4 To Watch For: Ollabelle

“The music chose us more than we chose it,” says Glenn Patscha, keyboardist and vocalist for New York-based sextet Ollabelle, referring to the gospel-heavy roots repertoire on the band’s self-titled debut. There’s something charmed about the band’s origin. “We formed out of a common desire to sing together. [Vocalist-guitarist] Fiona [McBain,] was playing regularly at a place called 9C. The bartender wanted something for Sunday nights, and kept alluding to some kind of gospel night. So we got our friends together, and we just had such a wonderful time playing this music. We did it for the solace we got from it. And for the free beer.”

A year later, that informal weekly gospel jam session solidified into a six-piece band with a growing local following and something Ollabelle’s members had never dreamed possible—a contract with Columbia Records. “Steve Rosenthal, a wonderful producer and a wonderful friend, gave us the opportunity to do a record on spec. It literally was a labor of love just to document this exciting time period. When we had finished, the one person we wanted to send it to was T Bone.”

A few days after hearing the record, producer T Bone Burnett, the man behind the O’ Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, flew to New York and gave the band a record deal. That it was Burnett who signed them just made it more of a fairy-tale, says Patscha. “O’ Brother was a tremendous inspiration for this whole thing getting started at 9C. There was a real roots music movement in the East Village right then, and the interest in O’ Brother really bolstered our interest in this music, and helped build us an audience that was excited to hear it.”

Ollabelle no longer plays weekly at 9C, but the band has continued refining its rich, cross-referential take on American roots music. “We’ll take a song that was done by the Carter Family, or Ola Belle Reed, do a reverse spin on it, and think, ‘How would The Staple Singers treat this? How would Blind Willie Johnson treat this?’ Or take a song by The Staple Singers and try to imagine it performed by Ralph Stanley.” There are also three group originals on the record, and Patscha says to expect more compositions by Ollabelle members in the future. “People are starting to feel more comfortable and are bringing in their contributions. What’s great is that we have this tremendous canon to live up to, and it really raises the bar.”