Lawrence’s Ovaries-Eez finds a comfortable home with Whatever Forever

Someone once told us they would have beautiful nightmares after listening to us,” Johni Lacore says of her band, the Ovaries-Eez, “and we thought that was a wonderful summary for us.”

Indeed, on Ovaries-Eez’s first album, I Saw You in My Dream, the Lawrence folk trio seems determined to make an impression. The three lead singers — Lacore, Amber Hansen and Monica George — create stark and chilling three-part harmonies, aided by a single acoustic guitar that they pass among themselves. It’s all the instrumentation they need.

It’s that sound, says Whatever Forever co-founder Bobby Sauder, that had him hooked from the first listen — and what ultimately led his label to help Ovaries-Eez with its debut. Ahead of the band’s show Saturday at Love Garden Sounds, we spoke with Lacore and Sauder.

The Pitch: Tell me about this album. How long has it been in the works? What sort of hand did Whatever Forever have in it?

Lacore: We started recording it at the Sound + Vision Studio at the Lawrence Public Library, which is a free resource and it’s been amazing. We recorded it with John Griffin, who also mastered it for us, last October or November. And we had released an EP [Snow Daze] in July with Whatever Forever, so we’ve been connected to them since then.

This album, we were actually planning on releasing it ourselves, but Whatever Forever stepped in and said they wanted to help. So they’ve helped a lot with getting us radio shows and extra things to pump it up a bit.

Bobby, why was this release an important one for Whatever Forever? What about this band jives with the Whatever Forever focus?

Sauder: The first time I saw them was at a really small art gallery show in Lawrence, and no one really knew what to expect because it was three girls and one guitar, and they were just slowly strumming. As soon as they started singing, everyone was dead quiet and jaws dropped. It was this eerie feeling that overtook the room. The songs they were singing were spooky and just extremely beautiful.

We really try to support bands that create stuff that is maybe a little outside of the mainstream or underground. We generally are drawn to psychedelic bands, or bands that use pop in their main sound but kind of go a little bit further off that path toward something that’s a little more exciting. The Ovaries-Eez definitely fit with what we do, and we like them as people besides.

Johni, give me a little background on the band. How did you all manage to unite with this sound? Was it something each of you were already creating separately, or did it happen when you met?

Lacore: Amber and I started the band in December 2012. We played for a while, just the two of us. Amber had some songs that she’d been playing, and I stepped in and put some extra vocals on them. Bobby actually introduced us to Monica.

The first time all three of us got together, our styles meshed really well. It [the sound] was already happening separately — we would send each other music and it was all a similar style — and our topics naturally vary from a female perspective on human relationships to relationships with the land to plants and animals. Now, the way it works, we all take turns writing and playing the songs, and we all sing vocals on all of them.

What was it like working with Whatever Forever? What do you feel like their role is in the Lawrence music community?

Lacore: They have really gotten us all of our connections and all our first shows. Whatever Forever is a great community — most of us were friends with everyone in the Whatever Forever circle before [they began releasing our music]. It really feels like they’re all there to support each other and give feedback. It’s a really positive community, and everyone has been really helpful.

Bobby, tell me about how Whatever Forever helps artists achieve their goals and supports them. Why is that important for you guys?

Sauder: A lot of it has to do with the way that we — and by we, I mean Rolf Petermann and I, we started Whatever Forever — and a lot of people that are close with us, like CS Luxem and Mark Osman from Arc Flash and Karma Vision. I guess we have a certain vision about what it means to be a part of the music community in Lawrence. We all feel like we’re all really affected in really positive way by other people who are doing similar things.

Setting up experimental shows that are off the beaten path, that’s important to us — and it’s those feelings or events that have always existed in Lawrence, but that specific feeling being a part of something is kind of what drew us all into it in the first place. We realized that we had the power to encourage that or help make that happen for the next generation [with Whatever Forever], and that’s something that we feel like we owe it to this awesome community.

What does the future hold for Whatever Forever?

Sauder: Last year, I think we did five or six releases, and those were all on cassette and digital. This year, we’re trying to expand our audience a little bit by doing more than just cassettes.

We’re doing some CDs for our first few releases this year. Then Ovaries-Eez said they didn’t want to do a tape, because the last time they did it was hard to sell more than 10 or 15 of those — and we love to do tapes, but it’s more than that. It’s about trying to support and build on these bands that we like. So we thought the CD was a good way to expand on that, and we’re looking at doing some vinyl, possibly. It’s exciting.