As teens, they rocked the metro-east. Sixty years later, The Orbits finally made an album

Bands all over the world have given evidence to the difficulty in remaining close friends with your bandmates. That hasn’t been an issue for The Orbits, a Belleville-based rock band that started in the 1960s.

Composed of vocalist Dan O’Saben, guitarist Doug Phillips, bassist Denny Meirink, drummer John Goodwin and saxophone players Tom Bauer and Don Amenn, the band has remained friends for more than 60 years.

“I think there’s this penchant for bands to go through all of these fights and have all of these disagreements,” said drummer John name. “That isn’t the case for us. We’ve remained friends all these years.”

“Not a single disagreement,” added vocalist Dan O’Saben.

The band, who played all throughout the metro-east and Missouri in the early 60s, got together one last time to produce a record of their favorite songs.

The recording happened at drummer John Goodwin’s home.

Guitarist Doug Phillips, who has made a career as a musician and producer, provided the recording equipment. Members of the group would come in over the course of the year to record their tracks using a laptop and ProTools, a digital audio workshop program. Phillips would then take the recordings home and “clean them up” using a mastering program on his studio computer.

“It was a lot of fun,” Phillips said of the experience. “We’d record a main track and then a harmony track.”

“It ended up sounding like there are four horns instead of just two,” said saxophonist Tom Bauer.

The whole process took almost an entire year, but there were no complaints. Members said breaking the rust off was one of the difficult parts, but one that was far more rewarding than expected. Singer Dan O’Saben said warming up his vocals was difficult at first, but came as a second nature after some practice.

“Vocals are like an instrument” said O’Saben. “If you don’t use it, you lose it.”

“I actually think he (Dan) sounds better now than he did 60 years ago,” Goodwin added.

For Phillips, who’s been recording since he was a teenager, the process was a little more fluid. Other members say he was essential to the process and that they couldn’t have really done it without him.

“Doug was really the mastermind behind it all,” said Goodwin, “He’s the one with the technical know-how.”

“I thought we were just going to record using a tape deck or something,” O’Saben chimed in, laughing, “but he really made it something special.”

Phillip’s consistent evolution as a musician is evident in the recording, blending elements in his playing from each decade he’s been active. As a musician he’s always tried to be innovative with both his playing and his gear.

“That’s the culmination of 60 years of being bored and always trying to go into a new direction,” Phillips said of his playing style.

A lot had changed in the 60 years since The Orbits played their last show. Most have retired from a variety of fields, such as being a judge (Goodwin) and a heavy equipment operator (Amenn), while Phillips and Meirink are still actively working as a dental technician and professional musician and teacher, respectively.

But The Orbits remember their history, and still laugh at old memories. One such memory comes from the early 60s, when the band was stopped by police on the way back from a late-night show in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

“They made us get out of the car and started to frisk us,” recalled sax player Don Amenn to a chorus of his band mate’s nostalgic chuckles, “but when they got to John (Goodwin), they couldn’t frisk him because he just started laughing. Every time they touched him, he’d just started laughing. Eventually they just let us go and told to never come back.”

The band’s self-titled record, consisting of 12 hand-picked cover songs they would play as a band in the early days, means more to them now that they’re older. After tossing around the idea for a while, bassist Denny Meirink decided to try and coordinate a legitimate recording effort.

“I was on a call with John and he said how it might be interesting to get the band back together and play something,” Meirink recalled. “I said, ‘you know, we really don’t have anything to give our kids as a legacy or anything,’ so this record was supposed to be that.”

Timing and scheduling was a challenge to work out, but the drive to produce something special made it happen. After all was said and done, the band produced something its members can hand down to their children and grandchildren.

“It truly was a labor of love,” said O’Saben.

“I’m just trying to convince them to make another one,” added Amenn, as the other Orbits nodded.