Okey Dokey “Love You Mean It” 2019. Romanus Records. Extremely limited edition (20 copies) liquid-filled vinyl. Breezy r&b-based indie pop, Love You Mean It is Okey Dokey’s debut record. The duo is The Weeks’ (also on Romanus Records) guitarist Johny Fisher and bassist Aaron Martin. Sadly, they just lost everything in the tornado that devastated Nashville last week. The band is currently on tour so weren’t there when it happened (in fact, they played a show in Madison, WI yesterday but I couldn’t go) and posted this about the destruction on their GoFundMe page:

So the destruction mentioned is based on what loved ones have told us. Information is still coming in but we do know that the house that Jeremy Clark and I live in was destroyed. This is the house that serves as our recording studio and the heart of every Okey Dokey project. It is also a place that we have shared with many of our friends over the years and we are sad to see it go. We are lucky in that our roommate Mikayla was not harmed though she was home at the time. We are fortunate in that, currently, none of our friends are known to be hurt or missing.  Many people were not as lucky. We feel so insanely thankful for the friends of ours, people they knew, and complete strangers who came out to help board windows, tarp up the roof, clean glass out of our walls, floors, and keepsakes, and the environment of compassion they created for our home and our neighbors. It will be a weird environment to come home to but I believe in the city that has made me who I am and I only wish that we could be there to love on our city in the moment that we need one another. Which brings me to this fundraiser. I am hoping to reach a goal of $10k through this. The three of us are currently looking for new homes, replacing the items that are essential to work (Jeremy and I are self employed and work from our home), and finding places for our items to be stored while we finish tour. We lost most of the furniture in the house and a lot of the things that made home feel homely. The junk isn’t important but we will now be rebuilding for a while. I would love to reach a base goal of $2400 for each of us to replace beds and clothes and essentials and I would like to put 30% of whatever we raise towards one of the many relief programs that are being put together now. Most of the workers helping strip the dangers from our home were people who had lost their jobs at Burger Up the night before. This is a huge deal to us and a large chunk of this fund will be going towards helping the people who lost their jobs and went out to help others anyway. That is the spirit of our city. Okey Dokey will also be playing a free show when we return to Nashville in April. It will be free but we will be accepting donations to put towards efforts as well. If you are reading this I love you. You’ve taken the time to read this and we all appreciate even that amount of care. To the people back home, we love you very much. We’ll be back soon. Thanks again to every person who has reached out and helped us thus far. Love you, mean it.

Love You Mean It is a summertime album: lo-fi, light, sweet and bright and melodic. One of my favorite song’s title kind of sums up the overall sound of the record: “Simpler Times.” That track also features the full The Weeks band and the video is delightful.  I also really like “Either Or, It’s All the Same,” which has a groovy 60′s psych-vibe.   Also super-groovy is “Wavy Gravy” but in a more 60′s doo-woop ballady style. I’m looking forward to warmer weather and spinning this while sitting in the sunshine.