In the muggy, un-air-conditioned closeness of a DIY venue in Atlanta, me, my friends, and roughly 20 other people who were about to become my friends, had the distinct and revelatory privilege of experiencing Ozello as they transformed us into a swarm of joyful dancers. With lyrics like theirs, that might come as a shock to you, but the rapturous noise produced by Ozello has a way of swaddling even the sharpest lyrics in the safety of their warm, vibrant instrumentals. My expectations for this random $5 show were surpassed in ways I didn’t even have the vocabulary for at the time- stuttering out something that vaguely sounded like “please… come to WUSC” to a sweaty Garam as we perched on the curb outside the venue. I’m beyond grateful they were able to translate my awe-struck gibberish because Ozello delivered the snuggest, most verbose Tiny Couch I’ve ever had the pleasure of facilitating. In the interim between its filming this past Sunday, and its eventual release sometime before winter break, I’m using this interview, conducted immediately after the recording of their 30-minute set, to take the edge off. With all the warmth, candor, and genuine good-heartedness of a worthwhile southern band, Ozello walks us through unexpected talents, musical convergences, and dealing with the fallout of COVID as artists. A huge, gratuitous, joyful “Thank You” to Ozello, for making time in their schedules to work with 5 grimy college kids. If you enjoy music with unequivocal sincerity, unmatched frankness, and decidedly jovial violin melodies, I’d encourage you to keep your eyes on their Instagram and Bandcamp. For our Pride Spotlight this year, I’m pleased to introduce Ozello. Take it away!
WUSC: We're gonna transcribe this interview to a blog post because it does take us so long to put a tiny couch together. This way you'll have something immediately- I've got my little list of questions that I’ll ask you. Oh, also free stickers if you want them. But if we just want to go around and you guys can introduce yourselves?
Garam: Yeah, I'm Garam Ri- I’m the violinist and guitarist and- for one song, the singer for the band Ozello.
Jody: I am Jody Rollins… legal name Joseph Rollins.
Jeofry: Last four of the social? (laughter)
Jody: Yeah (laughter) and I play the keyboard and sing background vocals. I also play percussion for Ozello and occasionally I play bass… and occasionally I play drums… and one of these days I might occasionally play violin.
WUSC: a true Renaissance man.
Jody: Yeah, that's me.
Jeofry: I am Joffrey Wages, 6’4”, I am Aquarius, I sing-
Jody: And you like aquariums
Jeofry: And I like aquariums. (laughter). I… I sing in the band and I also play guitar, not as well as some people.
Mike: Mike Burkhart. Drums. (Ozello and WUSC laugh)
Jody We also call him Michael “The Heartbreaker” Burkhart, among other things.
Mike: It's true.
Jeofry: We also have a secret fifth member, Chris Robinson, who normally plays bass but is locked away.
WUSC: Being shackled up probably makes it hard to play bass.
Ozello: Yeah, man.
WUSC: Well, I'm gonna start with a non-band question just to break the ice… after we spent five hours together… Um, what is something you're super proud of that you never get the chance to brag about?
Jeofry: Dungeons and Dragons. I run three Dungeons and Dragons games a week-
WUSC: a week?
Jeofry: A week. Well, I have… not enough time on my hands, but there are a lot of jokes I’ve gotta tell. I got to get them out somehow and I think it's a, it is such a fun thing. I've been doing it for 18 or 19 years. I've been playing like one specific campaign for like the last few and it is… it's fun. It's got gumption. It's got heart. You know, we did play as a band for a bit before-
Ozello, overlapping: yeah!
Jeofry: Mike lives in Tampa currently-
Jody: kind of-
Mike: allegedly-
Jeofry: Sometimes he lives in Tampa. we're trying to get him back up to the Atlanta area. (to Mike) But before you moved, we did play a little bit of Dragons.
Jody: I think it was a fun time.
Jeofry: (with supreme confidence) I think everyone should play Dungeons and Dragons.(Ozello and WUSC laugh) Legally speaking, at least once- I'm a lawyer. So, yeah, and you know, all lawyers can just say things and as long as they're legally speaking, it's a contract. (more laughter). So, legally speaking, everyone should try Dungeons and Dragons.
WUSC: Do you require like a blood oath? Or is a signature okay?
Jeofry: (sucking air through their teeth, mock considering) It is a blood oath…yeah, it's a blood oath. You know, my people, they’ll talk to your people and you know, it is all going to be fine. (laughter)
WUSC: I can't wait.
Jody: Everyone just needs the shiny math rocks and it's a great time.
Jeofry: That's right.
WUSC: For the non-shiny-math-rock fans… what about y’all?
Jeofry: Jody is kind of all over the place. Well, most of the time that Jody is not available for a show is because he's like running sound and lights and music for a magician, which is pretty sick.
