We were delighted here at LCM to premiere the video from our next featured duo Orian & Obidiah's (O&O) debut single 'Traveling' back in August. Since then the song has been one of the highlights of the UK’s homegrown Country/Americana scene in 2017, receiving support across the media including Chris Country’s new music list to the ‘Best of August’ playlist by Richer Unsigned. Having grown their fanbase further through a summer of live appearances and online videos, they added thousands of followers and over 200,000 views on their Youtube channel in the process. This exciting duo returned yesterday to release their brand new single and our LCM #SongOfTheDay the wonderful ‘Some Days’.
Inspired to write the song during a month-long stay in Nashville, where they performed at multiple venues including the legendary Bluebird Cafe, Orian and Obadiah returned to England to record the single in Liverpool, the city where they originally met. “Being a couple, as well as musical partners, of course inspires many love songs, and in this case, a song about the more challenging moments in a relationship. ’Some Days’ was recorded over three, intense days and the lyrics were being tweaked right up until we recorded the vocals.”
O&O are Colorado-native, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, Obadiah Jones, and Israeli vocalist, Orian Peled. “The shared dream of a career in music led us both halfway across the world to the classrooms of Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA), where we met for the first time.” While performing together in various projects during their three-year course, O&O established their deep connection as a songwriting partnership and were awarded the unique opportunity of a one-on-one songwriting session with Sir Paul himself: "Writing with Paul McCartney was an amazing experience. During the session, he started to harmonise on one of our songs, and hearing our three voices together was completely surreal - we could barely comprehend that we were actually singing with Paul McCartney!"
“Upon graduating and with student visa expiration dates looming, we knew there would be no country where we could both live and work together,” Obadiah recalls. Determined to overcome the bureaucracy, they found an unlikely solution – to live and perform on cruise ships. A six-month stint in the Caribbean ultimately led them on a two-year journey, performing for thousands, honing their distinct sound and learning their craft, while touring far reaching parts of the world, from Alaska to the Greek Isles.
This long and winding road led the truly international act to their current home, London, where they hope to become a mainstay in the fast-growing Country and Americana music scene in the UK. Although relatively new to the London scene, O&O have already made their presence felt on the local live music circuit over the last twelve months, with support slots for artists incuding Australian Music Award nominees, the Germein Sisters, and a number of club and festival appearances. Their live show features the duo's distinctive, close-harmony sound with an Americana flare, Fleetwood Mac meets The Civil Wars. Their self-released debut single ‘Traveling’, with the “perfect harmonies” praised by sites such as The Daily Country and Building Our Own Nashville, showed all the signs of early success, with support across the British music scene, while proceeds from the single and donations raised during a series of pop-up concerts in collaboration with Busk In London and Network Rail went towards raising awareness of national charity Youth Music and its music-making projects for children and young people experiencing challenging circumstances.
We have been very impressed with Orian and Obidiah's music since we first met them last year. They are also one of our LCM 'Ones To Watch' in 2018.
