Port O'Brien began early in the year 2005, as a folk-ish duo of Van Pierszalowski and Cambria Goodwin. The two penned songs while Cambria lived in the tiny Californian coastal town she shares her name with and Van lived in an apartment in Oakland which was about the size of his name. Shortly thereafter, Cambria moved to up to the Bay Area and within the next year, the project added a rhythm section, comprised of Caleb Nichols and Joshua Barnhart.



Every summer, Van works on his father's commercial salmon fishing boat, the Shawnee, on Kodiak Island in Alaska. Meanwhile, on land and around the corner, Cambria also writes music while maintaining her position as the Head Baker at Larsen Bay. After both write parts and lyrics separately, they fix them together when Van comes ashore. For the first time this summer, Caleb also joined the ranks at the cannery, and their cumulative effort while up in a latitude and longitude few of us may ever see resulted in the creation of the songs that comprise the band's first studio-recorded album All We Could Do Was Sing. Because when you're working all day in the freezing cold, what the hell else are you going to do?