Singled Out: Michael Olivieri Band's More Than I Do

Let's see... More Than I Do... Where do I start?... The whole M.O.B. record was written in a very short time.. less than 60 days or so. And this song was one of the first ones...

I wrote it in a time of uncertainty. I was in a relationship with a girl that I was, let's just say... WAY into.... But I guess in her eyes it wasn't enough..

She thought that sometime apart, (the proverbial, let's take a break) might help her figure out what she wanted and if I was the one for her..

This song came together very quickly.. I remember sitting out on the patio with my acoustic guitar and Dan Lucett (also part of M.O.B.) talking to him about it and what just transpired...
It was more tongue in cheek than serious, as we were laughing about it...

Truth is I wasn't laughing on the inside...

When the rest of the band showed up for a jam in our living room. By the way that's where we worked out ALL of the songs.. They took to it very quickly and the song came to life just like that...

As soon as Buzzy James hit the main riff on his dobro and Eric Von Herzen doubled that on the harp, I knew we were on to something really cool!!
Then K.K. Martin chimed in with the mando guitar and it was like "AAHH!!"

That made me want to pound out the rhythm on my acoustic even harder!!
Which in turn made for an honest, heartfelt vocal track!

The band not only has a unique blend of instrumentation but there are a lot of great singers in this band as well.

Tom Croucier, Dan Lucett and Paul Wilson all laid down a VERY solid background vocal track!

Another memory from this session is all of us standing around the Mic doing the CLAP tracks.. We were clapping so hard our hands were bruised and red!

The icing on the cake for me is Buzzys dobro solo!! That is SO crazy good it freaks me out!! Buzzy is a very talented dude and always takes the time and writes his guitar solos.

What I mean by that is he doesn't just adlib and say "That was good enough"... He spends hours coming up with great phrasing and note selection..

But not in this case! I watched him do it! He had no idea what he was gonna play and just went for it.. ONE TAKE BABY! No cutting, pasting, comping or altering of any kind...He was like "Let me do that again"... I'm like "OH HELL NO"!!

I'm truly amazed at the level of musicianship in this band! And this song really captures the magic of 7 guys in the studio, vibing off each other!
Multi-tracked and 0 musical overdubs...

So if anything good came from being put on the"Proverbial break" it is 2 things..

1. Someday someone will come along and make you realize why it didn't work out with the one before you...

2. I made a REALLY good record!!!