Ft. Wayne, Ind. has a storied reputation of producing nearly as many B-list personalities and nominal influencers as our very own little corner here in the 570. In fact, Ft. Wayne is the real life home to The Office's Jenna Fischer, who plays Pam, and fashion designer Bill Blass, but a quartet of local residents might actually put the Midwest city on the map for more than their annual fat man's Mecca, BBQ RibFest .

Ft. Wayne's The Orange Opera swept into Wilkes-Barre last Friday night as the East Coast leg of their fall tour hit its stride. The week previous, Opera played in Chicago with Scranton's And The Moneynotes and following Friday's show the band was booked at major market clubs in Philly, Baltimore, Arlington, New York then back to the Midwest to wrap up the month.

Doing all of this while packed in a van with no money, rarely a motel room, (or a shower), then putting on a smile and summoning the positive energy to deliver the same songs you've been playing for the last year to a sparsely populated club — well that's just determination and a belief in what you're doing.

The Orange Opera delivered all of this and more last weekend at Cafe Metropolis. Led by Kevin Hambrick's breezy tenor, Opera rolled 11 songs like bowling balls at a crowd grateful to be the pins.

From the jump, Opera was tack-sharp. Their opening number featured a sprinting, throwback vocal with a cool, yodeled kick. The song began as a mid-tempoed strutter, but built through a number of step-downs and send-ups. The final blast of sound as the number wrapped made this opener a winner.

Hambrick's key work adds a great layer to the Opera sound, but everyone knows what the deal is. Michael Ostermeyer plays a crushing lead guitar and serves as backup vocal number one. Kevin Hockaday delivers the goods with inspired timekeeping and as backup vocal number two. Bass player Brian Brubaker, the first bass to stand front and center since David St. Hubbins, keeps the hum and pulse tight as a pickle jar.

The gang's next number — described as a "song about Paxil" — began as a military stomp with a start/stop tempo. Then a quiet and spaced-out chill ascended into a keyboard-pawing noisemaker quicker than you can say "Go." "Paxil" was followed by "I'm Just Beginning," a number that evokes a My Morning Jacket feel on stage, but not so much on the Opera EP, on which it was originally dropped. A flurry-chorded opening yields the floor to a tap-dancing piano, followed by a rush of sound that proved "Beginning" to be the hardest rocker early in the evening.

Opera never really let up, wheeling from number to number confidently. Hambrick later ditched the keys for a guitar and made big sound with Ostermeyer on "Squirrel Feet," "We Can't Fight It" and few more.

A song described as "slow-motion football" and another as "a happy little tune" were the only real throwaways of the evening. Some might dismiss "Let Your Sun Shine On Me" as a Brady kids B-side, but anyone who rags on the Bradys probably celebrates Nickelback's catalog and doesn't read this column, so listen to and love "Shine."

The Orange Opera were part of four bands on the Friday night Metropolis bill. The Sw!ms played after Opera and The Marquees were also to be dropped in the mix, but they scratched last minute.

Hosted By: The Orange Opera
When: Friday Oct 31, 2008
at 8:00 PM
Where Mad Anthony Brewery
1109 Taylor St.
Ft.Wayne, IN 46802
United States
Description:
The Orange Opera

Click Here To View Event

Orange Opera going 'hungry'
Foot-tapping tunes akin to Beatles - they don't mind
Emma Downs
The Journal Gazette

Kevin Hambrick, songwriter for the local pop/rock band the Orange Opera, has a name for the music he makes. "Hungry tap-your-foot music," he calls it. And, to be sure, you can hear the melodic influences of the great hungry foot-tappers of the past – the Beatles; ELO; T. Rex. But the Orange Opera is a far cry from just imitative. Multilayered and relentlessly experimental, the band picks up where "I Am The Walrus" left off, creating a perfect pop synthesis of guitar, bass, drums and piano. The result is both ambitious and completely irresistible.

"We get compared to everything – Supergrass, T. Rex, the Beatles, of course," Hambrick says. "As long as we're not being told we sound like Rush or Boston, we're happy."

Although the Orange Opera has been a musical fixture in Fort Wayne for six years, it was only recently that the band began touring, swapping gigs with bands on the East Coast and bringing national acts such as Dr. Dog to our humble 'burb. Why the change?

