Q&A: Eastern Conference Champions

It’s not often that a band gets signed to a major label without having released a single song. But Philadelphia-natives Eastern Conference Champions did just that when they signed to Suretone/Geffen in 2007. However, after their first album, singer/guitarist Josh Ostrander and drummer Greg Lyons amicably parted ways with the label, added Melissa Dougherty and been making their brand of alt-rock independently ever since. The past 365 days have treated ECC very kindly. They’ve self-released The Santa Fe EP and their cover of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” was featured on the last episode of Gossip Girl. With a new album, SPEAK-AHH scheduled to be released in the fall, their song “A Million Miles An Hour” having a found a home on the Twilight: Eclipse soundtrack and a run of east coast shows in addition to a September residency at Los Angeles’ Spaceland, Eastern Conference Champions have a busy second half of 2010.

Recently, FILTER sat down with the band to discuss Lyons and Ostrander’s first meeting, the pluses and minuses about not having a record label and a fateful encounter with Cee-Lo.


Greg and Josh, you guys have known each other for a long time now. Josh, what did you learn from Greg and his friends that maybe you wouldn’t have before?

Josh Ostrander: Greg lived down the street in Bucks County, Pa and he was in a band that was signed to Columbia Records and I was 15 so they seemed like the coolest guys in the world and I’d come down and watch them rehearse and he took me under his wing and showed me the ropes. You know, what cigarettes to smoke, what beer to drink [laughs].

Melissa, how did you enter the equation?

Melissa Dougherty: Well I’m not from Philly, but I was playing in another band and we became friends through shows and…

Greg Lyons: Okay, here’s what REALLY happened. Two years ago, we both had a gig at the Troubadour and she was sound checking and one of our guys went for a smoke and said to us, ‘wow you have to see this chick play guitar.’ And we both looked at each other and said ‘God this girl is good.’ We were looking for a bass player and someone to play guitar and keys and to sing backups. We thought that would be the hard thing to find but Melissa was exactly what we wanted.

The name Eastern Conference Champions must have something to do with your home city of Philadelphia. How did you come up with it and have there been any problems with the band name?

Lyons: It’s referring to the Flyers. We’re huge hockey fans and all Philadelphia sports teams. We had that written down for a while and we were in another band before this one…

Ostrander: We had it thought out before because we knew were gonna quit that one. [laughs]

Lyons: So as soon as we started this band, we knew that was what we wanted to call our new one. The only problem is that the NBA tried to sue us.

Ostrander: Right before we signed to Geffen, our lawyer called and said ‘the NBA is trying to sue you, don’t worry I’ll take care of it.’

Lyons: But it got taken care of pretty quickly, our lawyer is pretty awesome.

Since then, you’ve left Geffen. What are some up the pluses and minus of being independent compared to being on a major label?

Ostrander: It’s a lot, lot more work, but it’s unbelievably rewarding. We don’t have to answer to anyone but ourselves, which is great, but there are so many things that go into it that take a little of getting used to.

Lyons: We’ve done more things and put more stuff that we’ve recorded in our studio. We’ve gotten three TV placements off of them…

Dougherty: Like the Gossip Girl season finale, we did a Bob Dylan cover of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright, and now it’s our best selling song on iTunes.

Who is the group’s primary songwriter and what is writing the typical ECC song like?

Ostrander: Josh wakes up has a cup of coffee and writes a really shitty verse. Then he brings it to Greg and asks ‘will this work?’ and either he says it will or ‘work on that’ and I’ll bring it Melissa and she’ll say the same. Then we work out the arrangement and then we record it.

Lyons: A lot of time we record it while we figure it out and do it on the fly.

How did you guys score a place on the Twilight: Eclipse soundtrack?

Lyons: Our publishing company pushed to submit a song for it and we gave them a few songs and went through so many steps of them saying ‘well no, that’s close but it’s not what we want.’ So when we finally got the call, we were happy because we worked so hard on it. Chrysalis was really awesome and helpful with making it happen.

Dougherty: We couldn’t believe it happened, it’s huge for us.


I heard a rumor that you guys had an unexpected encounter with Cee-Lo. What happened?

Lyons: We were in the elevator at the Hollywood Tower hotel, which is allegedly haunted, going up to the Twilight party. It’s this small crappy elevator with us, Cee-Lo and his people, about 10 of us. And Melissa says, ‘I hope we don’t get stuck,’ and right there, we knew it was gonna happen. Of course it did. So we were stuck for 30 minutes in an elevator with him and he was singing things like ‘this is craazzy.’ It was cool, we were stuck in an elevator with Cee-Lo and I’m sure he was like ‘ugh I’m stuck in an elevator with THESE people.’ Fortunately, Josh caught it all on his iPhone and we put it on YouTube so we have proof that it happened. F