Biography

It started, more or less, 25 years ago when vocalist James O’Connell and guitarist Hugh Simmons took a breather from Creative Writing classes to knock out a couple of pop songs together, just to see what they’d come up with (by chance, they’d learned that they both liked “Fear of Music” by Talking Heads and, unlike most of their peers, “Sugar Sugar” by the Archies). From the get-go—a catchy absurdity called “Young Writers In Love”—they knew they were musical soulmates: a pure love of melody, the necessity for irony, and a wistful sincerity just under the surface.

They survived the Peace Corps and a graduate poetry program to join up again in NYC for a long run of recording projects, and ultimately, a band that played out. Joined by drummer Rob Speck, their songs got a much-needed boost. It was also a boost of resolve.

In effect, they got their groove on. Connected to and inspired by the budding Brooklyn music scene of the late 80s, they found their fan base. Although eclectic influences from Camper Van Beethoven to West African Pop were integrated, they’d never stray far from the path to pop heaven.

After grad school, careers, and wanderlust intervened, O’Connell and Speck wound up on the crowded Boston scene, in the cocktail-and-angst pop band Johnny One Note, while Simmons tried to make a go of a NYC outfit called Major Matt Mason. The next big move found the members even farther afield, with Speck moving to Phoenix. There he met songwriter and bassist Paula Murray, who cut her teeth on the Minneapolis music scene before moving to San Francisco to become a veteran of numerous Bay Area bands and studio projects — including, ironically, the show “San Francisco Does San Francisco,” where her band covered Camper Van Beethoven’s “Take The Skinheads Bowling.” Speck and Murray worked as a duo for a time in various projects, ranging from jazz to cantorial music. It was around this time that, looking backward and forward, they realized they might all work better together. So, initiated by Speck, they met up in Phoenix with new material. Through some pure play in the rehearsal studio, they found immediate chemistry.

The result of years of hard work (together and individually), several long trips, and the inspired purchase of cowboy hats, their debut album
“Dayjob Believer” arrives as a labor of love. It is a weave-work of the members’ separate influences. But it’s also the culmination of a four-decade-long immersion in popular music, from shiny 60s and 70s AM radio pop (thus, the Monkees reference of the title) to offbeat 80s bands like XTC and Talking Heads, and on to the slightly darker vibes of more recent indy music. It’s a big embrace. Especially for three-minute pop songs.

But The Obligations do it – warm and fuzzy or cold and prickly. Come into the embrace.