Olive Dares The Darkness is from left keyboardist/vocalist Becca Darling, drummer Danielle Carlson, bassist Ken Baum, and guitarist Mike Baum. Submitted photo

The members of Olive Dares the Darkness said the name of the band may mean different things to different people.

Originally, founding member, guitarist, and Frewsburg native, Mike Baum, said the band’s name was going to be Olive and the Eternal Gloom.

“We liked Olive and the Eternal Gloom, but we realized that becoming Olive and the something, every album wouldn’t work,” Baum said.

His brother Ken Baum, also a Frewsburg native, who plays bass in the band, offered another idea to the members — figuring out what the band’s audience may want.

A lot of bands try figuring out their audiences. Some succeed, but many don’t.

Mike Baum said that idea didn’t really gel because when a band figures out what their audiences want, the audiences have probably changed their minds. But, Ken Baum said, essentially, bands just dare the darkness of auditoriums to listen.

“But it’s all about harnessing your own darkness. The most effective people understand how to use all parts of themselves. And, so, it’s kind of what it (the name) means,” Mike Baum said.

Even before the band’s first name was rejected, Mike Baum had a totally different idea for a name. His premise was for the band to follow a three-element trajectory. Fans would follow a hero’s journey and the band’s name would change for every recorded album. Mike Baum really thought he had a gem of an idea. The other members, vocalist and keyboardist Becca Darling, drummer Danielle Carlson, and Ken Baum, did not.

“I was outvoted. ‘No one’s going to know who we are, if we keep changing our name,'” Mike Baum said the other members told him.

They had a valid point.

By day, both Mike Baum and Darling teach at a music school in Charleston, South Carolina, and by night they transform into musicians. In 2014, Darling said, Mike Baum had posted song to a social media site, and stated his intentions, and was looking for a female lead singer.

“So we met for coffee, and the rest is history,” Darling said with a laugh.

She said the both her and Mike Baum started as duo playing cover songs, and that was the opportunity for them to figure out their sound.

“That (playing as a duo) kind of gave us an opportunity to figure out our sound and find musicians who were willing to be an excited to be part of that. Our drummer is also a music teacher, and, so that’s kind of how that happened organically. So it all kind of came together,” she said.

Darling the band has had some lineup changes, but said that the current lineup has been playing since 2018.

“It’s a really good group of people,” she said.

There are no egos, no pressures, and the members just perform to have fun, Darling added.

When writing original music, Darling, who as a background in theater, said she likes to tell stories with her songs. And, she says, that part of being a musician is to be a storyteller. Being a musician, she said, gives her a chance to live like someone else, and to have a different persona on stage, and it feeds her artistic soul.

But not all of her songs are stories.

“Sometimes I feel like writing stories sometimes I feel like writing from a place of personal space, but we don’t get overtly political, and will kind of comment on the zeitgeist of the time,” Darling said.

All members contribute when writing original songs. Mike Baum and Darling often co-write lyrics, and present them to the band, and then as band, members will write music together, or individually bring ideas to rehearsals where the whole band can shape a song.

“We try to give everybody a voice in the band,” she said.

“Anybody can come up with the initial idea,” Mike Baum added.

Olive Dares The Darkness will perform at The Beer Snob, Saturday. For more information, visit darethedarkness.com.