We’re all Indie, Aren’t We? A Conversation with O Warwick

By: Benjie Salazar, aka, Sandy

O Warwick | Photo Credit: Mario Sosa

A conversation with O Warwick on his new record The Outside, which releases January 23rd, 2026. 

O Warwick is an ambient folk musician from California, currently in his final year at USC in the Popular Music Program within the Thornton School of Music. O is also in a traditional Irish folk band called The Great Big & Friends who play every Wednesday night at Griffins of Kinsale, an Irish pub in Pasadena. O works as an elementary school music teacher and is just a bright and vibrant person to talk to. The following is from our conversation in early December of 2025. 

Setting: O’s wifi is down. We are texting frantically and decide to call on the phone—it is late in the afternoon on Thursday, the 4th of December. I am well caffeinated. The wind is howling outside, dusk begins to fall. 

S is for Sandy 

O is for O 

S: Hi, O. Nice to meet you over the phone. 

O: Nice to meet you, Sandy. 

S: So tell me about yourself.

We go on talking about O’s childhood and the practice of writing and how integral it has been in O’s life. 

O: I was an only child. I was kind of a lonely kid, my graduating class was 74 people. I just spent a lot of time in my head, my friends were the people in the books I read, the movies I watched. I just had this little world inside my head, and now I still think that is a big part of who I am. 

S: It’s interesting isn’t it, you know how music kind of relates to dreaming. So let’s talk about dreams. Tell me about your dreams. 

O: I have so many thoughts about this, I mean my favorite types of songs are vibe songs, like Radiohead you could say, and you know when you are just in the vibe— 

S: —and it feels endless at a point right-like a canvas with no end or beginning— 

O: yes and about dreams, I have very vivid dreams, very colorful. I have tried to draw out my dreams, and I can’t draw but I try to, and I haven’t had a dream directly inspire a song, but all my dreams are super visceral and big. 

O: I used to just spend days writing a story when I was younger, like I was really into orphans as a kid— 

S: —ahh imagining the orphan life 

O: —I was just really into the idea, I just have a really big imagination, I love creative writing and I still do some, as well as poetry. 

O: I mean and also I work as an elementary school music teacher. I have a lot of side hustles, or more that this is my job security, but it feels sad cause I feel like kids are reading less and less, and I just want the world to read-and I just love stories and fiction. 

S: You had me thinking about vibe songs a lot like with Townes Van Zandt or what’s more big in the indie folk and ambient scene nowadays and—or what’s big anymore anyway— 

O: Everything’s indie, isn’t it? 

S: We’re all indie, aren’t we? 

Shared laughter, some silence. I ask more about how his tastes have changed.

O: So basically, until I was 16 I listened to purely Jazz and R&B and it wasn’t until then that I started listening to other music, like folk and rock, my trajectory felt different to many other kids my age. 

O tells me how in college he fell in love with folk music and felt that that is the music that just comes out of him naturally. We talk more naturaleness and community. 

O: Basically, I started out in Jazz in my first year at USC and then transferred into the Popular Music Program. I moved into this house at that time called Flea House, and I met my best friends and we just started making so much music together all the time. I also started a band at the time called The Great Big with my dear friend Nolan Kiser and we started making indie folk music, and all that time I was making and writing music myself. 

O: It wasn’t until March that I decided, okay I’m gonna be an artist, I’m gonna push this out. So, I made an EP, I put stuff out, I'm playing a lot of shows. I'm really committed to it and everything. It’s been amazing. 

O: Writing songs with other people, creating with others, that is my favorite part of the songwriting process, of making songs, there is nothing better. 

S: Has there been a certain place or community you have really loved playing? 

O: I’ve had two favorite shows—one was at my friend Nathalie’s house in Silverlake called Growing Gardens, and it’s such a beautiful house filled with plants and a yard and I booked the whole show so all my friends played—it was so special—but there was also this night we played at this placed called The Woodbridge which is basically in Skid Row. You have to go inside this large building, there’s this spot where you can see the skyline of the whole city—it was the best show my band ever played. 

