Josh Ostrander isn’t really into teenage vampires. So it was a bit disconcerting when he and his band, Eastern Conference Champions, found themselves walking up the red carpet at the Twilight: Eclipse movie opening earlier this year.
“I was standing next to Jennifer Love Hewitt and Ron Artest of the Lakers,” Ostrander said. “I’m like, ‘What the…?”
This is part of the fate of the indie rock musician circa 2010. The Eastern Conference Champions are part of a newly evolving independent music industry that uses a by-any-means necessary distribution model that includes song placements in movies (their song “A Million Miles An Hour” featured prominently in Twilight) and television shows (their scruffy cover of Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright” was recently featured on Gossip Girls).
“Seven years ago we might not have done something like that, but now, it’s like, ‘You are going to give us how much money for what?” Ostrander said. “I guess we are eating tonight!”
The ECC have earned their independence. Ostrander and drummer Greg Lyons – two thirds of a lineup that includes Melissa Dougherty on bass and guitar – have been together for more than a decade and have scored major label deals both with an earlier incarnation of ECC and other bands. The pair has a deep musical connection.
“I mean, I haven’t had an argument with the dude for like six years,” Ostrander said. “It’s a good working relationship. Sometimes I can even tell what’s going on by the way he’s not looking at me. We’ve got it figured out.”
They actually met when Ostrander was 15 and Lyons 16 back in Bucks County, Pa., shortly after Lyons’ band Trip 66 was signed to Columbia Records.
“They were just this great rock n’ roll band and I lived right down the street,” Ostrander said. “Here’s this band that’s rehearsing at their mom’s place, so of course I snuck over. I was just blown away. I started hanging out and they started taking me to shows… Showing me what beer to drink, what cigarettes to smoke, and just that great fellowship….They showed me what to do, and more importantly, what not to do.”
That band grew into another one, called Ty Cobb, and Ostrander was asked if he could play keyboards. “Absolutely!” he said, though of course he had no idea how. He ran home, learned enough to get by, and joined the band. And then he ran off to join the circus that is the rock n’ roll life. Another band later, Lyons and Ostrander broke off on their own to form Eastern Conference Champions (both are big Philadelphia Flyers fans, hence the name). The band signed with Geffen and in 2007 released the critically acclaimed Ameritown, produced by Owen Morris of Oasis fame. But then the band made an unusual decision – they asked out of their big label deal. It was an amicable parting; the band simply wanted complete control of its musical fate.
Last year, ECC self-released the Sante Fe EP. The band has always had a big, fast and sometimes furious sound; now they have gotten even bigger by learning how to slow down. Freed of the constraints of the three-minute single encouraged by the recording industry, they learned to stretch out a little bit, to make every note count a little more.
“I just love the patience of it,” Ostrander said. “Also, we tried to strip it down a little bit. Less is more.”
This is a band with a high level of musicianship. Lyons is that rarest of things, an unpredictable rock drummer; Ostrander is a gifted guitarist, playing a hollow-bodied Gretch with a slide that enables him to play with combination of feedback and thump; and Dougherty, a Berklee College of Music grad, is magical musical glue, singing superb background vocals while playing both bass and rhythm guitar.
ECC has drawn frequent comparisons to Radiohead, and it’s easy to see why, with Ostrander’s undulating melodic waver of a voice and the band’s highly textured sound. You can hear the crash and invention of Pavement and the abstract, oddly sensical poetry of Wilco in their sound. Most crucially, you hear a distinctness that is ECC’s alone, a quality that has grown as they doubled down on their independence.
“It’s that liberation of taking chances,” Ostrander said. “You have got to take chances and do things you aren’t sure about. I am proud of doing what we do. We believe. That is why we do it. We don’t know what else to do. We are lifers.”
Eastern Conference Champions play Brixton Aug. 19. See www.eccmusic.com for more band info or www.brixtonsouthbay.com for ticket info. ER
