Rolling With the Punches: The Oranges Band

A LOT OF artists can tell horrific stories about their record companies. But the Oranges Band has one of the worst.

In 2005, the Baltimore indie-rockers were signed to Lookout Records, Green Day's first label. Then Green Day got into a dispute with Lookout and took its lucrative back catalog away from the label. Money got tight and employees were laid off. All this happened when the Oranges Band's "The World & Everything In It" was about to drop. The band's momentum was broken.

"It really hurt the record a lot," recalls bandleader Roman Kuebler, a one-time member of Spoon, with whom the Oranges have been compared.

Kuebler and drummer Dave Voyles trudged on undaunted. Recruiting bassist Patrick Martin, they recorded the slyly titled"The Oranges Band Are Invisible." The CD has already gotten local print and radio buzz, even though it won't be officially released until February.

The band will sell the new CD regionally at pre-release shows, including one at the Red & the Black on Saturday. Says Kuebler, "Instead of doing the typical thing where you pick a release date and send it around to everyone in the world except the people who really want to hear it, I decided to make it available to people who want to hear it."

» The Red & The Black, 1212 H St. NE; with Deleted Scenes, Sat., 9 p.m., $8; 202-399-3201.

Written by Express contributor Tony Sclafani
Photo by Tad Kubler