He just knew music was his love.
"It's been my passion and my drive for the last two years," said the quietly thoughtful, well-spoken young man. "It's been, overall, extremely difficult, seeing as I did it myself and had no idea what I was doing when I started out."
 Russell Ollerton of Half Moon Bay has released a CD of thoughtful original songs. |
"It was extremely difficult," he said, "but one of the most edifying things I have done in my life."
His roots go back to five years of piano lessons he began at age 8. He listened to his mom's Billy Joel and Al Jarreau albums, and in eighth grade, he borrowed his brother's CDs by The White Stripes, a band he would later call "the trailblazer for almost everything I listen to."
About two years ago, his passion for music ignited. He took up guitar and tried songwriting. At first it didn't work.
"When I was younger, I tried to imitate other musicians" with "minimalist garage rock," but it "tended to come out terrible."
The first song was hard to write. The second was easier. Then the floodgate opened.
The result is nine songs on a "highly conceptualized" CD that, Ollerton said, chronicles a journey of transformation and redemption.
"It's about being unhappy with myself and doing something about it," he said. "Going from negative to positive, from dark to light."
That journey is laid out in the evocative "Part I," "Part II" and "Part III," and filled in by the rest, in Ollerton's yearning, emotive voice and rich harmonic layers.
The music reflects Ollerton's major musical influence, mellow singer/songwriter Dan Fogelberg, whose late-1970s album "Netherlands" Ollerton describes as "the piece of work that best describes my ambience ... It makes me feel the way I wish I felt most of the time - calm, placid."
Spirituality permeates Ollerton's songs, but hard work got them on a CD.
He began by cutting a demo CD with a friend's equipment, and decided to learn how to record songs himself. So he got a job at Strawflower Electronics that financed equipment he set up on his living room coffee table.
"The majority of it was done here," he said, gesturing to the table. "A little was done in my room, and a lot in my dad's (Rand Ollerton) dental office garage."
Ollerton added acoustic and electric guitar, piano, bass, accordion, violin and percussion.
Then came the challenges of meeting technical specifications and illustrating the CD, which he did by photographing a twig on the family apple tree and a self-portrait for the CD cover.
The resulting CD was released in an event at Cameron's Restaurant and Inn on March 23 and can be found online at Ollerton's Web site, ollertonmusic.com, at Strawflower Electronics and the Music Hut. On the way, Ollerton resolved his personal conflicts.
"There are lots of things I like about myself now, that I didn't a few years ago," he said, "It's better in general and I'm more happy with myself."
He said the album could have the same effect on his peers. "The effects can be felt by anybody."
Currently a senior at Half Moon Bay High School, he plans to attend community college briefly after graduation, then embark on a two-year mission to another country with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Then he plans to pursue work in either electronics (an interest born while recording his album) or pediatrics.
Either way, he says, "Music has had a huge impact on my life. I know I'll always be into music, no matter what the occasion will be."
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