OK SWEETHEART is more than just a band name. It’s equal parts affirmation and dismissal, acceptance and rebuttal. It’s a phrase for keeping the peace without backing down, a term of endearment for a person and also, if read right, a place. OK SWEETHEART is a way of life.
Living that life is Erin Austin, a 31-year-old singer-songwriter with one foot out the door and the other in the recording studio. Austin is a woman constantly on the move. She’s at home on the road, with musical family in places as far-flung as Tulsa and New York, San Francisco and Seattle. The last 6 years of her life have been dedicated wholly and completely to music—writing, rehearsing, recording and performing songs that nestle comfortably into the Great American Songbook alongside modern traditionalists like Harry Nilsson and Randy Newman.
Erin grew up on a Christmas tree farm in upstate New York, her father an avid hunter and fisherman, her mother a nurse. Both parents were religious and she was steeped in church music, leading her to take up piano at age four. Not long after, she started writing her own songs and studying opera at age 12. She left home for Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, where she continued voice training along with performance, composition and orchestration spent a semester at a recording studio internship. Her professional songwriting career began with her first job out of college at an ad agency in San Francisco.
From there Erin’s passion grew—as did her talent. She spent hours in a whole in the wall recording studio in San Francisco’s Bayview, digging deep into the Beatles catalog for inspiration. She found young conspirators in Los Angeles, New York and in Denton, Texas, where she later relocated to live and record with members of indie-rock band Midlake, Lucius, Via Audio and the Polyphonic Spree. She self-released those songs as her first album, Home, in April 2011. Erin’s audience expanded as her songs found their way to prime time TV shows and commercials.
Starting in January of 2010, more than a year before the release of her debut, she spent three years living on the road, traveling with a band that believed in her mission, playing hundreds of shows a year at venues of every variety. The road was the source of that OK SWEETHEART MO: To live in music as purely and personally as breathing. To chase inspiration wherever it may lead.
No surprise that wanderlust is all over Erin’s latest collection of songs, recorded in late 2013 and early ’14 with producer Ryan Hadlock at the famed Bear Creek Studios outside Seattle. Harkening to the Golden Era of Motown and Abbey Road, tunes like „Get Back“ and „Save the World“ grapple with the call of far-off horizons versus the warmth of the familiar. She rerecorded the title song from her debut with Hadlock—an update, yes, but also a reminder.
Long recognized as „one of the most fashionable girls in indie music” (google it), Erin is in production for clothing label and will be showcasing designs as a companion to her touring and 2015 music release. Her old-is-new reconfiguring of vintage finds will also take the OK SWEETHEART name—yet another facet in a life constantly on the move.
Restlessness, change, progress—these ideals are at Erin Austin’s core. For OK SWEETHEART, home is in the music she makes, the people it brings into her life and all the places it takes her.
OK SWEETHEART’s debut album was recorded and released independently April 5th, 2011, followed by consistent touring through the United States and multiple placements in film and television. Her sophomore release is being recorded at Bear Creek Studios with producer Ryan Hadlock and expected to be released in 2015.
Videos:
OK SWEETHEART | IN ANOTHER DIRECTION
OK SWEETHEART | ALL WE HAVE
Platoo Montag in der Scherbe
OK SWEETHEART (US)
12.02.2018 | 20:45 Uhr
Tickets an der Abendkassa: 9€
Die Scherbe, Stockergasse 2, 8020 Graz
