LOCAL LIMELIGHT
While finishing his senior year at Ohio State University in 2014, Dylan Aughe was looking to start a group and pursue music professionally. Through a mutual friend, Andrew Fox, he connected with three others who shared similar interests and music taste as him and formed a band — Electric Orange Peel.
The band is made up of Aughe (drums), Nate Labine (bass), Austin Crumrine (guitar) and Marko Manastyrskyj (keyboard).
When Electric Orange Peel booked its first gig in 2013 at Ruby Tuesday's on Summit Street, band members saw themselves as just friends playing in a basement. It wasn't until the owner offered them another gig that the friends evolved into being seen as an actual band. Since then, the band has been heavily involved in the music festival circuit, playing gigs in Ohio, Illinois, Colorado and Indiana.
After releasing its debut album, "Peeled," in 2017, Electric Orange Peel is currently working on its second album and gearing up to perform at What? Festival on Saturday.
Q: How did you come up with the name Electric Orange Peel?
A: We chose the name that made us laugh the hardest when brainstorming. This one had energy and vibrancy to it. A lot of bands have "electric" in their names, and we thought this one had a classic retro feel to it.
Q: On "Seed," your 11-minute song, there are a
lot different musical styles and sounds. Was that intentional or is it from being an experimental band and just putting everything together?
We wrote the song actively trying to squeeze (in) as much as we could. It wasn’t intentional; it just came out. We like different styles of music. It is really fun, especially as a drummer, when you are performing. It's like "Wow, we played a bluegrass song, but the next song will be a slow ballad."
How do you balance your personal lives with playing music professionally?
It takes a little bit of balance, especially with people working a part-time day job. We rehearse pretty heavily, and the band has become a priority. We will schedule our band stuff and plan everything else around that. We have been like that for a while.
Q: How would you describe your sound?
A: You can definitely describe us under an umbrella of a progressive rock band that plays almost every genre. Bluegrass, heavy metal, funk, jazz; we all are open-minded and do not limit ourselves to one genre . ... It is a liberating feeling that any band member could write a song in any style and bring it to it the practice and get it played.
Q: What can we expect from the second album?
A: There will be 10 tracks of original songs. This album is going to explore new genres — there's a '80s heavy-metal song, a reggae song, a couple of ballads and electronic dance songs. This album will be a big difference from the first one because we are writing accessible lyrics. In the first album, they (lyrics) were meaningful but cryptic and only had meaning to songwriters. People in the audience will be able to relate to this album more. It feels better when someone comes up and says, "That song really resonated with me."