Orlando Bloom

Charley Orlando has a new label, a new tour and a new way of making music

Charley Orlando is a self-made musician. He’s been touring for 22 years, has played more than 3,000 shows, has 13 albums out and has been considered for Grammy nomination 28 times with projects both solo and in
various bands. 

At age 42, Orlando is reinventing himself once again. He now incorporates into his live show the musicmaking software Ableton Live, which uses a series of foot pedals that can access thousands of audible options. Drums, bass, shakers, triangles, congas and more are all available at Orlando’s toe-tips as he sets out on Wednesday, Feb. 29, for a tour that takes him from Vermont to Texas to the Rockies, with a stop in an Atlanta studio on the way. 

The last time the Syracuse New Times caught up with Orlando (“On the Regular with Ruha,” Dec. 22, 2010), he was working with his band Ruha and had just self-

released a digital EP. Today, Orlando is a fresh artist with the AMA Label Group, has a new manager, Gregory Allis, is working on two upcoming albums and is even looking for a booking agent to take over the duties he has assumed for more than two decades. 

As Orlando chats about his past and future, he laughs often and provides sound effects and hand motions to help make his points. Despite thousands of shows and more than a dozen albums, it’s obvious that Orlando is still in love with the music. 

Q: What happened
with Ruha?

A: Everything that can happen to a band. We were an eight-piece; kinda tough to go anywhere with that. And people just had different ideas of what they wanted to do. I just got sick of trying to keep everything together. When you run a band it’s really difficult when {the other musicians} are booked up months in advance locally. I don’t really think like that. I think more of tours. I think of the country. I try to find a venue in every town that I like to work with and then just keep going back. 

Q: How did you get hooked up with AMA?

A: They hunted me down. It was the beginning of last summer when they started talking to me about it because I was on my way home from my summer tour. Part of their deal is they want you to come in their studio and do a single, and then they would bring the single to the labels and be like, “Is anyone interested in this guy?” Because AMA has seven or eight labels, I recorded the single with them, they heard it and they were, like, “sell it.” 

Q: Why are you
recording in Atlanta?

A: It’s one of AMA’s home bases. They have a bunch throughout the country. I chose Atlanta because I kinda wanna nudge my way back in there because it’s so close to home. 

Q: Close to home? 

A: If you look at the whole country, I’m driving 22 hours to go play shows and I could be driving 10, know what I mean? So I kinda wanna split it up a little better because I go out west a lot and it’s tiring. 

Q: You’ve booked your own gigs for a long time. Explain your process. 

A: You can’t make a phone call and hope they call you back. It goes: e-mail, phone call, e-mail, phone call. Every eight days. Greg {Allis} asked “Why eight days?” I said it was because a week’s too short, but that one extra day for some reason doesn’t piss people off. He asked “How did you find that out?” Trial and error! (Laughs.) But you have to be persistent with people without being a pain in their ass. 

Q: Are you willing
to give up booking responsibilities now?

A: I’m willing to give it up in two seconds. Just having Greg on board has made it so I can wake up in the morning and play music instead of getting on the phone, so that works out. I just wanna play music. That’s all I wanna do. And if everyone else can take care of the other shit, I’ll be fine. I just wanna get a call saying, “This is where you’re going, here’s your tour dates.” I’ll be happy with that. 

Q: You call your music “organica groove.”
What is it?

A: In the Charley Orlando Band, drummer Kyle Feher used to bring his computer with us in the van and he had this program called Abelton Live. He’d build beats in the back seat and plug them into the stereo and I’d be like, “Oh my god, that’s so cool.” We would write songs just for fun while we were driving down the road, and I was blown away with how real it sounded. 

So when I started looking at {the program}, I always had the idea in the back of my head to do acoustic music or with my electric guitar and just build landscapes behind me that weren’t necessarily a full band, but soundscapes and different kinds of like, noises, for lack of a better term. But once I got into the program I realized that I could do all of it. I could add a whole drum kit. I could add a whole B3. I could put strings on stuff. I could put in really wacky Middle Eastern tones. Everything’s at your fingertips and it’s endless. 

