"I live for playing live shows," he said. "All of us do. I really want to connect with people.
" "We'll probably do 90 percent originals and we'll throw in some covers, too, to get the people singing along," Zeller said. Songwriter, guitarist and lead singer Zeller pens songs about personal relationships and life experiences such as "Now You Know" and "Distractions." "We have a lot of hard-hitting drums and lots of energy behind the music," he said.
"It's very melodic, very progressive." Zeller co-founded the band with drummer Kevin McGonigle several months ago in South River. They recruited veteran bassist Joe Maldonado and began writing and rehearsing songs.
"I was doing an acoustic gig. The drummer came up to me and asked me if I wanted to start a band. We pretty much got to talking and we later met Joe and it just clicked and things have been working out for the past five or six months," Zeller said.
The band has slowly been building a fan base, performing at small rock venues in Asbury Park, New Brunswick and New York City. Zeller first became interested in early '90s rock in his teens. His parents bought him a guitar and he taught himself to play.
A couple years later, he joined his first band. After high school, he studied recording engineering at Rubberball Productions in New Brunswick. "It gave me ideas.
It allowed me to see how studio work is done," he said. He said he has drawn inspiration from John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Filter and the Foo Fighters to write his songs. "Lyrics have to be meaningful, for sure.
People can connect in their own way," he said. "I try to make it sound unlike anything out there. I'm big on energy.
I like the hard-hitting drums and the chord progressions. Not only the melody; I want the chord progressions to be catchy as well." Overflow is currently recording its self-titled debut CD at Skylab Studios in Roosevelt.
In anticipation of a spring release, the band is putting out a two-song EP. All the band members came to the group with hopes of finding more expressive outlets than had been the case in their previous bands. Zeller played guitar in alternative rock band Open Closure.
McGonigle played drums in a hard rock group and Maldonado played bass in rock-funk band Large Music. "It just sounds a lot better and we work together a lot better and we all have the same goals and dreams," Zeller said of Overflow.
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