"I got fired," Hambrick says. "But it got me out of that daily routine and got me heading in the direction I need to go. And it's made everything better. Gigs got better, touring picked up. We got a new guitarist."

The band – Hambrick, bassist Bryan Brubaker, guitarist Michael Ostermeyer and drummer Kevin Hockaday – will leave for another East Coast tour in November. But while they're here, they'll be promoting "Ant Muscle," a six-track EP recorded with financial help from Rob Wood of the local radio show "Little Brother Radio."

"He really believes in what we're doing," Hambrick says. "And we appreciate that."

The handful of tracks on "Ant Muscle" experiment with everything from fuzzy guitar rave-ups to jaunty piano and trumpet ditties, paying tribute along the way to the symphonic pop vocal sound of the '70s – percussive panting and undulating and dissonant vocal harmonies.

"I try to write music that I'll like 10 or 20 years down the road," Hambrick says. "It doesn't always happen, but I try. I don't make straight-genre music. Genres – and genre-rific bands – tend to die quickly."

The album is a place-setter of sorts, something to whet fans' appetites until the band's next full-length album is released in March. (Tentative title: "The Year of the Beard.")

"We needed to put something out there now," Ostermeyer says. "Mostly because we were getting sick of sitting on these really great songs. Kevin's songs have the ability to stick with you. Even before I was in the band, I would see them play and wake up in the morning with the songs in my head. I think that's rare."

Hambrick pulls lyrical inspiration from muses as varied as his guinea pig and his border collie. In fact, his songs – quirky lyrical gems, happily left open to interpretation by the listener – often seem deceptively simple. For instance, the song "Ice Cream Store" – an organ-infused galloping melody – is about "I don't know … a cool little ice cream shop," he says.

"I write about everything but politics," he says. "Right now, I'm writing one called 'Hickory Hen,' which is just about a hen that sings in a tree – and he puts on a really great show for all of the other animals. But, it could also be about a transvestite hen. I'm not really sure which direction I'm heading with it yet."

edowns@jg.net

Entertainment | Music
The Orange Opera's quirky lyrics never stray into politics, but you will hear songs about, say, an eatery or even a band member's pet.

If you haven't checked out our daytrotter session, please do...that was a big highlight for us getting to go into such a cool place with so much history for only being around a couple of years....Thanks to all the folks at Daytrotter again...We love you...
here's the link and the article...enjoy..

Town Band In The Final Resting Place Of Johnny Appleseed

19 June 2008
tell your friends... tell your friends...

Words by Sean Moeller // Illustration by Johnnie Cluney // Sound engineering by Patrick Stolley

A lot was made last week – after the untimely passing of political journalist Tim Russert – about the man being the favorite son of Buffalo, New York. He was a homer for the Bills and the Sabres, mentioning important games on the air on regular Sunday editions of his program "Meet The Press." You've done something right to be the most beloved man of a city that has a population of 292,000 some people. Kevin Hambrick has almost twice the number of challengers (we're including the metropolitan areas here too) for that distinction in his town of Ft. Wayne, Indiana, but he wins in a landslide. ... [Story Continues Below]

He might be more of a prodigal son of the city in the northeast corner of the state – within spitting distance of Ohio – and he's certainly more of the chain-smoking son that the rich Indiana dirt never knew it had. He hustles through those cancer sticks as if that white smoke were an aphrodisiac and the payoff. Never before in my life have I witnessed a chimney of such an insatiable appetite. It doesn't stop with the smokes for Hambrick and here's why he should be getting his key to the city and a star on one of the city's streets any time now. He is the glue that is holding that city's entertainment together. Alternative weeklies and such have been naming Hambrick's band The Orange Opera as the city's best, as well they should. The general, national knowledge of just what's out there for Ft. Wayne to offer is not widely disseminated, but one listen to the ferocious, sticky sweet power pop that Hambrick and crew seem to ooze and the polling stations should not just close, but be lit on fire to never be used again. You ask The Orange Opera to rock and they say, "Gladly, it was already on our agenda, with enthusiastic exclamation points punctuating our notation of the act." The Orange Opera is and All-American band that loves The White Album – perhaps the album and the book, just as all All-American bands, grown on French fries, more hamburgers than you could choke on, Cap'n Crunch and Dr. Pepper do. Hambrick finds himself singing about football (not in a jock itch sort of way, hating on the sport or the guys who played the sport and tortured him long ago, but doing it in appreciation of something that he likes), singing about being happy and meaning it (maybe that's just coming home to his wife and a nice, simple dinner for two), singing about spending all of his days and probably quarters in an ice cream store, singing about buzzards (and we're picturing the ones in Merry Melodies cartoons that get shy around girls and wear aviator goggles as he wishes desperately for. It's unorthodox subject matter, but no different than the octopus' garden or yellow submarines. He's a glutton for the sounds of those years in the early 60s when pop music was lean and adventurous and scrappy. He goes out of his way to hustle his way into the minds and cell phones of like-minded bands such as Dr. Dog, Nik Freitas, The Teeth, Richard Swift and others, bringing them to an out-of-the-way tour stop in a city that Hambrick and The Orange Opera have made into one of those secret havens where time warps can happen with just a little ambition.

