Australia\u2019s Oh Pep! have been slowly building a name for themselves in the past few years. Already a powerhouse in the Americana realm, The duo of Olivia Halley and Pepita Emmerich\u2019s expertly fuse their bluegrass and folk roots with a natural pop sensibility. This came to fruition on 2016’s Stadium Cake where the band wrote songs that fit as nicely on the radio as they do on the front porch of a farmhouse. The duo then released I Wasn\u2019t Only Thinking About You in October 2018, which pushed them into the pop realm even further without losing that bluegrass foundation. We recently had the chance to speak with Olivia Halley from Oh Pep! about their musical roots, their home country of Australia, and the growth in musical philosophy between Stadium Cake and I Wasn\u2019t Only Thinking About You…<\/p>\n
Pepi and I met in high school in Melbourne. We were both at a performing arts school studying classical music. I was playing classical guitar and singing on the side. Pepi was studying violin. Pepi walked past when I was about to rehearse a song and I asked if she wanted to join me and that was that.<\/p>\n
There was and still is an incredible original music scene in Melbourne, especially. When Oh Pep! was first starting I remember going to the Evelyn on Monday nights for their residencies and watching these amazing bands, thinking \u2018that\u2019s what I want to do\u2019. Even before Oh Pep! I was lucky that my family loved live music. We\u2019d drive up to the city from Phillip Island to see acts like Liz Stringer and Jordie Lane. I remember when Loudon Wainwright III came to town, I think we went to every gig of his in the state.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s always so much going on in Melbourne. Even now, when I\u2019m coming home from tour, I get out my diary and make sure I\u2019m not going to miss anything while I\u2019m home. We run these songwriting hangouts too, called FUN, and get people together to write music and go for a surf or something like that – and I get a lot of inspiration from that as well.<\/p>\n
I was listening to lot of rock\/folk\/roots\/country, maybe what we\u2019d call Americana, when I was growing up and so was Pepi. I think our conversations around what we listened to as kids and seeing the similarities really consolidated the band. After uni finished (I had studied classical guitar and Pepi studied jazz fiddle), we went on this big adventure which was really formative to our touring overseas. We hung out at fiddle conventions around the USA and met so many people in the old time and bluegrass scenes.<\/p>\n
There is a small but lively old-time scene in Australia and we hang out with a group that we\u2019re a part of called FOTA (Feminist Old Time Association) that\u2019s really given us our sanity over the past few years. We come back and sit in circles playing these simple, but nuanced melodies over and over in this Zen-like manner with our friends, occasionally singing songs. It\u2019s pretty cool\/cathartic.<\/p>\n
The general philosophy in songwriting and collaboration (and life) is to not be judgmental. Sometimes someone will come by with an idea they were going to throw out and then next minute someone else has picked it up and it\u2019s become a song with a lot of life. There\u2019s something very special when you collaborate with someone else and what you create becomes larger than the sum of its parts. I also love solo writes, and a lot of the new record was written that way, too.<\/p>\n
I believe we\u2019re just growing more into ourselves as a band. I think for both records we were like \u201clet\u2019s make a pop record\u201d. We felt like we were writing pop songs but through the filter of ourselves and all the music we\u2019ve absorbed over the years. And as time has gone on, we\u2019ve just moved deeper and deeper into it.<\/p>\n