Recent photo of Adam Young, taken from: Radiou.com
Adam Young and the
Owatonna Music Scene By AUTUMN VAN RAVENHORST autumn.vanravenhorst@gmail.com.
H Adam Young’s most recent album.
Album art from Windsor Airlift.
ome is where my mood for the day is almost predetermined by the mug I drink my coffee from in the morning. Inspirational quotes? Why yes, I will be fearless today. The mug with a crack? Obviously no one did the dishes the night before. Home is where there are 10 blankets in the living room at any given time because, really, you can never have enough blankets. Home is where I find a plastic shark in my coat pocket and diaper crème in my computer bag. Home is a concept that isn’t always just a place—it is a feeling. For Adam Young of Owl City, it is both. A brief recap: Six years ago Young’s synth-pop song “Fireflies,” exploded and reached No. 1 in 26 different countries. It was absolutely ridiculous, in the good sense of the word. And Adam is from Owatonna— most of us know this already. He has been introduced in countless interviews as the small-town star that records music in his underwear—one can only assume—in a basement. Some newscasters facetiously introduce his native land as “Minnesooota” because those people clearly aren’t aware of the musicians that come out of this state. If only it were socially acceptable to punch someone in the face. It may have been surprising for outsiders to discover where he is from but it wasn’t the least bit shocking for those who grew up around him. Back when the ‘M’ in MTV actually stood for Music, Owatonna had a music scene that stood for passion and unity. Music is just something you did if you didn’t do anything else. Jake Vanderwaal grew up playing shows around Owatonna in well remembered bands like Soul Awakening, legendary for performances at local venues and at the Steele County Battle of the Bands (itself a legendary institution that even Adam Young has performed in. “Looking at our friends who have made successful careers in music, we all had the same friends,” said Vanderwaal. “We were all close with the same bands. Everyone knew everyone. That whole music scene growing up was like a huge family. That’s why we loved it so much, I think. That’s why I loved it. We were one giant musical family. It didn’t matter who was playing that night. If there was a show, everyone was there.” Young wasn’t very outgoing nor was he popular in the school setting. He was shy and introverted according to his friend, Andy Johnson, also of Owatonna. Young and Johnson met when Johnson was in fifth grade and Young was in seventh. Their friendship went from skateboards and
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Nintendo to producing some pretty terrible music, in the beginning. “We started playing music together when I was in sixth grade. We were really bad. I played drums, my older brother, Tony, played bass and Adam played guitar,” said Andy. “Adam got in to music right around seventh grade. He had been playing for a few months. I owned a drum set and my dad had this old bass, so along with my brother we started a band for fun called Lambs & Flowers. We recorded directly to cassette and those songs are buried deep in the archive. We later changed our band name to Left Lane [laughs]. We recorded a bunch of songs on a $5 PC microphone and sold CDs to kids at school.” In 2002, when Adam was in his sophomore year of high school, he and the Johnson brothers started the band Windsor Airlift that began as a pop-punk project. They booked their first show months in advance at Bethel Church in Owatonna. Both Andy and Adam are deep in to their faith and continue to use their musical talent to express that. Andy is the Children’s Ministry Lead Associate at Valley Church and one of Adam’s hit singles off his newest album “Mobile Orchestra” is titled “My Everything” and is a representation of his Christian faith. Their band began performing at more shows and churning out multiple albums and extended plays. The genre eventually moved from poppunk to math rock and finally ambient post-rock, the genre Tony and Andy still perform under today. The three began weaving in and out of small projects, some they performed together and others Adam did solo, many that only had a couple songs to go with the name. Like a project where Young synthesized his voice to sound like a grizzly bear which was unsurprisingly called, you guessed it, The Grizzly. One of those many projects was Owl City, something that began as an escape from Young’s struggle with insomnia. Despite his shy demeanor, going so far as to seclude himself to his parent’s basement, his talent did not go unnoticed. “I always knew he was good. During 2006 and 2007, he was pumping out an innumerable amount of music, most of which has never been heard by more than a handful of people. It was all instrumental music, a lot of trance and electronica. My brother and I were telling him to record an EP of some of the electronic ‘Postal Service’ style he was doing, but with vocals,” said Andy. “Some time went by and he emailed us a link to a new MySpace page with like four songs he recorded over the weekend. The first song I heard was ‘Hello Seattle.’ The project was Owl City. My brother and I knew immediately it was good, and there really wasn’t anything else being produced at the time that sounded quite like it. He uploaded the songs to CD Baby, made some homemade CDs and the rest is pretty much history.” His songs on MySpace and iTunes began to sell and after a few musical
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