hi i'm mandy pryor and welcome to spotlight on pittsburgh spotlight on pittsburgh is a program about pittsburgh's most fascinating people and what they do to make pittsburgh an amazing place to live and work when we return i will introduce you to our first guest all go walk in older walk ins band the over back of the band have been playing in and around pittsburgh since two thousand and three you may have heard one of the oldest songs as you were tailgating outside of heinz field will be right back with all of our after the break to make college possible for anyone with a mind to get there thousand three third's been a while i think it was two thousand and three i don't want to remember this what was the big secret to close and i am the band got started i actually used to do a lot of musical theater and i was an opera singer and then i took about a ten year more or less hiatus from singing completely and after i had my daughter who's fifteen now i decided that i wanted to set the example of being not being somebody that used to do something like if you want to do something does it matter what else you are doing you can go ahead and make that happen you know i used to be a figure skater you know you know right right i do it's really bad  i started singing again and i was primarily doing jazz pick up diggs was shuba dos who is percussion teacher at mount lebanon school and we've been playing together for like twelve years now something like that and then jay weaver my guitarist he's in carnegie p a as a recording and teaching studio carnegie j i think is worth it we've been with jay at least eight years i think so if you like something and then our bass player willie franklin he's been with us about two and a half years now and what john or i would you describe i mean you have a couple going on there i think well i like to say it's a fusion of blues and funk and soul but we're all essentially classically trained  and with a lot of jazz influence you now but what we do now are primarily original premier li original tunes and they're like they're a mix of all that stuff they're like a stew of martini and you're like you know what we should do kind of moment make i don't remember that's entirely possible actually we are just wanted to do some singing again and then when i sort of fell in with the  right you know combination of like coconspirators then the the by my music writing started again i hadn't done any of that for a long time so once that started and we just the easiest thing to do you know and so you know you have lots of different lots of different songs for the thin album correct yes actually yes more than one but more than willing this configuration one just one and we're working on another one and what are the songs about there are a lot i think you know a lot of my songs are about relationships maybe not great relationships but relationships that were words sometimes for certain people from my past and so you travel in pittsburgh you go outside of the city i mean we've west virginia and maryland ohio you know  and that's very nice for us to have a home base like that but i will say that it has been that has been one of my favorites because it's a very festive it's not you know something best spot acoustically you don't necessarily have anybody like really paying attention to what you're doing but sometimes it's nice because you can try new stuff you know but it's a fun environment people dance and they definitely going on markets where it is and they they're they're our people so yeah it's fun to just be able to hang out in and be up close with everybody and you said you have a daughter i do and to she follow in your footsteps she's actually quite a good singer she  riverview park for the first city park to do in a free concert there will be a south side works for their free concert series and i think there are a couple of other free concert then years you know short clip from the  i'm a research analyst small business owner teacher dance fitness instructor film and television actor i'm an office clerk i'm a copywriter i'm a veteran i have approached leg i have multiple sclerosis i have lupus cerebral palsy post traumatic stress disorder i'm blind and i'm working in a job i love i love because i was given a chance because i was given the chance to contribute my skills and talents to show my disability is only one part who i who i am who i am at work it's what people can do that matters for more information visit what can you do campaign dot org  and so can you tell me a little bit about the clarks how you guys got started how you got started in particular well i got started in music at the ripe old age of four years old when i told my grandmother she needed to walk connellsville with me to buy the forty five single crystal blue persuasion by tommy james in the show and take it back in my little suitcase record player and i was obsessed with music at a very young  age took a lot of it and my father loved music and i was always music around the house in the garage and when i got to college i had a couple friends who had guitars and we would sit around after class in the evenings and they would show me some chords beatles songs and you know young and and that summer after my freshman year i asked my dad who was a big music lover and supporter of my dreams to buy me a guitar and he did and the rest as band and rob knew a friend of mine and introduced us and he said hey do you want to sing in this band we're starting and i said sure so i really didn't know what i was doing but you know i was just starting to learn how to play guitar i was really interested in becoming a musician so i sort of threw myself into the fire