Q: How did that turn into foot pedals?

A: I talked to a friend of mine who’s brilliant and I asked “OK, how can I do this? I need to run this thing with my feet.” So we basically cracked the thing open and started soldering in all these different inputs on either side of it, so it’s all these plugs that go into the interface now and they all go out to foot pedals. So now when I’m playing, I hit the foot pedals and I know which ones are which and I can bank through the whole program with another foot pedal and it’s all hard-wired into it. 

So basically I build the sections of the songs. Say I have an intro that I really like. That’ll be number one. And there’s five different pedals, a stop button and an up-and-down button. So I can go down through the program on my screen. It gives you five choices at a time, but they’re kind of endless because I can bank down and then hit a button and something else happens. And I can bank down and hit another button. 

Q: How many options?

A: Thousands.

Q: How do you know what you’re getting?

A: I actually memorized all of them.

Q: That’s insane!

A: (Laughs.) And sometimes I fuck up. I’ll be playing and hit the wrong button and be like “That’s not even the same key. . . there we go! Back to normal!” So people have been pretty understanding about it because I’ve basically been learning on stage.  

Q: How do you keep track as you’re playing?

A: Now, it’s just become second nature. At first it was really, really hard. I almost thought, “This can’t be legit.” I’m having to think too much and for me, music isn’t about thinking, it’s about playing. And I was like, “OK, I have to get myself to the point where I don’t have to think about what I’m doing.” So I started out with three songs last year and I just got up to 35 songs yesterday that I can use with this platform. It’s really fun. I’m never bored because I’m always thinking. Anything I can do is there at my fingertips. 

Q: Are you going
by van for the tour?

A: Oh yeah! I got my bed all set, the platform’s ready to go, the gear fits in the back and I’m ready to roll. And it’s just about warming up to where I can sleep in the van if I need to. To be honest with you, I’d rather camp. 

Q: You’re playing an unofficial showcase at the South By Southwest music festival in
Austin, Texas. Is it
your first SXSW?

A: It is. That and CMJ {College Music Journal} I thought were really cool festivals or showcases, I was just not into the fact that you had to pay to play them. It always annoyed me, and still annoys me. That’s why the showcase that we’re doing is not affiliated with SXSW. It’s not official. And it’s free. 

Q: What’s your
motivation to do
what you do?

A: I guess most people got into music to get laid and I didn’t. I got in music to play. I played a show with Kid Rock a long time ago in a place in West Virginia called the Stone Monkey and we actually headlined. We walked into soundcheck and there was this fuckin’ guy {Kid Rock} with his pants down to his ankles, this little midget running around on stage and 10 kids in the middle of the floor beating each other up. And I was like, “What is this shit?” (Laughs) And then I sat and listened to it and I was like, “Wow. . . this is totally different. This is really good.” And next thing you know, he’s everywhere. And he had this statement: “I don’t care what anyone says. If you’re in the music industry and you’re a guy, you got in it to get laid.” And I’m like, “Asshole.” No, some people didn’t. I know a lot of people that didn’t and we’re all the ones that aren’t rich. But there are so many musicians out there that are just amazing and they’re happy doing what they’re doing. So yeah, that’s my brush with fame. 

Q: What’s some advice you have for aspiring musicians?

A: We were headed to High Sierra Music Festival in 1995 and they loved our CD, so they said, “Yeah, you’re perfect! Come out to the show!” So I was like, “We’re gonna play for free 3,000 miles away. How are we gonna pay for this?” So we decided to play along the way out there. We were trying to book a gig in Lake Tahoe and we stopped at a gas station and I called from a pay phone. The booking agent asked, “Are you calling from a pay phone at a gas station?” I said, “Yeah.” And she’s like, “You got the gig. That’s hardcore.” I’m like, “It’s all I got right now!” So those things pay off. People appreciate it if you work hard.    

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