Brian Olive wasn’t content in supporting roles—it only seemed that way. His career started a decade ago as an original member of local garage-rock revivalists the Greenhornes, a band he abandoned (with fists flying, he says) for the garage-blues trio the Soledad Brothers. Olive adopted the pseudonym Oliver Henry for the Soledad gig, thereby assuring his anonymity.

Now, with the release of the kaleidoscopic full-length album Brian Olive (on Alive Naturalsound, the Los Angeles label that’s also home to fellow Cincinnati act Buffalo Killers), the 33-year-old guitarist has reclaimed his name. The album is a swirl of psychedelia underpinned with classic rock, Martin Denny exotica, and Southern roots swagger, all recorded in the former vault of a Hamilton Avenue pawnshop in Northside. All of the session players had local ties, from the Greenhornes’ Jared McKinney to onetime Heartless Bastards guitarist Mike Weinel to Dan Allaire, a Cincinnati native and drummer for the California band Brian Jonestown Massacre. “The people who played on this record are as good as or better than anyone I’ve come across traveling around,” Olive says. “If I had the means to fly people in I actually can’t think of anyone I would have rather had.”

With its pop hooks, odd harmonies (ever hear a baritone sax harmonize with a psaltery?), and a galaxy of reverb, Brian Olive is the feel-good album of the summer—only it’s hard to say if we’re talking about ’09 or ’67 or a summer to come. “I was always trying to figure out what the style was that I wanted to do. In the meantime people were letting me know that they needed me around to make the band go, whichever band it was,” he says. This month, Brian Olive finally plays Brian Olive, on June 27 at the Northside Tavern. Just don’t call it a comeback.

Originally published in the June 2009 issue.

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