i was just probably had to play guitar for six months or a year when i joined the band and learned on the job learned a lot from rob learned a lot from watching other people and we graduated late eighty's and came to pittsburgh and started writing our own material and got on the radio and quit our day jobs and started to travel and tauren for a long longer making records and playing to a lot of people so it's been a good run wonderful and you have and so you you know you write in your own songs and work if i'm correct you wrote born too late as a or yeah i had made a couple solo records in the ninety's and i really made them as almost demos for the band to hear the songs that i was writing for them to be able to pick and choose what they wanted to turn into clark's songs so i would make these soul recordings and people would hear them and say that's really good you should release that so i would so born to lay came out on my second solo album which was called shine that was one nine hundred ninety nine and then the band recorded i can completely remember sitting in my apartment in college listening that songs if that's like says something about generations of what do you have coming up  got done sort of touring around the in the springtime we travel we go to new york in philly in chicago and down in the carolinas and sort of travel around and see our fans in other places and so awesome summertime tends to be more fairs and festivals and outdoor shows in this region and we'll take a little family vacation to the beach and i love the summer the kids you know it's nice to finish up with school and everybody gets to relax a little bit and go fishin and bike and fun stuff like that but the being a keep busy and war are working on a new album so we've been writing and rehearsing a lot of plans and new songs at some of the shows so that's exciting and i think after the summer is over we'll probably get into the studio and and start recording that's great had very exciting yeah and you'll be in pittsburgh any big pictures coming yes saturday june twenty fourth that stage eighty on the north shore is our big outdoor summer show and we'll be playing with band called meeting of important people as well as paul luke i went to high school with my paul is super talented and josh and the guys in meeting of important people fantastic musician and there's a lot of great music in pittsburgh and we're happy to have them be a part of the show that sounds really and it is and it's always nice when your show is obviously but to see your family there yeah it's a blast we have all have families in our kids perform now with this is our drummer dave son noah as a teenager and a fantastic guitar player our daughters rob i have daughters and they come out and saying and the crowd loves it i don't know what kind of sound it is yet we're writing songs the creative process is really fun greg our bass player greg joseph is a terrific songwriter and he's been writing a lot of songs i've been writing some songs  it's just really one of the best things about being in a band to be able to take the things that you experience in your life your feelings your emotions and put them to music you know write words write lyrics that mean something to you and hopefully will have meaning to your fans and your listeners it's a really fun process is not an easy process but it's a craft sort of try to pick up a piano or pick up a guitar or sit down at the piano you know every couple days or every day and at least just sit down and  pittsburgh i'm naomi judd and i love my dogs but disasters like hurricanes and floods and tornadoes can only hits another animals injured abandoned or lost america cared about and i'd be over thinking about what happened in iraq three months ago they're almost like a stranger when you come that everything's different your kind of discombobulated people were asking me how it was but i got the sounds they couldn't relate to what i had been through so i just stopped talking about it it made a tremendous difference and no life when i chose to get help in hindsight it probably saved my life save my marriage i personally believe that i'm also a better soldier sometimes when you come home it can seem negative distressing concerning you can all be out soon will be got through you're not going to be the same person afterwards that you were before you deployed and don't try to be accept who you are now figure out how to move forward and make that possible together we can change the news find out how safe kids dot org  on pittsburgh we're back with olga and sky and we are so pleased so i mean pittsburgh is so lucky to have both of you here you know some of you have probably seen them sing somewhere or another heard them saying hopefully we'll go to see them sing like all summer long but i wanted to see if you guys maybe had any questions for one another about what you do or i don't know you guys didn't know each other had a timer on the many good organ i have never met we've never  is interesting because we have on occasion played the same test of all or you know type then you invented but we've never crossed paths before to we had such a group conversation before we went on air we're both parents of daughters here on the floor so the challenge will be it's played a lot like orders but with pennies right and whoever knocks the most amount of pennies on the floor was there drinking so anyway olga and scott thank you so much for coming on thing and please look for us on spotlight on pittsburgh thank you once again for watching please follow us on facebook and instagram at spotlight on pittsburgh and join us again next time  when we will shine the spotlight