Overhand

Last Updated: October 1st, 2006

The beauty of the future harmonizing with the rooted past in the form of today. This is Overhand.

History

Overhand was officially spawned on November 23 rd , 2005, by vocalist Joel Barker and keyboardist Jeremy Wainscott in Bloomington, Indiana. Shortly thereafter, they commissioned Indiana University student Alan Hamrick to play bass in the band. The original name of the band was Crither, and that was name Barker, Wainscott, and Hamrick originally intended to go with. After several weeks, however, Hamrick left the band to focus on his education at IU. When this happened, Barker and Wainscott were left without an obvious replacement, and it was back to square one. Shortly following this, they located a drummer in Bryan Ibison, an old friend of Barker’s, who agreed to sit in on drums for the time being. Eventually, Ibison became the permanent drummer, and the three kept chugging away at their material for quite some time with no guitarist and still no replacement on bass. In addition, the name of Crither (at the suggestion of Ibison) was changed, and for a long time the band actually was nameless until everyone finally settled on Overhand some time later.

Throughout all this, the band was struggling to locate both a guitarist and a bassist to replace Hamrick, who showed no interest at all in returning to the band. Multiple people were tried on guitar and several on bass. Finally in March of 2006, Jeff Ellis became the official Overhand guitarist. But bass still remained vacant, and it was becoming brutally obvious to Wainscott and Barker that bassists were hard to come by in Bloomington. While searching for a bassist, Barker, Wainscott, Ibison, and Ellis continued writing, practicing, honing and editing their music. At long last in April, Yuki Tasaka was auditioned on bass, and almost immediately after the audition he agreed to become the permanent bassist in Overhand.

With the lineup finally complete, the five members of Overhand rushed to prepare for an audition for a Battle of the Bands at the Read Dormitory at IU. The audition was unfortunately unsuccessful, due mostly in part to the band’s inexperience at playing together (this was 2 weeks after Yuki’s inclusion) and the fact that they obviously were not the type of music the judges were looking for.

Around 2 months later, the band was thrown yet another curveball. Due to extreme problems regarding practice attendance, Jeff Ellis was removed from the band’s lineup, and the guitar position was once again vacant. Also, Yuki had to return home to Japan for the summer and would not be returning until August. So this sent Barker, Wainscott, and Ibison scrambling to find a replacement as they were planning to start doing shows in October. Like before, several people were tried and every one of them either didn’t seem to fit the bill or weren’t used to the style of music. So this was leading to much frustration within the band.

The band started posting advertisements everywhere they could; various places around town, on the internet, etc. About a week and half after this, they got a response from a man named Scott McClure who mentioned he would be interested in auditioning for the spot. He was tried and instantly accepted into the band.

While in preparation for their first show at Rhino’s All-Ages Club on October 6 th , 2006, they recruited Cody Hill as a session bassist, as Yuki still had not returned to Bloomington, and there was confusion as to exactly why. Cody began getting comfortable with the songs, along with Scott. Things with Yuki started getting sketchier and sketchier, and no one had heard from him in weeks. After consulting with Scott, Bryan and Cody, Joel and Jeremy agreed that it was best for the band to continue with Cody as the permanent bassist, and probably for Yuki as well, and to this day the band still has not heard from him.

Now the band sounds more solid than it ever has, and Overhand is prepared to make their mark on the music world.

The Sound

The music is multi-genre with multiple influences. Joel Barker brings an interesting operatic industrial feel with his vocals. Jeremy Wainscott provides an ethereal gothic feel with his keyboards as well as more industrial influences with some driving synthesizers. Bryan Ibison was originally trained as a jazz drummer, and thus brings that element to the band. Scott McClure is a multi-faceted guitarist who can crunch like Rammstein or Theatre of Tragedy, but can also provide classically-oriented guitar riffs reminiscent of Pink Floyd. The final member of the group, bassist Cody Hill, does mostly simplistic and full bass patterns but is not afraid at all to break into more complicated riffs from time to time. Officially, the band is classified as gothic rock, but unofficially, the members prefer to call it "eclectic-industrial-goth-rock."

The Plan

The first two shows are official, and will take place on October 3 rd, 2006 at Uncle Fester’s, and October 6 th , 2006 at the Rhino’s All Ages club, both located in Bloomington. From a recording standpoint, there were plans to release dual EP’s, but that has since been changed, and plans for a full recording have been pushed back indefinitely. Instead, a 3-track demo is currently in the works, and the band has not yet set a timeframe for the making and release of the recording.

In addition, the band’s art director and web designer Chris Callahan has launched the Overhand website, and has worked extensively on some media for the band, also to be found on the website, including album art.