Features

Spotlight: Anders Osborne

“Last night, I was tearing up like crazy and had to turn around from the crowd,” Anders Obsorne says one Sunday morning this past September. “It happens quite frequently. Things start to surface—when you are actually going through stuff onstage—that’s what makes it special. That’s what it is all about. Anything else becomes two-dimensional—its television. It’s not real.”

Osborne is sitting in an Asbury Park, N.J. boardwalk breakfast joint, ripping into a stack of bacon and a pork roll, sipping a triple espresso and moving the eggs around his plate like a brush on canvas. This barely awake version of him is a far cry from the man leading the ferocious three-hour gig the night before at The Saint that bordered on a rock and roll exorcism.

“The stage is a pretty good arena for working out stuff,” he continues as his blue eyes gradually brighten and the caffeine kicks in. “The chip on my shoulder that I got? It comes out onstage. I get pissed off up there. Sadness that I got—it comes out. My eyes get filled with tears sometimes—not when singing, just us playing together—because what we are doing musically creates this very strong emotion.”

Onstage, he is in constant motion. His tie dyed shirt is a blur as he headbangs and strangles his guitar. He sings with his neck stretched out to reveal all of its tendons, his eyes closed or rolling back in his head, performing until his emotions and physicality become one.

“I’ve toured nonstop for two and a half years,” says Obsorne, who sports a rather burly mountain man beard and tattoos galore. “Now, it’s not just songwriting, it is ‘live’ writing. We are developing that sense of playing it live and keeping it interesting for ourselves and the audience,” he says of his onstage collaboration with bandmates bassist Carl Dufrene and drummer Eric Bolivar.

“I enjoy the search and trying to develop these special moments,” Osborne says of the gigs. “Take a song that we started and make sure that I don’t rehash it every time. It’s important that I let the moment breathe and let the song do something; [that I] enjoy the freedom of trying things and going for things that end up in good places.”