Heed The Calling

At age 15, most teenage boys are thinking about high school and girls, but young Alex Band had other plans; his group The Calling had just been signed to RCA Records.

Band grew up in a family that knew all about the entertainment business. Both his father and uncle worked in the horror movie industry, and he knew that he wanted to work in the entertainment business as well.

“When I was really little all I wanted to do was make horror movies, but as I grew up I knew that I wanted to work in the music business,” said Band. “I started playing guitar when I was really young. I have been singing since I was five years old, and I knew ideally what I wanted to sound like.”

Band and guitarist Aaron Kamin were the original members that were signed to RCA six years ago. The two met when Band was only 14 years old and Kamin was 19. Kamin was dating Band’s older sister at the time, and noticed a guitar in their house. When he found out it was Alex’s guitar he laughed. However, once he had heard him sing, he knew that he had found something incredible.

The age difference soon became a non-issue. The two played together as often as possible, and tried to find a band to play behind them. Eventually, they were seen by an A&R staff member at RCA records who encouraged them to keep singing and eventually gave them a development deal. However things didn’t turn out exactly as they had planned.

“When we were signed, I was 15 and they wanted us to be something different” says Band. “I would say the closest thing to what they wanted us to be was Hanson … The guy who signed us, even though he’s a great guy for doing it, kind of kept us hidden and wouldn’t show us to anybody at RCA … For years they didn’t think that we had the material to make a record, so we just got together and wrote, like, 100 songs. We tried to get the material they wanted, and, in time, we had written this entire album including our single.”

Band and Kamin were then joined by their new bandmates Sean Woolstenhulme, Billy Mohler, and Nate Wood to form The Calling. Once the band actually entered the studio, the album was recorded in only three weeks.

The song that was chosen as their first single was “Wherever You Will Go,” a pop-rock ballad with an acoustic feel. It was several years old by the time it was picked as a single, and Band was surprised it was even chosen.

“We wrote the song three and a half years ago, and although I knew it was a great song I never thought that would be singled out amongst the others,” he said. “Now it’s just crazy to see it become as big as it is.”

With their first single blazing up the charts, The Calling plans to release their second single “Adrienne,” a fan favorite, in early March while taking off on a national tour.