Oliver Hazard

The story of Waterville, OH indie-folk trio Oliver Hazard – ​​Michael Belazis (vocals, guitar) and Devin East (vocals, guitar), joined by Nate Miner (keys, vocals) – is the digital age’s version of classic band myth-making.

One member of the band came home to Ohio after leading camping trips in California and decided to make an album with two childhood friends. They won a Facebook raffle to record one song at a studio. Instead, they played their whole album straight through once, resulting in their debut LP 34 N River (2018). The Fader called the album a “folk-pop masterpiece” and the band was booked at Bonnaroo and Mountain Jam shortly thereafter.

In 2019, the band released their 6 track EP, The Flood, which Billboard called a “souvenir.” This brings the band to their sophomore, self-titled album (July 2023), featuring music from the band’s recent Northern Lights EP, plus five additional songs.

Equal parts vulnerable and powerful, ebullient and heartbreaking, gentle and cynical, Olive Klug refuses to be put in a box. Working out who you are in front of an ever-growing audience is no small task, but one the Portland-bred, Nashville-based songwriter is always up for. The singer graduated with a liberal arts degree shortly before the 2020 pandemic derailed their plans of pursuing a career in social work. Though they’d recorded and self-released the 2019 EP “Fire Alarm” from a childhood friend’s bedroom, up until early 2021, Olive categorized their music as either a hobby or a pipe dream, depending on who was asking. However, when Olive was laid off of a teaching job in late 2020, they starting working as a barista and decided to commit all of their extra energy to an ever-growing community of fans online.

From a small bedroom in Southwest Portland, Olive’s audience grew alongside them as they wrote countless new songs, discovered their non-binary identity, changed their name, moved to Los Angeles, started touring internationally, signed their first record deal, released their full length LP “Don’t You Dare Make Me Jaded” and, ironically, got dropped from said record label, all in real time. Olive can’t help but be unapologetically themselves, something their community of fans (dubbed the “Klug Bugs” on Instagram and Discord) appreciate most about them. Their debut LP ranges from a playful Americana romp about “watching all the rules disintegrate” to folk-punk anthem “Coming of Age”, which somehow manages to reference both pop singer Taylor Swift and existential philosopher Kierkegaard in one song, to “Parched”’s haunting modern ballad about a doomed relationship, to an indie rock closer about learning to take up space as a person with a marginalized identity. Through this no-holds-barred documentation of the struggles of their early adulthood, Klug embraces all their inner contradictions with reckless abandon.

2024 finds Olive in Nashville, attempting to stabilize after a 3-year whirlwind of viral niche internet-fame, nonstop touring, and music industry naïveté. Olive’s social work background grounds them in community, a word they keep coming back to when ego proves unfulfilling. After attending Folk Alliance International for the last two years, Olive is excited to solidify themselves as a fixture of the greater folk community and return to what inspires them the most about music; the catharsis and social change that is possible when people come together and share themselves through song.