The Ocean Blue is an American indie pop band formed in Hershey, Pennsylvania, in 1986. Its original members included David Schelzel on lead vocals/guitar, Steve Lau on keyboards/saxophone, Bobby Mittan on bass guitar and Rob Minnig on drums and vocals.
Early career
The members of the Ocean Blue first met in junior high school.[1] They cut a series of demos while in high school, with Scott Stouffer sitting in on drums. They managed to get two of these earliest recordings, "On Growing Up" and "Wounds of a Friend", included on a local radio station compilation in late 1986. The compilation also included very early work from noted local artists the Innocence Mission, who were friends and mentors of the Ocean Blue. Rob Minnig would join as permanent drummer in 1987, and the classic line-up of Schelzel/Lau/Minnig/Mittan would continue through 1994.
The band's busy calendar included U.S. touring and an appearance on one of the first episodes of Club MTV, with Downtown Julie Brown. The first single, "Between Something and Nothing", peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart, while its follow-up, "Drifting, Falling", peaked at No. 10.[3] Two videos were made for the songs and both received rotation on PostModern MTV. The band joined the Mighty Lemon Drops and John Wesley Harding on an extensive tour of the U.S. and Canada. All of this promotion helped the band sell well over 150,000 copies of the first record.
After recording in several New England studios with Pat McCarthy engineering and co-producing, the band released their second album, Cerulean, in 1991.[4] The singles "Ballerina Out of Control" and "Mercury" both charted on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart, at Nos. 3 and 27, respectively.[3] Drummer Rob Minnig began to hone his song production and mixing abilities, which would be reflected on the next album and its single B-sides, which the band chose to produce themselves.
The final Sire Records release came in 1993 with Beneath the Rhythm and Sound,[4] which sold over 100,000 copies. The single "Sublime" peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart.[3]
The band contributed songs to the 1994 Martin Scorsese film Naked in New York. For the duration of their 1993-1994 tour in support of Beneath the Rhythm and Sound, they toured as a five-piece group, with newly-added second guitarist Oed Ronne. Westwood One Radio Networks recorded the group's June 20, 1994, concert in Ventura, California and released it as a promotional-only CD, the band's only official live album.
In 1994, keyboardist/sax player and original member Steve Lau was becoming more interested in the music business and moved to New York City, where he founded Kinetic Records. His final appearance on a commercial release by the band came with the Peace and Light EP, featuring the album track "Peace of Mind", as well as two live performances and a previously unreleased track.
Mercury Records and indie releases
In 1996, Mercury Records signed the band and released their fourth album, See the Ocean Blue, that fall, which saw the arrival of new guitarist Oed Ronne and the band's renewed interest in the music of the 1960s and 1970s.[5] While Schelzel remained the predominant songwriter of the band, Ronne composed two tracks and sang lead on his song "Behind".
See was released to lukewarm results, with the record company cancelling plans to film a video for the second single, "Slide", although the band embarked upon a U.S. tour. In 1999, the band recorded and self-released their fifth album, Davy Jones' Locker. Two years later, the album was re-sequenced, re-mastered and re-released on March Records, with March releasing both "Denmark" and "Ayn" as EPs, each featuring three new B-sides. Shortly thereafter, drummer Minnig decided to leave the group after fourteen years, and Peter Anderson, a friend of the band from Minneapolis, was brought in for live shows and, eventually, permanent recording work.
In 2004, the band released the diverse six-song EP Waterworks on What Are Records?. That year, the group performed select dates around the U.S., recruiting the Owls' saxophonist Brian Tighe. The Orange Peels' Allen Clapp contributed music and production duties to the EP and, to reciprocate, Ronne and Anderson contributed to Allen Clapp and the Orange Peels' 2005 album Circling the Sun. In October of that year, Schelzel recorded a solo version of Adolphe Adam's 1847 Christmas classic "O Holy Night". This song was available only as a digital download via the band's website for the 2005 holiday season.
In late 2005, the Ocean Blue's entire five-studio-album catalogue, as well as the Waterworks EP and the band's first four videos, became available for purchase on iTunes.
On June 1, 2006, the Ocean Blue's Schelzel/Mittan/Ronne/Anderson line-up played its first-ever South American concert, with a show at Teatro Rajatabla El Llonja, Barranco-Lima, Peru.
In July 2010, the Ocean Blue's long-unreleased studio track "City Traffic" was uploaded to Dailymotion and YouTube, with an accompanying homemade video.
Comeback
In December 2010, the band's website announced that a new record was in the works. The website also offered a free Christmas download of a newly recorded cover version of the ancient Basque carol "The Angel Gabriel from Heaven Came", performed by Schelzel and Don Peris (of the Innocence Mission).
In December 2011, the band's website announced that another free Christmas download—performed again by Schelzel and Peris—was available via the band's Facebook page. The release was a cover version of "Walking in the Air", a song written by Howard Blake and first showcased in the 1982 animated film The Snowman, adapted from Raymond Briggs' noted 1978 children's novel of the same name.
On January 12, 2013, the band performed their first concert since 2006 at the Korda Records Showcase in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Korda Records was a new independent label formed by several artists, including Schelzel.)
On March 6, 2013, the band released "Sad Night, Where Is the Morning?", the first single from their forthcoming album, to radio and in digital and physical formats. On March 19, the Ocean Blue's sixth album, Ultramarine, was released on Korda. The band embarked upon a tour of key markets in the U.S., followed by dates in Paraguay and Peru.
On September 9, 2014, the band reissued their 2004 Waterworks EP as a full-length album, expanded with the addition of three extra tracks. The band supported the release with a six-date US tour.[6]
In 2015, the band worked with Sire and Rhino Records to reissue their first three Sire albums on vinyl. The band marked the occasion by performing the first two albums in their entirety at limited concerts throughout the U.S. Also that year, Rhino made "City Traffic" available for digital download on iTunes.[7][8] The following year, the band embarked upon a full South American tour.
In June 2019, the band released their eighth full-length album, Kings and Queens / Knaves and Thieves, on Korda.[9] They also released a video for the song "Therein Lies the Problem with My Life". A concert tour is planned for late 2021, postponed from 2020 due to the global COVID-19 pandemic.[10]
Personnel
David Schelzel – lead vocals, guitar (1986–present)
Bobby Mittan – bass guitar (1986–present)
Oed Ronne – guitar, keyboards, vocals (1993–present)
Peter Anderson – drums (2000–present)
Rob Minnig – drums, keyboards, vocals (1986–2001)
Steve Lau – keyboards, saxophone, vocals (1986–1994)
