Osgood & Blaque: Blog

Though music and songwriting played a major part of my childhood, I don't set the date for my first composition until later. Being a pianist and an electronic musician and composer, I depend on a solid connection between my heart and my ears. I owe a lot of thanks to my mother, who sang almost every day! And so I was introduced to music very young and thus began training my ears even before I was born. I took the first years of music classes during junior high and high school while participating in the shcool band from 1976 - 1980. This was my first true formal training in music. It was quite enjoyable, but I found myself writing less music, even becoming a little disinterested. I value the things that I learned from those classes but there was something about the technical side that stole away the link between my ears and my heart. My music-writing kind of dwindled for the next few years as I dropped all music classes and focused on required credits for acquiring a high school diploma. There were times, even during my teenage years, when I experimented with recording techniques and composition styles, but little finished material came out of it.

In 1993, I purchased a Roland E-66 Electronic Keybaord and spent my first few hours in a real home studio. I was introduced to and immediately ensnared by MIDI sequencing! The following summer I took my finished product to BUMA Productions. Using only a built-in six-track recorder on my electronic keyboard, I recorded my first four original songs ever! I mixed the drums, bass, guitar, piano & strings until I achieved the desired quality of sound. What a miracle that was for me at that time! I called the album "Amour" and in 1997 I began recieving royalties for radio airplay in Canada.

Over the next several years I spent a lot of time experimenting with musical techniques, traveling with bands, performing solo shows at parties, weddings, clubs, restaurants, parks, and the like. From 1993 to 1999 I was known as "Greg Osgood-The One-Man-Band" and I could hold a crowd by myself simply using high-tech electronic keyboard manipulations. This was both fun and financially rewarding. Although I was happy with what BUMA Productions and I had accomplished, I wanted to do the "whole-nine-yards" thing.

So, in 1999, I began rekindling my desire to create. With electronic keyboards becoming fast enough for digital audio recording to be reliable, I wanted to put my music down the way I felt it. I recorded my first radio hit "Back To Back" in April, 2002, but now, I have quite a few finished pieces. I joined a group called "The Dominoes" and became their lead vocalist. It was a great opportunity to explore the challenges of stage performance, club ettiquette, fan mail, and traveling throughout the chitlin circuit. Although the Dominoes tried to stay together through what we called "stormy weather", we were unsuccessful. So, with the demise of that group, I saw the opportunity to organize my own band.

In the fall of 2002, I founded "Mississippi-145" and we played a few gigs every other week around Jackson and Vicksburg, Mississippi while we sought to get our show tight, as it were. Even so, the group began to fade due to lack of sincerity and dedication. Thus, it became my immediate objective to go back and do what I had started back in 1995 (the "one-man-band" thing). I had met a fine female vocalist from Vicksburg, Cee Blaque and we discussed the possibility of performing as a duo. This was challenging, but the hard work and time spent preparing our act eventually began to pay off.

It has been a great honor to work with Blaque. She is a super vocalist and budding harmonica player from Vicksburg, Ms.Singing with the church choir without the aid of microphones is one of the reason why she sings with the power and feeling that she does. In her own words, she told me: "I wanted to be heard when I sang, so I taught myself to sing at the volume that was really comfortable for me with the best perception of the words and the tone".

I am happy with my music career. Over the years I have had the privilege of sharing the stage with some great entertainers, some popular and some not-so-popular. Though my music is often categorized under "blues", I write only what speaks to me on some personal level. I don't try to target any one specific style, although from time to time I may experiment with a certain genre. In trying to classify or describe my own music, I've found that, like good friends, I know each song so well that I can no longer pass judgment on them. I let my listeners make their own observations.-Greg Osgood

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