Oliver Thiessen

Well I played my first show at a small coffee place in a loft atop a college cafeteria in a small farming town in Alberta, Canada. Most people were to busy watching the Stanley Cup playoffs to listen to me. I probably started playing music because I wanted to be like my older brothers: one who played saxophone and guitar the other played harmonica and the bass. First I tried to sound like Ray Charles(which would never work),then Coldplay(which kind of worked and still sticks to the back of my voice when I try to sing), then Switchfoot, and now I am trying not to sound like Ben Gibbard of DCFC and trying to sound like myself, which is hard because I just feel like this messed up love child of all my musical influences. I try to evoke the best of them in my music, focusing on the folk - i - ness and story telling of some of my favorite artists. I love the idea of never ceasing to change musically, always throwing in different styles and instruments into ones songs, creating something at once different and more bizzare than the last one you did. Good music to me, has to be something that is consistent without being boring and to strategic. Some people spend hours trying to make something work, and in the end it either does or doesn't. However, the way I usually work is I stumble across something simple but has the potential to be beautiful, and then you have to work hard to make it that way, but sometimes you don't, it just comes naturally, i think if your honest and mining the depths of your "honest soul" then it should just come naturally. I would love to be able to perform full time, you know go on tour and what not. However, that opporunity hasn't presented itself yet. So for now I continue to make music in my basement, soft indie - folk ballads on my classical guitar, that make my limited audiences: my family, friends and my bedroom walls swoon.