Overman Family

Obie here, I’m the old man in the Overman Family Band. I’ve been writing songs and performing with bands or solo or with my family since 1968,69? I have a bio on cdbaby and I’m blogging on ourstage.com so you can fill in a few more of the blanks if you’re so inclined. I want to tell you about the band. Right now we are performing as a trio, Gretchen, Ian and me. Gretchen is the chick singer in the band. If you love Jolie Holland or Gillian Welsh or Patsy Cline, you’re gonna love Gretchen. A few years ago, Gretchen and sister Heather presented me with a three song CD of my tunes. Heather’s husband Craig Neil recorded it at his studio in Santa Fe. I’m hoping we can make it available real soon. Goose bump raising harmonies. I was blown away. We’ll run one on Ourstage next month, see what happens
Ian, on the other hand, really is on the other hand. He learned to play the banjo up side down, didn’t reverse the strings, so it tweeks people to watch him play. The banjo just kind of fell in our lap a few years ago, Ian picked it up and started playing, wrote a couple of bluegrass tunes, one of which turned out to be the chord progression for the song “Bob” on our CD. However, his first love started with the drums, he loves jazz. He studied with local maestro, Pete Amal. He played with a band called Ande, a local high intensity marimba band. They have a CD called “Fear Not.” Ian has been pretty much the chief engineer here at Cerrillos Island Sound seat of yer pants production facility. It’s all good, getting better. Anyway, thanks to OurStage for providing this world wide sounding board. There’s a lot of music yet to come...........Obie
So...............it has occurred to me , having just re-read my press kit, that a bit more of my performance history is required. Let the name dropping begin. The sixties and seventies in Santa Fe were a trip. I started out solo in a coffee house run by Eliza Gilkyson and David (guitar) Gilliland. My first band experience was with the Family Lotus, a full on psychedelic Bluegrass orchestra. My first bar gig was with the Family Lotus at Claude’s bar on Canyon Road. After the Family Lotus melt down I joined with David and Eliza in a band called Tusker. The scene was such back then that if anyone needed an opening act for a show, the Family Lotus or Tusker was there to fill the bill. So I got to play with some really great artists. I’m going to cut to the chase and give you the list of luminaries right off,OK? In relative chronological order they are, Taj Majal, Pete Seeger, Jerry Jeff Walker, Gary P Nunn, David Bromberg, Country Joe McDonald, David Amram, Peter Rowan, and on and on.(I'll add more names as they occur to me.) I remember taking the medicine trail with Peter Rowen up to the Telluride Bluegrass festival sometime in the eighties. All the greats were there, I won’t list all the players but I gotta say it was great being in the presence of icons like Doc Watson and Ralph Stanley. Anyway, such as it is, that’s a rough sketch of my early performance history.These days we continue making history as the Overman Family. I have been blessed with a very talented bunch of kids. If you are ever in the neighborhood and you see that we're playing, come by and check it out...Peace, Obie