Interview with Stephen Orban

At twenty-six years old, Stephen Orban is perhaps the most prolific of all the musicians I grew up with in Troy, Ohio. From early pop-punk cover bands as a little kid, to garage rock revival in high school, and experimental electronic music as an adult, Stephen’s musical creations have spanned a dizzying variety of genres. Being involved in so many projects has made Stephen a small-town musical legend. I have met dozens of local artists who have been touched by his music in one way or another. Every single one of them has remarked on his ability to blend his creative visions with the professionalism necessary to keep a band running smooth. I sat down with Stephen to try to understand what has led him to pursue music so relentlessly his whole life, and what creative pursuits he might have in store for the future.

“I think it all started with the movie: School of Rock” Stephen told me. “That scene with the Ramones montage and the chalkboard with all the different bands on it. Oh my god! That movie came out at the perfect time in my life to get me really hooked. I saw that movie in theatres and was like, ‘this is it.’ I’ve talked to so many other musicians around our age since then and almost all of them have a similar experience. That movie alone probably helped spawn more bands than we’ll ever know.” Shorty after seeing School of Rock, Stephen’s dad bought a drum set and started a classic rock cover band (Spun) with a few of his friends. This meant their basement was soon full of all the instruments and gear that the other members of the dad rock band would leave at their house between practices each week. Stephen was slow to pick up other instruments, though, envisioning himself as more of a supporting member than a lead man. For the first few years of his musical career, he would stick to the drums.

In short time, Stephen was playing with his middle-school friends Reegan Wenning, Adam Witmer, and Luke Manis as 7/11. “I remember our big song was ‘All the Small Things.’ We probably practiced that one song at least a hundred times for our first concert, the middle-school talent show. Playing in front of that many people felt so cool. Soon, we were doing pop-punk cover shows at The Rec in Troy. It was all the sort of stuff perfect for kids that age. I think if you had a soundtrack to the inner thoughts of a thirteen-year-old boy back then, it would probably sound like Blink 182 or some ska band. The songs seemed easy to learn, and the lyrics were catchy.”

Meanwhile, Stephen was making a name for himself in another way. Around this time, he was gaining a local reputation as the best Guitar Hero player in the area. “I really don’t think I was that good at the game, but there definitely was a period where I was a better Guitar Hero player than a drummer. The most important thing for me probably was that you could play bass in the free-play mode. I’d be playing one of my favorite songs, get to a cool part, and be like ‘this is the bass?’ I didn’t feel like learning guitar yet back then, but I picked up the bass because I thought it would be cooler to be a bassist. Because of my dad’s band, there was always a nice Gallen-Kruger bass amp in my basement, so I had good gear to help me get excited to play.”

In short time, Stephen was off to new musical projects. He formed the guitar/banjo duo, Stunter Orbington, with extremely talented guitar player, Hunter Covington, and started playing local shows around town. “Hunter was the first person to get me really interested in playing guitar. He was such a good player. Still is a great player. He gave me the chance to see how much more creative and expressive you can be, and it made me want to pick it up for myself. It wasn’t long after Stunter Orbington that my dad got me a Line6 pedal to hook up my guitar to. I could plug it straight into a PA system we already had on hand, so it was the most cost-effective thing because it meant I wouldn’t need an amp. In hindsight that pedal had so many settings it really let me go crazy as teenager and mess around with all the sounds. The pedal even had this cool setting that would make it sound like you were playing an Indian sitar.”

Stephen would use that same Line6 pedal setup for our own musical collaboration, Terra Cotta. We wrote the songs together, and I played bass and Stephen played guitar and sang. The EP was a DIY experiment and a more ambient laid-back approach to rock music. “Around this time is when I started smoking weed. That, plus jamming with you and Andrew Baptist introduced me into a whole world of rock music I had never explored before. I started getting into edgier music and listening to psychedelic stuff for the first time.”

Around the same time as Terra Cotta Stephen and I recorded an EP with Dan Schnell and Andrew Baptist. This project was the total musical opposite compared to Terra Cotta. It was a hard-hitting fast-paced lo-fi adrenaline rush of rock-and-roll we called CATT. For this project, Stephen was back at home on the drums and Andrew and Dan played guitar, while I was on bass. Together, we combined our favorite elements of the garage-rock revival we were obsessed with at the time. The band was short lived, but the CATT EP still lives on as one of the most important musical moments for all four of us young artists.

The last time Stephen and I would perform together would be at our high school talent show performing a funky garage-rock version of ‘Hey Ya’ by Outkast. We had Nick Cottom, who we previously had no idea played music, play drums for us. He tore it up. Our power trio was complete, and we performed the talent show as Nonstop Climax. The crowd went wild, and I got the chance to slap the bass using the booming Gallen-Kruger amp that lived in Stephen’s basement thanks to Spun. We won first place and I still have the award hanging up in my parent’s basement to this day.

After I graduated high school, Stephen went on to create his own band Michael Trash. This is where Stephen began to cultivate his own sound that would carry on to his most recent projects. I remember seeing them perform in Dayton after coming back home from my first year of college and thinking that you could hear Stephen’s influence in almost every part of the band’s sound. It was psychedelic and poppy at the same time, and Stephen’s confidence as a leading man and a songwriter had finally developed into fruition.

Soon, Stephen’s foundation as an artist would shift completely thanks to his discovery of the psychedelic musician and new-age prophet IASOS. “IASOS changed my life. I never bought into all the new-age stuff, but I loved the ideas he connected to his music. He claims that he gets his music from interdimensional angels, who he calls Crystal and Vista. I actually got an online flute lesson from him once by contacting him through his website. It kind of sucked because I’m not very good at flute, but I got to finally talk to him which was amazing. I told him how much I loved his music, and he was so humble. He told me he didn’t write the music, Crystal and Vista did. He is just showing it to our dimension.”

As Stephen was pursuing a degree in graphic design in Indiana, his interest in new age and vaporwave aesthetics began to take over his music and his art. These influences culminated in one of his currently ongoing projects, Elk Manakin, an ambient experimental electronic duo where he performs alongside goregrind legend, Adam Witmer of Moiscus. Elk Manakin is a collaboration between the two of them both musically and visually, with the duo both helping to create art and graphics to compliment their sonic collages. The group uses a variety of synthesizers, autoharp, saxophone, and vocals in experimental performances that often have heavy elements of improvisation.

While Adam was away doing goregrind pursuits with Moiscus, Stephen created his band The Boomies with local musicians he had met in Indianapolis at State Street Pub. “State Street changed my life. I had just gotten divorced, and the people I met there became my new family. Indy has such a great music scene. It gave me the chance to dive right in and get back into writing songs. If Elk Manakin was my way of pushing my music into the future, The Boomies was a return to everything I had learned about music before that.” The Boomies carry many of the same musical influences as Michael Trash, but in a more refined, mature, and hard-hitting way. Their self-titled LP is a landmark in Stephen’s musical career, serving as a retrospective of his many rock-and-roll influences over the years culminated into one album.

Currently, Stephen is back at work on another chapter in the life of Elk Manakin with the recent move of Adam Witmer joining him in Indianapolis. “It’s going to be great. It’s so awesome having him so close to work with.” In addition, he is also currently in the band Living Dream, which is fronted by his girlfriend, Kayla. They are a psychedelic rock group heavily influenced by The Velvet Underground and can be seen playing shows around Indianapolis. Most recently, Stephen has helped form Mana, a five-piece alternative rock band from Indianapolis with a focus on spirituality and good vibes. He has also recently began DJing drum and bass sets and creating dope mixtapes on his YouTube channel.

Stephen can be found on Instagram and YouTube