By Steve Wildsmith
of The Daily Times Staff
They've starred in an award-winning docu-drama, played the big stage at the Foothills Fall Festival, won a Middle Tennessee battle of the bands contest and, on Saturday, they'll play "The Shed" at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson.
Not bad for Dustin Sellers and Brad Crittenden, a couple of William Blount graduates whose partnership dates back to daycare.
Technically, the two didn't start making music together until high school, and after graduating from WBHS in 2000, they took their band, Overzealous, to clubs and bars around East Tennessee.
"We came to Murfreesboro and won a battle of the bands contest, and part of the prize was studio time at Wolf Studios in Nashville," Sellers told The Daily Times this week. "We went there, started cutting some songs, and they liked us so much, we got to cut all 10 songs, the whole Overzealous record, for free."
The duo's good fortune continued, as the studio owner hooked them up with a group of independent filmmakers who were shooting a mock documentary about a band from Bowling Green, Ky., who recorded a collection of rock songs before tragically dying in a wreck on the way back to Harrison State campus. The fictional story intercuts between the band -- Novem, which is also the title of the film -- and those who discover the "lost" music in the present day.
Sellers, Crittenden and their old Overzealous bandmates not only provided five or six songs for the soundtrack, they also starred in it.
"The long and short of the movie is that it's set in the '70s, part of it, and it's documentary-style, with us hanging out and playing music," Sellers said. "The other part is in the present time, where we're finding the footage of those 'sessions' and the music. It's done really well and has won a half-dozen film festivals.
(For more on the film, check out the Web site -- www.novemsongs.com.)
However, Sellers and Crittenden couldn't keep a rhythm section together. They went through numerous bass players and drummers before deciding to combine with two members of a Chattanooga-based band, The Gigs, who had a similar problem. Jay Lawson and Adam Thompson had played around the Southeast for almost a decade and had just recorded an album titled "Pop Vulture." The catchy-sounding name became the basis for a new group, based out of Murfreesboro, last December.
"All four of us are songwriters, and we all play guitar, bass, drums and piano, for the most part," Sellers said. "It really helps with the musicianship."
Shortly after the first of the year, the members of Pop Vulture recorded a couple of songs with Travis Wyrick, a local production wizard who's worked with such bands as shadowWax, Jag Star and 10 Years. More recording is planned for a full-length debut album; in the meantime, some promotional copies of songs that developed from the combined repertoire of both bands will be available at Saturday's show.
The end result is a frothy pop stew that draws inspiration from The Beatles, The Pixies and Foo Fighters -- melodic rock with a pop slant that isn't too syrupy or too heavy. It's an energetic, feel-good sound that'll go well at "The Shed."
"Our biggest selling point is that our catalogue of material is very, very deep," Sellers said. "We've written close to 150 songs together. Obviously, we don't have all of them worked up, but that's one of the things we're excited about. We like to play the straightforward rock stuff, and people who hear us like that, but there's so much more that we want to showcase, especially now that we're part of a band where all the players can do that.
"We don't get home as much as we want to, but I'm a big fan of Maryville, and I love it and miss it a lot. This'll be our first show in Maryville, which is kind of appropriate, since the last big show by Overzealous was at the Foothills Fall Festival in 2003 or 2004. This is our first big pumped-up show in Maryville, and we've got a lot of family and friends there, so we're looking forward to trying 'The Shed' out."
Originally published: August 08. 2008 3:01AM
Last modified: August 07. 2008 1:24PM
STEVE Wildsmith - THE DAILY TIMES (Aug 8, 2008)