On Again

Local band Q&A: On Again

•Why: On Again, featuring Lauren Owsley on lead vocals, bassist David Klein, guitarist Matt Owsley and drummer John Hernandez, creates energetic power-pop/punk-influenced tunes. They've spent months crafting new songs and reworking and perfecting old ones, and now they're primed to hit the stage again.

•When: 8 p.m. Saturday.

•Where: The Conservatory, 8911 N. Western.

Q:So tell me, how and when did On Again come to be?

A:David Klein, bass: On Again started officially in late summer '05. Matt and I had played together for a few years doing instrumental prog-rock material with more musicians than we can remember, and were tired of trying out people who couldn't hang or were in it for the wrong reasons. Therefore, we scrapped everything we had composed up until that point and started anew.

We decided to play the kind of music that inspired us to play. We adopted a more minimalist — well, relatively minimalist — approach to songwriting and focused on melody and chord structure rather than chops. We asked Matt's sister, Lauren, to sing and Bart Davis joined on drums, and we played for nearly a year before taking a break. Bart moved on to another band and we were lucky to find John Hernandez on a charitable day; he agreed to play drums with us in the fall of last year. John and I played in a Colorado band, Wretch Like Me, and a couple other bands when we were younger, so he was a natural choice to play with us.

Q:What are some of your primary influences?

A:Klein: Between the four of us, I'm pretty sure every style is an influence on some part of our playing. I stick to punk, jazz and prog, but our players probably have influences from ALL to Led Zeppelin and back to John Coltrane. Every song has its influence from some source, and we could probably map out every note and justify it with an influence.

Q:What is the usual creative process when you write as a band?

A:Klein: Matt and I usually come to practice with the skeleton of a song, we work together to make it work and jam it out until it becomes a natural extension of our creativity. Lauren and I write vocal melodies together and we work on lyrics and rhythms after the music is pretty solid. We record a lot of practices and Lauren uses the tapes to work on vocals at home. Her melodies are often better when she has space to write and she's not in a blasting practice space.

Q:What can someone who has never before seen your live show expect when they see

you perform?

A:Klein: They can expect, and we will deliver, a blasting amalgamation of precision and creativity sugar-coated for the masses, or as Lauren puts it, "It's gonna be awesome!”

— Michael Senior