Olde Time Religion Is Ready to Take on Miami's Rock Scene

Olde Time Religion doesn’t need the glamour of sold out shows.

Though the duo are newcomers to the Miami music scene, the brooding, easygoing yet no bullshit sounds of South Miami’s own of Gerard Di Paolo and Garman Ranck are making South Florida music fans take note. The bluesy, hard hitting southern rock these two specialize in make them nothing short of a terrible twosome in the best way possible.

Ranck remembers the band’s earliest origins. “We used to go to Catholic school, and we’d be in the church band and play together in High School,” he says.

“Eventually we both went off to college, and when we came back we were like, hey do you wanna jam? The band had sort of a revolving door line up at first until I sent Garman an idea and he sent me back drums. From there we just decided we were better as a duo,” Di Paolo adds.

The band even recalls a short stint trying to have an ex in the band. “It simply didn’t work. We’d go into practice mad at each other. She had an amazing voice, and one day — maybe two weeks into it — I come into practice like, ‘oh we broke up.'"
But thankfully the band has now slipped into a more comfortable practice routine. “I’ve got my drum set set up over at Gerard’s house and we get together and throw ideas back and forth. Sometimes I’ll have a drum pattern in my head and we’ll build off that” Ranck says. "We’ve got so many unused ideas," Di Paolo says. "I call my unused guitar licks the ‘riff graveyard.’ Sometimes we’ll revisit and resurrect something, but more likely than not it stays dead and we move on.”

Both Ranck and Di Paolo self-produce their music via Ableton with a cardioid mic and condenser mic for recording. “We want to keep it as independent as possible, for us there's no difference playing to 10 people or 100 people," Ranck says. 
Like most bands from South Florida, Olde Time Religion can recall a dubious first show at Churchill's. “We were on a bill with like 20 other bands, and we didn’t think anyone was going to watch us,” Ranck remembers. The duo's list of venues conquered is still minimal, but with new shows around the corner on June 27 at Octopus in Hollywood, and June 28 at South Beach spot Kill Your Idol, the band is branching out into new and uncharted territory. “We really love Gramps, we’d love to play there, and we’ve been told Bardot is awesome as well,” Ranck says. 

But — for now — it's not about the crowd for Olde Time Religion. "If one person comes up to us after the show and says, hey good job, that to us is worth more than money or sold out shows.”