HeartbeatUnited States
Heartbeat -- The one time recital band that became so much more.
Heartbeat was created to showcase Brandon Witte, our 16 year old drummer for his first drum recital. Our then 16 year old drummer had just received his first drum kit for Yule 2008 and began taking lessons with Jeffery Kennison. Jeffery was planning a drum recital for all of his students at the D-note just 3 months after Brandons lessons began, and invited us to put together something to showcase what Brandon was learning.
Greg Boyles jumped on the opportunity to help put together a small performance to showcase his girlfriends shy son. It helped that Greg had also just gotten an electric guitar that Yule. Greg contacted Barbara Doyle, whom he knew would be a good singer for this because she had been singing along with a karaoke machine that Pats daughter had also received that Yule.
Greg, Pat and Barbara then set about finding the right song to showcase Brandon. Heartbeat of the Earth by Inkubus Sukkubus quickly became the obvious choice due to the heavy beat throughout the song. An opportunity was born.
Greg contacted the band Inkubus Sukkubus for permission and was instantly given their blessing to run with it. We changed it to fit our little band and made it our own. Greg knew we should also have a bass player, so he contacted an old band buddy, Tim Krantz, and bugged him until he agreed to help us and came to one practice before that first performance.
When asked just before the performance what our band name was, Heartbeat just seemed to fit. It was after-all what we were about. Tribal drums were a passion for Greg, Barbara, Pat, and now Brandon and we were doing this performance because music was in our Hearts.
The performance at the D-note on March 21, 2009 was to be our only performance, recorded for posterity and placed on Youtube for family and friends to see. But the Lord and Lady had other plans. Suddenly, we were asked to perform at 4 other events. We had never expected our little band to do anything more than the one performance showcasing a 16 year old at a recital.
Confused, we set about writing new material, something none of had ever done or even thought of doing. But, WE NEEDED MORE MUSIC! We had events starting less than 2 months later. Blood Moon was our first new song written by Greg Boyles, Pat McIntosh and Barbara Doyle. Blood Moon required a lot of blood, sweat and tears but finally took on a life of its own. Silvery Light was a poem written by Greg Boyles that had no music until one day when Greg was fooling around on the guitar and Barbara said..OMG keep playing that! She got the words, we changed a few things, and it basically wrote itself, and quickly became Brandons favorite song to play.
Just before our second performance at Beltainia on May 8, 2009, we added Tana Marie Sjoquist, Barbaras daughter, as our back up/harmony singer. After the Beltainia show, Tana took over the keyboard and later the Didgeridoo as well.
After Beltainia, it was performance after performance all summer long all the while adding music to our play list as fast as we could write it. In the case of Earth Air Fire Water, we combined, added some new words and rearrange two songs from Wendy Rule, which inspired us to create something new. A huge thank you to Wendy for your support of our little band! Pandora Celtica has also been very influential and supportive of us. Not only by guiding us in the right direction, but also by helping us to avoid pitfalls they encountered.
As the summer of 2009 came to a close we took 7 songs to the studio, or more precisely the studio came to us for a day of excitement and music. Seven songs into studio and seven songs back ready for production..What an incredible journey for a little band now with big dreams!
Join us as the journey continues |
