Art & Life with Oliver Lemke

Today we’d like to introduce you to Oliver Lemke.

Oliver, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
I’ve been writing songs since I was 12 or so. The music I liked growing up was pretty mellow, or at least non-aggressive — power pop, melodic indie bands. Then in college one of my professors used Gang of Four and The Clash and that sort of stuff as examples of applied critical theory, so I was philosophically interested in punk/post-punk bands even before I heard the music. “Entertainment” was my first favorite punk record. Leaving aside the cultural criticism which is a huge can of worms, I found it really compelling on an aesthetic level, the way they were calculatedly breaking a ton of rules, creating all this tension. I think the tension attracted me because I was finishing college, moving city to city, trying to find a way to make a living, and really everything was tension for me at that time. I started writing punk songs as an outlet for anxiety. And then in 2012 I ended up in Phoenix and discovered that people liked these songs and wanted to play them with me. That was the beginning of Soft Deadlines.

Can you give our readers some background on your art?
On a literal level, we’re a guitar band mixing art punk with power pop and dance grooves. I like to use the tagline “music to dance to as the world ends.” It goes back to anxiety: everything is falling apart, we don’t know which end is up, but if I can put those feelings into a song and play it for people, I get some relief. Hopefully they do too. People need the experience of gathering in a room for a night and remembering to live in the moment. To say “we don’t know if tomorrow is coming or not, but tonight we’re going to fucking dance.” I just want to help that happen.

What would you recommend to an artist new to the city, or to art, in terms of meeting and connecting with other artists and creatives?
I don’t know that I believe being an artist is any lonelier than being a human being in general. Everybody struggles to connect. One of the cool things about art, though, is how much it can facilitate that. Shared admiration for a piece of work, shared creative goals among collaborators — these things lead to a lot of new friendships. I recommend finding local artists, be they bands or acting troupes or painters or whatever, wherever you are and attending their events. If what they do affects you, talk to them about it. They’ll appreciate it, and most likely will go to your events in turn. What I’m saying is not exactly revelatory, I realize, but I promise you that any thriving scene you’ve ever heard of, this is how it was built.

What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
The best thing you can do is come to a show. We as a band pretty much go for broke every time we play. I don’t care to hold back, it’s not the place for it. But that’s only half the equation: the other half is whoever is there in the room with us, and the energy we create together. That’s really the core of the whole weird phenomenon that is rock and roll. On a more prosaic note, we have two records out that you can hear online, share (we love sharing), buy if you have money to spend. Every little bit helps. Show dates and links to our music are all at your fingertips on softdeadlines.net.

Contact Info:

• Website: softdeadlines.net
• Email: softdeadlines@gmail.com
• Facebook: facebook.com/softdeadlines
• Twitter: twitter.com/softdeadlines
• Other: softdeadlines.bandcamp.com

Image Credit:
Jeff Niemoeller

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