O: I’ve also been working at this venue called Makeout Music and I just come in when I can and work the door and bartend for them, but it’s one of my favorite places so shoutout to them—though unfortunately they are closing down and their last show is like next week which is super sad. 

S: That is so sad to hear…hmm okay so where did you move from to go to USC? 

O: Well, I grew up in Marin County just north of San Francisco and it is just a huge part of my music, and it’s honestly one of the most beautiful places in the world—it’s definitely hard living in LA because I miss the woods, so I wrote about that in my first single, “lonely creek,” about missing the woods, and missing the creek, and lots of other things. 

I talk about how I can feel the ecological themes and ambiance in O’s music on Lonely Creek and Grasses Grow, how the traditions come about in folk music, and I ask O to tell me more about the themes and his history. 

O: I’m actually in a band called The Great Big & Friends and we play every Wednesday night at Griffins of Kinsale. It is actually like the biggest thing in my life right now, and it’s awesome. The other night too—you know Leith Ross? They’ve been such a huge inspiration to me for so long and one of my dear friends and a fellow member of our Irish band, Soona, is in their band so I got to sing with them at their show in LA at the El Rey and then they came by Griffins to sing with us at the pub which was so magical. It was one of the greatest nights of my life. 

We talk about what forms of music come out of ourselves naturally, what music we are drawn to and show to the world. 

S: Okay—I mean, I did want to talk a little about the world and what it means to be alive right now, but also how you manifest through your music, how things like love come about. 

O: Ahhh I mean music is the embodiment of love, you know. I think what it is, is that I love people through music—like when I think of anyone, my family or friends, or anyone who I have ever been in a romantic relationship with, music is always the first thing we share with each other. 

O: It just goes with the simple action of making a playlist, because sharing music you love is sacred—like it is a sacred act… that’s what I have to say about music and love… as for the world… It’s definitely scary to be trans right now in our country, and I mean that is definitely in my music and as a music teacher and artist I do feel a responsibility—that having a kid seeing what I am doing and knowing it is important—so yeah representation does matter. 

S: No, it really does, and like you said, you’re a music teacher, and in a growing age of obfuscated realities and AI, having real people, making real art, showing real love, that is what is important. 

S: Something else to your point on music and love, which I don’t really verbalize much but when I lived in California and I traveled all over and met people, and the way I founded those relationships was always through music, through dancing and singing with someone, and that was always part of our bond, you know.

O: Yeah, now I am thinking about every important relationship in my life and how it all started because we were showing each other music. 

O: It’s also that, I am just really dedicated to California, and there was a point in my life where I thought I was going to move to New York, and I just think California just has a certain wildness to it, because of its history of colonization, because of its newness compared to even the east coast—and sometimes I’ll be home—and I’ll think about what the land was like with the Native people—and this sense of freedom, and I can feel it in the place and I just feel so deeply connected to this place that I can’t ever imagine living somewhere else. 

I experience the hearing of a verbalized feeling that no one has ever articulated—the things that memory becomes in the body. I continue our conversation and say to O how the sensation is similar to when you think about the place, you just think about the land. In all efficacious colors and forms, when the butting of memory comes to a head and your lived growing pains take root, they grow like a tall flower in a dark land. 

The day grows longer. It is dark outside. Billie Martin is playing later at The Music Hall of Williamsburg. O tells me how much Billie’s music means to him and how much he played Dog-Eared. A lull in my body begins, like the swaying of a gut, or the vibration of my chest, a conversation to push things forward. I think of Jeff Tweedy and his ethos on the transformative power of music, as a willful act of swimming headfirst, of music as a life-saver, as a muse and reason. 

O: …Northern California is really uncharted terrain. I really don’t get to talk that much about it with anyone. 

S: Yeah, it is a magical place. 

We go on a little longer and wind down 

S: Well, any parting thoughts? 

O: I don't know—I just am full of love! 

S: Ahh me too! You just made my day! 

O: You just made mine! 

We say how we are now best friends. O says to call him anytime. 

We leave it warm.

The Outside EP cover | Photo Credit: Lillian McLaughlin

O Warwick is playing at Healing Force of the Universe in Pasadena for the release show of his EP on January 23rd, 2026. Go hear him and his band live. Support live music everywhere.