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Put Your Dancing Shoes On: A Conversation with Oh, Hush By Brian Campbell  |
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 This band is a mystery of sorts. They have no band pictures on their website, they have yet to play a live show despite over 37,000 friends on MySpace, and apparently they aren’t worrying about it. It is surprising that a powerpop band isn’t vein and all about image, wanting everything to be about the fans and their music. Its more genuine than surprising, and a really strong selling point for Oh, Hush.
Their dominant selling point is their music. It is witty, tongue-in-cheek, off-the-cuff, and pretty much every other smart adjective you could think of. Clean guitars lead way into praiseworthy drum work, topped off with sometimes subtle, sometimes prevailing synth. They even have a commendable cover of Corey Hart’s Sunglasses at Night up on their site now.
They also have one of the stronger fan bases for an unsigned band and again, that is a testament to their strength as a band. Hell, that’s saying something, seeing as how no one has ever seen the band live yet, at least, not until October when they are slated to jam their first show.
I had the chance to catch up with the boys from Oh, Hush and was able to ask where their catch-as-hell sound came from, how they go about writing songs, and why they haven’t decided t put up any band photos on the net.
Get eXposed: How did the Oh, Hush sound develop?
Oh, Hush: That's a really good question as I'm not entirely sure. We didn't really have much of a plan when we set out to start writing and recording songs other than making songs that were fun, catchy and instantly recognizable! We knew we wanted to give the music a touch of the dance feel but we also really wanted to make sure it was still a ROCK band. So we dialed in guitar tones that we thought were cool and rocking, and we made sure the songs made you want to dance, and voila.
GE: How would you describe your sound to someone who hasn't heard you yet?
OH: Instantly likeable and danceable rock music!
GE: Who are some of your biggest influences as a band?
OH: I think there's a great mixture of musical and NON-musical things that influence us. Certainly the bands in our top friends are big influences on what we do. Cobra Starship's first album was groundbreaking! Butch Walker is the greatest singer/songwriter/performer/producer/superhero on the planet! We go back to bands like The Beatles who were pretty much the only band to write 150 amazing songs! We're also influenced by a lot of things. Pop culture is everywhere and it's really interesting and sometimes fun to poke fun at. I like to do lots of reading and certainly books influence what we write our songs about. Movies are also a great influence because movies usually happen the way we WANT things to happen (which reality often does NOT do). We're also heavily influenced by Charles Shaw!
GE: Tell me about your songwriting approach.
OH: It really varies from song to song. Sometimes it's just me sitting down with an acoustic guitar and a lyrical idea or hook that I have and two hours later I've got the foundation of the song written. Other times someone will come to me with a track they've created and then I'll tweak it and write a lyric/vocal to the track. Other times a bunch of us will sit down in a room and just jam on an idea someone has for five hours and at the end of it we'll come up with something that either rules or sucks.
GE: Do you have a favorite song? Why?
OH: Wow. Like a favorite song of all time? That's really tough. There are songs out there that every single time I hear them I just go "man, this song is amazing.” There's no "one song" really that I can think of, but like every time I hear "My Way" by Butch Walker I fall in love with the man all over again. Daughtry's "Over You" is just an awesome song. "The Adventure" by Angels and Airwaves kills me (in a good way) every single time and Switchfoot's "Awakening" is a really awesome song. "Mr. Brightside" by The Killers is going to be a timeless hit.
GE: How did you go about getting airplay on Sirius?
OH: That was really a crazy story. One day I woke up and checked our MySpace mail and saw a message from a program director on Sirius asking for a CD of "Going Down In Style" saying he loved the track and wanted to add it to his playlist. That kind of stuff just doesn't happen anymore at radio so I thought it was a joke. Sure enough about three weeks later the song was getting spun on their show! They found us and just made it happen!! A really cool story!!
GE: Why aren't there any band photos on the MySpace page?
OH: We have pictures of all of our fans up there now too! But there's no band photos because we want Oh, Hush to be about more than image. In fact, we want image and who we are and what we look like to have NOTHING to do with how people form their opinion of the band. This project is about the MUSIC and we want people to make their decision about us based on hearing some songs. Love us or hate us, but do it entirely based on the music!
GE: What is an Oh, Hush live show like?
OH: That's a really, really good question! We haven't played one yet so we still don't really know!
GE: What can we expect from Oh, Hush the rest of the year?
OH: Expect a new record. Expect a streetteam (The Scream Team- www.myspace.com/ohhushmusic). Expect more new music. Expect some kind of visual images. Expect lots of surprises. Expect lots of ridiculousness. Expect the unexpected!
You can take in the Oh, Hush experience right now, by visiting www.myspace.com/ohhushmusic.
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