The OaKs

This is a bitter sweet post for me. Last Sunday night, all the members of The OaKs were finally able to meet together again. And we met together to officially commemorate the end of performing as The OaKs.  Even though we won’t be performing, we still sell albums online (here’s our iTunes link), and we will still have our latest album, Songs for Waiting, streaming for free on our web site.

We haven’t been in the same room since the beginning of the summer, and it was kind of a slow fade into the dark since then.  I think that made it easier for everyone, at least it was for me, giving more time to accept the inevitable.

We’ve had some incredible times together, going to New York a couple times, driving out to Austin, playing live, playing on the radio, hearing our songs being played on the radio, getting some great reviews, getting a few hilariously bad reviews, creating even worse inside jokes and repeating them ad nauseam, seeing our band on top radio playlists, seeing our album on top album playlists, getting into Paste a couple times, hearing people’s real responses to our music…we’ve had some incredible moments on stage and off.

I wrote that this is bitter sweet.  Bitter because it is the end of The OaKs performing songs that I love, going to cool places, and (the most gratifying for me) hanging out with everyone, creating music together.  The sweet is because we are all still friends, and everyone has different avenues to go down.  We all have individual musical aspirations that may involve other people, and that is an exciting thing to think about.

And even though The OaKs are finished performing, we’ve kind of created a collective of like-minded musicians, and I would be surprised if we don’t create other projects where we can utilize each other. So it’s the end of one thing, with possibilities for others.

At the end of the night, we came away with some leftover CDs, T-shirts and money, a sad symbol of our individual involvement in this communal act of creating music. Even though it is sad, there is an element of hope, seeing where we end up, how God uses the interactions of a small thing like a band to further His kingdom, making Himself more real to us.