Open Sky

So what is it going to take for you guys to finally settle on a good name? Mike looked at Nathan and shrugged as Jon put his guitar away after a hard days work in the studio. The band had been tossing around name ideas for the past few months now, but nothing seemed to stick. With this question in each of their minds they packed up and left the studio.We got lost. Jared recalls of that day. We were just turning the car around to head back when WHAM! We hit another car coming the opposite way. The band was pretty shaken up. They sat in the car for a few moments in shock.It was a pretty bad crash, but luckily everyone was ok. says Nathan. Slowly we each stepped out of the van, looked up and just stared into a big, beautiful Open Sky.This incident in May of 2005 would prove to be a major stepping stone in the formation of Open Sky. The band had been playing together for over 5 years but it was this point that would set them on a more serious course.Brothers Mike, Nathan and Jared Boucher and family friend Jon Felske grew up in the suburbs of Ottawa together. Were practically a band of 4 brothers, comments Jon, Ive known Mike and Nathan longer than Jared has. Nathan continues, When four guys whove pretty much lived together all their lives pick up instruments, forming a band is just the next natural progression.Within weeks of the first time that Mike picked up a guitar he was writing profound songs on his own and with the other guys. I had been playing for about 2 weeks when the September 11th crisis occurred and that day I wrote a song about it. A week after Mike and Nathan would sing the song at the front of their church as one of their very first public appearances.Ive never just written songs for the sake of writing, Mike says of his own work, I usually have a concept or point of view that I want to convey and the emotions that Im feeling at the time just naturally come out in the writing process. Its that purpose driven writing that has given life to the music of Open Sky. Whether the song is about life, love or just having fun the band has something to say.Life can be a burden if we let it be. Mike reflects, Theres always obstacles, theres always hardships and theres going to be struggles that we are going to have to face at some points. But one thing that Ive found is that there is always hope and thats what I try to convey in my music.Open Sky really stresses that even though we cant control all of our life experiences, we can choose what we are going to focus on, the obstacles of life or the answer to life. As the famous playwright Oscar Wilde wrote, We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. And we can only see those stars when theres an Open Sky.