Jody: (incredibly casually) Yeah, I sometimes work for a magician. I… I signed an NDA so I can't say too much about that, but we do things. It's incredible, like we make cars appear on stage sometimes… you know, different things like that, but I handle all the tech for that. And when I am not working with the magician, I am anywhere and everywhere in Georgia.
WUSC: That’s a dope sentence, “when I’m not working with the magician”.
Jody: Yeah, I've, hey, I've worked on TV shows. American Idol, and Street Outlaws, which is a crazy program on the Discovery Channel. Yeah, so that's kind of my secret life.
Garam: He stays busy. Yeah, I make some killer cocktails.
WUSC: Sick! Are you professionally trained or self taught?
Garam: I just recently started working as a bartender, but even before that I did a lot of mixing and a lot of, you know, experimenting. So my home bar has quite a lot of different things in it. It's always fun to have guests over and kind of experiment on them.
WUSC: Do you have a specialty cocktail that you love to make, or?
Garam: Oh, no, not really? I just like I'm always trying something new. So, you know, I don't think I ever had a favorite cocktail for more than a month.
Mike: Not alcoholic, but he made me a crazy good blue raspberry lemonade.
Garam: Yeah, that raspberry lemonade is good. That’s a Garam Ri Guarantee. (Ozello and WUSC laugh)
WUSC: Man, you need to patent that. I hear you know a lawyer.
Garam: I'm ready for that.
Jeofry: I have a very high billable rate, but for you, I'll give a steep discount. (laughter)
Mike: For me, I’m a top 50 World of Warcraft player. (WUSC laughs, astonished)
WUSC: Seriously?
Mike: It is true… that is objectively true.
WUSC: Like of all time? Or…
Mike: Like North America.
Jeofry: If you need to up your PVP, you call this guy.
Mike: That's right. I was gonna compete in tournaments but I blew out my knee. (Ozello and WUSC laugh)
WUSC: It's hard to recover from that. World of Warcraft aside… more in the music realm of things, do you want to tell me the worst cover you've ever heard? It can be your band or another band.
Jeofry: We're pretty bad with covers because we all, someone will be like, “oh, we should cover that song” and then none of us agree what version of that song we should cover- (Ozello and WUSC laugh)- and so we all just kind of show up playing things in the wrong key quite a bit… We do a mean cover of You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch. But I think that's probably a good one.
Jody: I think there's some, some out there like… what was that one that we played… at the Pride Festival?
Jeofry: We played Harry Styles! We played As It Was.
Ozello, overlapping: That was fun! it was.
Jeofry: I had the lyrics written down in front of me because I could not remember them all. (laughter) I know there's a lot of them-
Jody: Oh, no, Jolene was our worst one.
Garam: I think Jolene was rough.
Mike: Jolene was rough.
Jody: There was a time that we covered that Coldplay song and the crowd hated it so much- (Ozello and WUSC laugh)- Jeofry had to get on the mic and they were like, “guys, you aren't disrespecting us, (Jeofry joins in) you're disrespecting Coldplay” (laughter)
But that wasn't the worst Coldplay cover… I've seen far worse.
Jeofry: We… I would say that like we don't, we don't have enough respect for cover songs when we do them. I think it's why we kind of stay away from them. We do really mean interpretations of things, that’s why I think our cover of that Grinch song is so good… all things that do not respect the source material, but I think are fun to do.
WUSC: I guess we can get out of the valleys, we can get into the peaks here. You guys have been playing oodles and oodles of shows, but as far as I know just from one EP for source material- is there anything coming soon that we can look forward to?
Jeofry: Yeah! We started recording a full length album in January 2020- (derisively) which is, if you recall, a great time to start recording an album. Great time to start spending a lot of time locked in a small room together.
WUSC: Damn, that must have been tough.
Jeofry: Yeah, so we had to take a little bit of a break in recording. We reconvened… kind of a year or so in 2021, maybe halfway through 2021, we started recording again. We recorded the full album over the course of that next year and hated it. (Ozello and WUSC laugh) And so we said we don't want to put out on the internet, a product that is not, you know, recognizably us even.
WUSC: Yeah, for sure.
Jeofry: So we started driving over to Athens and recording again. Then, the other one [the second album they had recorded] it sounded like a lot of bands from Florida.
Jody: And we've got beef with Florida, obviously. (laughter).
WUSC: Historically, a terrible place (laughter).
Mike: Historically! Historically…
Jeofry: I say that… he's [Mike] from Florida or… lives in Florida? I shouldn’t say that.
Mike: Yeah, don’t insult me like that. (laughter)
Jeofry: Yeah, so we’ve recorded the whole album two and a half times now, and it’s probably coming out next year. We'll have, it's a 10 song thing out there. We’ll put on the internet and the radio waves and hopefully people will enjoy it.
