Marc Roberge

Mark Roberge, it is good to see you.

Good to see you.

Lots going on in the world of O.A.R., so we'll, we'll, we'll breeze through all of this stuff here.

But we have to talk about starting with, uh, thirty years? Thirty-year anniversary? That does not sound like a real thing.

It really, it really doesn't.

I mean, we, we, like, skipped over twenty and twenty-five.

We're like, "Don't say noth- Don't, don't tell anybody." [laughs] Don't say shit.

[laughs] And now we celebrate.

Is it a significant thing? Is it a thing that you think about? Or is it just, "Yeah, they tell me this is what it is on the calendar, but we're, you know, we're just doing what we do"?

It's an interesting time to be able to appreciate the thirty years because you get over some sort of twenty and twenty-five-year hump where you don't really wanna celebrate.

It's almost like you're running down the field, you're at the one-yard line, you celebrate too early, you fumble, no one gives a cra...

You know? I think the thirty-year [laughs] thing was just as much a celebration of the band as much as the, the loyalty and the family and the, just the broader system that we operate in allowing this to go on so long, I mean, has been the real win.

So those appreciation-- You know, when you got kids and family and every-- and your wife is like, "Let's go.

Let's do this," I mean, that, I think, is where the celebration kicks in s- really strong because we-- none of us can believe it's been thirty since the first record.

I mean, we were playing in the basement before that too, so we just kinda feel that this is the, uh, [laughs] the give thanks lap.

I know there's no-- there's not an answer to this, I mean, it's an endless thing, but I can't imagine, you know, guys that I met in eighth grade or whatever it is, that not only am I still much-- starting with that I'm friends with them, but, you know, working with them, creating with them, sitting at the top of a business together, making...

H- you know, how do you navigate it? How do you learn how to do that? There were not models for you starting out of bands that had been together for that long.

There wasn't a, "We can do this" though.

I mean, there was maybe, like, The Stones, but they're a thing unto themself.

How do you figure out how to grow, maintain these relationships, and do this thing together over time?

The short answer is that we always had our eye on this prize being The Goonies lifestyle.

I know it sounds crazy, but we come from the neighborhood, and [laughs] the growing up with the brothers and the sisters and the Dead Man's Cliff and the bike and all those, like, stories for us was so real that we said, "Well, we gotta keep, we gotta keep this going." And so along the way, like, my brother was our manager for ten years.

My father started us out as an S corporation.

Our drummer's dad ran the sound, the pro audio at Chuck Levin's in Wheaton, Maryland, so we got our first sound system.

And the reason-- And then we started lookingBut to answer your question, we're looking at everybody, and that's how it kept going.