Here is the link for our review of our newest ep "Ant Muscle"
http://www.whatzup.com/Music/cd071008a.html

hola folks....just waking up in keller texas today...so far the gigs in the past 2 weeks have been great....and the food, seriously...usually i hope to lose maybe a couple pounds when we're on tour but this tour i'm gaining and lovin' it...Brisket,Chicken,Pancakes,Ice Cream,Tacos, and so many more good down home places we've chowed...so far we've only had to stay at 1 hotel so thank you to all who let us crash at your place....a big thanks indeed...we had our first tire blowout near austin the other day but managed to change it fairly quick and still get to our dallas show in time.....we also ran out of gas 3 miles out of Shreveport Louisiana on our way to our friends house and seriously coasted 3 miles on fumes and rolled into a gas station....it was a band highlight for us indeed....hope to see some of you at our all ages release at wooden nickel july 12 at 2pm(north anthony location)...later bubs...
kevin hambrick

We'll tonight is the 4th night of our 3 week tour..We'll be playing Wall Street in Murfreesboro, TN. Last night was amazing at the basement in nashville..Also had some of our buddies from Ghostfinger(check them boys out) come out to the show....We've killed alot of hours playing with hockadays fartmaster toy....pretty desperate huh....we hope you all have went and checked out our daytrotter session that was posted yesterday....Those guys are so fun and kind...

here's the link for that site....give them some feedback and enjoy some free tunes...we'll try to check back in with you all when we get a chance...thanks

The Orange Opera

http://www.daytrotter.com/article/1326/the-orange-opera

 

 

Hello opera fans,
we will be getting our new album "ant muscle" back very soon....when we get back from our tour look for a release party. We'll also have a release party for all ages for the folks that don't get to see us in the bars and clubs...hope you enjoy and keep spreading the word...thanks
The Orange Opera

Well folks, we should be getting our new 6 song ep "Ant Muscle" back this weekend before we head out on a 3 week tour....we're very excited about this and hope all of you fans will enjoy....more info to come soon...
thanks
kevin hambrick

The Orange Opera got back last night from an amazing 10 day east coast touring adventure. Every show was classic and a humbling experience. Fat City Reprise and Mike Lowe made us feel like kings and showed us the extra mega moose good style of PHILLY. We owe them greatly and shall play more shows together this year all over the place. Brian from The Swims gave us the norman rockwell town of Scranton for a very artsy cool classic memory and showed us maybe the best movie ever, Feeders 2:Slay Bells....you have to order this movie now.........Then Fat City let us share the night with them at The Bitter End in NYC on New years eve. Seriously, a fort wayne band playing new years eve in NYC for our first new york show ever. It doesn't get any cooler than that. We have audio and video of that show that will be possibly available in the future. Then it was a show in Delaware at a cool place that was like a place that charles bronson would of killed a villain in a movie. They actually had a guillotine in the bar, that flat out rocks, and they don't have taxes on cigarettes there, Genius. Next, 2 shows in Connecticut where Quiet Life hooked us up with a cool show at the oasis and a cozy place to rest our smelly snoring funeral breath asses. Thanks again fellas. Then we ended the tour with a final show in PHILLY playing to a warm crowd and our buddies FAT City. Seriously, go watch them, they'll blow your mind with talent...
So thanks to all of you that helped us out and showed us good times and introduced us to so many great people....
We hope to see you all again very soon....
thanks
The Orange Opera