WUSC: Sweet! We can’t wait. I don’t think it's a crazy leap to say that you all kind of come from different places musically, you kind of go from bluegrass to some garage rock, I’m sure there's some genre specific words that I don't know that we could throw in there, but is there any band where you really come together? And you're like “wow, we have this in common”? (decided silence) It's OK to say no. (laughter)
Jody: No, that's a good question.
Mike: Pine Grove.
Garam: Pine Grove!
Jeofry: Yeah, that's actually, that's actually pretty good. Pine Grove is one. I feel like there's probably a Midwest Emo band that connects us all.
Jody: I am, the two of us [Jody and Jeofry] are like musical theater people. We met through, we, we basically got to know each other doing the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
WUSC: (gleeful) And is there a better way to get to know somebody? That’s incredible! Were y’all at The Plaza [historic Atlanta theater] or somewhere else?
Jody: No, no, it was deep down south, in Georgia. For that production, I played Riff Raff and Jeofry played Brad. So we have a lot of connection, like when it comes to musical theater and stuff like that. And then it's like, there's like a whole different area of music that I have connection with Michael, and like, and then Michael and Garam connect on all kinds of other music. So it's like, I like, we have a million different influences and we come from different places. So it all kind of collides into this.
WUSC: Sweet! I think I've just got two more questions for you- I know y’all have stuff going on. Earlier y’all described your band in three words, if you would pick another three words or if you want to restate those again…
Garam: I don't even remember the three words that I said. (Ozello and WUSC laugh)
Jeofry: Well, that's because we like to be off the cuff.
Mike: (decisively) Off. The. Cuff. (laughter)
Jody: The perfect three words! (more laughter)
Jeofry: Sad Gay Yelling is like… what we fall back on quite a bit because like.. we're queercore, and emo, and folk… Someone described us once as “the middle between Mumford and Sons and Pierce the Veil” which I thought was so good (awed laughter). I was like, “I'm gonna get that tattooed on my forehead”. (more laughter). We also got “if Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros had a queer Southern baby.”
WUSC: So damn real.
Jeofry: It's “sad gay yelling” that I think kind of like smooshes all that together, I would say. WUSC: “Sad gay yelling” sounds like my spotify daylist. Last question then, kind of in that vein, what is your favorite song to scream along to in the car?
Jody: Good Luck Babe by Chappel Roan. (everyone nods solemnly in agreement). As soon as that one dropped I was like, well, I know it's gonna be on my Spotify Wrapped this year. But before that one, I always like to turn on The Black Parade.
Jeofry: Yeah, that's, yeah.
WUSC: Any specific one off that or just, all the way through?
Jody: I like all the songs, but usually my voice is blown out after Welcome to the Black Parade.
WUSC: That’ll do it. Mike, are you like cruising through your Spotify right now?
Mike: Yeah, I think Whatever and Ever Amen [by Ben Folds Five]. I could just sing through that the whole time, to be honest. (everyone turns toward Garam expectantly)
Garam: Oh, I'll scream along to our own EP on Spotify.
Jeofry: Amen. That's the right answer (laughter).
WUSC: I was, I was bitching earlier in the elevator. I was like “you didn’t play my favorite song!” “you didn't play Right Where You Belong!”
Jeofry: Oh, well, we were gonna play it and our sweet, beautiful bassist- who is not here-
WUSC: He’s chained up-
Jeofry: Yeah- Jody did an incredible job-
Jody: But I do not remember how to play it (Ozello and WUSC laugh).
Jeofry: It, it's, it's a tough one. That's kind of the thing about our music- I think it's kind of deceptively complicated when you start trying to teach it to people. You have to be like, “Yeah, it goes Verse A into Pre Chorus A, then it goes back to Verse A for a brief little bit, and then we go to Chorus B… and then we do Pre Chorus A again, and there's a bridge and there's another chorus and then you end on a third chorus.
Mike: Don't forget the dynamic, there's the dynamics (Ozello laughs)
Ozello, overlapping: Legato! Formata! (Ozello and WUSC laugh).
Jeofry: So it's whenever we have someone filling in, it's like “we're just gonna sit around and pray about it” because it's, it's kind of a battle. But hey, next time, next time we're in South Carolina [we’ll play Right Where You Belong], right?
WUSC: Yes, Please! I think that's all the questions I have for you, so thank you so much!
Ozello, overlapping: Thank you for having us, We appreciate it.
Tiny Couches are not possible without our incredible Audio Engineer, Nikhil Vaishnav, or our highly sought-after Videographer, Andy Beck. Special thanks to Ethan Nikolaus, chairman of pushing rickety carts laden with incredibly expensive equipment, Graysen Dowdy, and Ra’Shon Heyward for all their help. We can’t do it without you!
This interview will also be accessible in podcast form shortly, check WUSC.FM for details!