Good Morning
Old Man River
Good Morning by Old Man River is an alluring and engaging work. Bandleader Ohad Rein is an articulate wordsmith but one that uses an organic approach with both instrumentation and arrangement, so the songs have a very natural feel to them. I was lucky enough to catch up with Ohad (in town for a gig) and get some comments from this soft spoken and thoughtful man. I’ve always loved hippy speak and Ohad didn’t disappoint.

The album really insinuates itself into your heart and mind in a very organic way, did the songs come together as seamlessly as they sound?
“The general way of things is by being loyal to the law of always doing without doing, so all you’re really doing is what you are meant to be doing, in that it’s almost effortless. It’s like you are just a channel.”
Just step out of the way and let it happen.
“Exactly, get yourself out of the way and let it happen. There were points where I really wanted to control it because it was ready to go about a year ago and I was really inpatient and wanting to get it out but when you try to control something it’s going to be cancelled out by the world. ”
At no point in time does the album sound over produced. I’ve always thought if you remove all the production in a song and reduce it to just voice and maybe guitar and it works, you have yourself a great song.
“Totally man, we tried because it’s really easy these days with Pro Tools to overdo it. Because you can put like 150 layers on if you want to. All the music I really love is so simple and so minimal. Like we were watching the new film about John Lennon last night, The United States Vs John Lennon, in a big cinema and every time they played one of his songs it just cuts in even with these big cinema speakers. All there is, is just drums, bass, piano and vocals and it was so spacious and powerful. It just cuts through.”
When you write a song and give it space, you give the audience time to digest it.
“Yes well they do say music is just the spaces between notes. So to perceive that you aim towards the stillness and not towards the motion, it opens up a new dimension.”
The guitarist David Gilmour is a good example of saying more by playing less.
“Yeah totally man he is one of my favourites as well.”
One of the strongest emotions I get from the new album is the sense of community. Was it really just recorded with friends?
“Yes even the actual song writing process was very communal for a lot of the songs. Like the way the first track Sunshine came about for the first time was at some hippy festival on the border of New South Wales and Victoria in a tent while it was raining outside. We were just jamming and the song came out of that and then later it was recorded with a bunch of friends. We got all our friends to do the drunken choir effect.”
There is that sense of community throughout the album’s 11 tracks.
“Well that’s really the aim and when we play live as well we like to get people involved and up on stage.”
What was the vibe like in studio when you were recording?
“Well we did it in two halves, one half was done in Sydney and that was a pretty intense week just putting all the beds down and at that stage I was freaking out about paying so much money for that and trying to get so much done but never-the-less while we were working on the tracks we stayed loyal to that concept of keeping it real and organic. So most of the songs were put down on first takes and all the drum takes were done live. No click tracks or any of that stuff, we just let it breath.”
The album was self-produced as well?
“Yes I didn’t really have a choice at that stage. I wasn’t with any label at that time and I knew I had to do it so I took on the job without really thinking about it. I found it really educating and enjoyable.”
I really like the way the sound on the album opens up with the expanded instrumentation like the pedal steel on Trousers and sitar on Sunshine, when you were writing the songs did you have that in mind?
“No all I had before I actually went down to the studio and started recording anything was probably the chords on the guitar and just the lyrics and the melody, that’s it. So everything kind of came about on the spot. With the sitar segment on Sunshine we just had a little block to fill. I think it was standing there for a few weeks until one day when I was walking through my living room and saw the sitar standing on the side of the room and thought, umm maybe we should add some sitar and it all worked out perfectly.”
The tonal quality of the sitar fits the arrangement perfectly.
“It just has something doesn’t it? You hear it and it puts you in a different dimension.”
I read in your bio that you spent a number of years wandering the globe; I've always thought as a westerner that it was important to experience a culture outside our own.
“Totally, I can really remember what the first ten minutes felt like when I first got to India. I started my trip in Bombay and remember those first ten minutes when my whole world just turned. It felt like I was using a muscle in my mind that was just asleep and wasn’t being used. I felt like I was waking up. Everything looked familiar but so new. It was so fresh.”

As much as music is a business, it’s also a form of universal expression and a vehicle for personal growth. The music of Old Man River reflects this side of the industry in a most inspirational way.
Rob Hudson
http://www.oldmanrivermusic.com/