yeah!” Mandi ” And Sam you did a good job considering I 

made you do it! :P

Dan “Sam, you did a great job!” Jacob, good job.

Erik, Dan, Jacob, trevor ” Happy Birthday sam”

It was great to meet all of you and regarding the concert  it seems all of you can still rock the Hell out of a stage. Mandi

For more information on he bands new music or upcomig tour stops go to:http://www.otownofficial.com