If you like rockabilly, you won’t want to miss Seagrave, Ontario based rockabilly quartet Ollie Vee at the Owl Acoustic Lounge, May 18.
Named after the Buddy Holly song, Ollie Vee formed when rhythm guitarist/ singer Jesse Adamson got to talking to his cab driver Howard Linscott in the local watering hole.
“In our town we only have two cabs, so he was my cab driver a lot. I knew him for about two years. He actually used to own my house but we never talked about music. Then I was talking to him in the bar about some songs I was working on and he told 
me he was the best rockabilly bass player I’d ever seen. So I invited him over,” related Calgary bred Adamson, who moved to southern Ontario because of a girl.
Adamson and Linscott connected over their mutual love for the ’50s Sun Studio Memphis sound and started working on some songs.
They put up posters looking for a lead guitarist and found Johnny Vassos and started recording music.
“ We started recording as a trio without a drummer, like they did in the ’50s,” he said. Their new self-titled CD has been in the can for several months and is in the final stages before they release it. It combines elements of Elvis Presley, a little bit of Canned Heat and a lot of Brian Ferry.
“ We were only together for about three months when we recorded the CD at Metalworks studio in Mississauga. So some of the songs are getting kind of old for us now,” he continued.
“It was recorded live off the floor with analogue equipment. We maybe overdubbed hand claps. But it is basically a live album. We wanted it to feel like music, not a Pro Tools editing project.”
They started playing around southern Ontario, sometimes playing Hamilton and Toronto.
They are excited about a summer tour on the U.S.
“We basically booked it because we wanted to hang out in Nashville and Memphis where rock and roll began. And maybe hear a few great bands along the way. So we basicallybooked it around places we wanted to hang out in anyway,” he enthused.
They have also toured around B.C and Alberta. Response has been really good.
“Our bassist is almost 60 and the rest of us are in our 30’s and we‘ve all been in other bands before. But this feels good and people seem to like it. We get a lot of people who are impressed that we’ll play five ’50s ballads right in the middle of the set while other bands wouldn’t. Me and Johnny love Ernest Tubbs and old Hank Williams and I love Buddy Holly, which is where the band’s name comes from. So we’ll mix it up with some old honky tonk music,” he said.
They will officially be releasing the album on June 7.
