Getting Personal with Overlook
Photos by Sierra Sevier
Hello Pleaser Magazine Subscriber! You came here looking for the next (musical) love of your life, and boy, do I have the one for you! Get to know your new favorite band, Overlook! Overlook is an up-and-coming Rock band based in Nashville, playing their hearts out for their local community and making the music they always dreamed of.
I sat down with the boys– Carson Bull (vocals & guitar), Colin Christenson (drums), Sam Bellavance (bass), and Jim Haines (guitar)– to ask them these deeply personal (and mostly silly) questions so that you, as new fans, can get to know them and therefore, their music!
Dive in and don’t forget to head to Spotify to soak up all of their latest releases! Shake It, their latest EP, is out now!
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First, and most importantly, what are your Big 3?
Carson: Cancer sun, Sagittarius rising, Taurus moon.
Colin: I know I’m a Libra and that’s about it.
Sam: I’m a Pieces and I’ve looked up the other signs before and I do not remember them.
Jim: Gemini.
So many different energies, do you all get along well? How long have you known each other?
Carson: Yes. We’ve been a band for six and a half years now.
Sam: We started back in High School, like my freshman year. Now we work together and live together.
Colin: We eat together…
So you really get along, then?
Sam: I mean, the fact that we haven’t killed each other yet really speaks to it.
How do you settle arguments?
Jim: We talk stuff through. Get everything out on the table.
Carson: We’re big on open communication.
Jim: Healthy communication and listening.
Carson: Yeah, that’s our secret. And maybe a few drinks. We had a Jager jam therapy sesh the other day.
Jim: Kept the ego out of the room, you know what I mean?
Did you just pass around a bottle of Jager?
Carson: Anytime someone messed up, they had to take a swig at Jager. It was a very interesting writing session. We were all very like, burnout and kind of terrible. There was a lot of tension between everybody and it wasn't over anything serious. You'll come to notice when you live with like your best friends and you work with them sometimes you just have to work through it.
Jim: 20 minutes later we were all drunk and all of a sudden best friends again.
Is there a story behind your name?
Carson: Jim, that’s you.
Jim: I'm a big horror movie geek, so we just named it after the hotel from The Shining. ‘Cause the hotel in The Shining is called the Overlook Hotel. The antagonist of the movie is the hotel itself so I thought that that was cool. I don't want us to be a haven of darkness, though. I want this band to be like a haven of light.
If you had to choose only one type of media or art to consume for the rest of your life, what would it be? Like film, painting, sculpture, music, TV, books..?
Jim: For me, it would be a really close race between music and film. But I think I'd go with music. Because you still have imagination and you can have your own film in your head with any song.
Sam: I feel like music can fit in any environment in your life. Like if you're driving or you're by yourself at home or you are with your friends. It always works. So that would be my answer too – music because it fits every environment. It's universal.
Carson: I think I'd go with poetry.
That’s kind of in the same vein as music, right? Because music is poetry in a lot of ways.
Carson: Yeah, it's all storytelling.
If you had to give a Ted talk on something, what would you talk to Ted about?
Jim: Nuclear disarmament.
Sam: I think I would talk about the American Education System.
Colin: I would give it on music and how everybody, individually, experiences music differently. I think that's fascinating.
Carson: I think I'd give mine on mental health. I'm passionate about the difference between Americans, our youth, and mental health versus other countries.
What is your party persona?
Jim: In high school, if I was ever going to parties where I didn't know a lot of people, I was the dog guy. At least the dog's gonna be my friend, you know?
Colin: My answer depends on who I'm with. If I'm with a bunch of people who aren't the life of the party, I could hang back with them. But if I'm with Jim, and it's our party, we could get rowdy for sure.
Sam: I'm definitely chilling in the back. I like talking to people and just getting a conversation going. And then, if I drink enough, then I'll start dancing and it gets pretty fun.
Carson: I can get a bit dancey when I’m drunk. But I like having conversations like one-on-one with people more.
I think there's always a natural inclination to compare music you like to other music that you already know so you can relate to it in a way. Right? So, what are some of the bands that influence you guys or that you admire a lot?
Carson: The Beatles.
Colin: Yeah, The Beatles I feel like is probably one across the board for all of us.
Jim: If I had to narrow it down, it’d be any of the classic rock bands, whether it be Pink Floyd, Beatles, Led Zeppelin..But then we also love the nineties stuff and we like a lot of the modern stuff. The Strokes…
Sam: Starfucker, King Gizzard.
Carson: No one said Nirvana!
Colin: Oh. Nirvana.
What was the first concert you ever went to?
Colin: Mine was Huey Lewis and the News.
Carson: I do not like country music now, but my first concert was Eric Church.
Sam: I saw Muse in DC…
Jim: My first concert was Roger Waters of Pink Floyd doing The Wall. I have never been the same since. It was a lot for my 11-year-old brain.
Is there any song that you could physically never skip when it came on?
Carson: Oh sh*t. “Gimme Shelter” by the Stones.
Colin: Dude, I don’t know what my never-skip song is…
Jim: Mine's a weird one, but I'm doing it 'cause it's a short song. “Riot” by Earl Sweatshirt. It’s an instrumental jazz piece and it's like the only happy part of the entire album. And it's the last song. So the whole album, you're just getting dragged through the mud and then you finally get to this last song and it's the little ray of sunshine. So I would never skip that.
Sam: “Does Anybody Know What Time It Is?” By Chicago. Colin put me on to that a couple months ago. Beautiful harmonies.
Colin: I got it. “For Sale?” by Kendrick Lamar. Everyone loves Kendrick Lamar in this band.
If you had to describe your specific genre of music and give it a new name, what would you call it?
Jim: Avant-garde-Postmodernist-Contemporary-Rock-N-Roll-for-a-New-Age-and-Generation.
Sam: Moderate Rock You Can Dance To.
Colin: It’s not Rock-N-Roll anymore, it’s Rolling Rock.
Carson: Yeahh..
