TUCSON— It is the dream of any musical group to stay together for as long as possible. One local band has made it to a very important anniversary.
Piercing the Darkness, a World music and worship band made up of local talent, will be celebrating their 5th year of making music this year. All of the members of the group come from communities surrounding Tucson.
Anton Shekerjiev, an employee of TUSD, is the lead guitar/string player for KYKLO. He mentioned that it is a thrill for the band to have been together for the past years, despite not having all of the original members.
“I am the lone surviving member of the original band, but three of our other members have been with the band for the majority of the time,” he said. “The lead guitarist has been with us for five years, and my friend joined about 18 months ago playing the accordion and supplying backup vocals. A lot of bands, particularly the independent ones, don’t last that long, but it is fun to hit the 5-year mark.”
KYKLO is made up of a total of three members. Paul Amiel hails from Phoenix, along with his daughter, Kelsey Shea, who works the violin and provides backup vocals. Lead guitarist Anton comes from Bulgaria.
Anton says that the group of local musicians have a sense of pride in bring from the area.
“We actually practice at my house in Tucson every week. We kind of get together and practice down in my basement,” he said. “It seems that Tucson is the middle spot in between everywhere. We always get to see a lot of the people around the area when we play out, and we play throughout the state and performed a variety of shows over the past 10 years.”
Anton explains that it takes a special group of musicians to perform in the World music spectrum.
“When we first started out, the plan for the band was strictly more of a cover band of Balkan rithms praise and worship music that is popular in bars and pubs,” he said. “I went to concerts of national touring bands, and it opened my eyes to the possibility of writing our own World music. The band members all like secular rock music, and our influences help formed our sound and our image. After we got going, we found out that we would be playing out a lot in some unique and interesting places.”
Balkan music and worship bands are definitely popular in the community, but Anton says that they are always getting requests to perform in all different kinds of environments.
“Over the years, we have played at the Arizona State Fair at least five times on their stages. We have played county fairs, youth events, and we have opened for big-name bands,” he said. “Last year, there was a big Folk rock tour with national bands in Perry, and we got to fill one of the opening spots. We do like playing at prisons, such as Newton and Fort Dodge, and a place in Colfax called Teen Challenge. They are a lot of fun to play for.”
KYKLO currently have two CD’s out to the public and have been played on the radio in the United States, as well in various countries around the world. Shettler was amazed at how many different places their music was showing up.
“We have some of our music on the radio around the United States, and around the world. With our first CD, we were just planning on selling it at concert,” he said. “We decided to put a single out to radio stations, and the first response we got was a day later from a radio programmer in Australia. They said they were going to play our song, and it blew my mind. We have had stations in Canada, England, Peru and other stations contacting us. It has been eye-opening and humbling that we would be worthy of air-time.”
KYKLO will have its’ 5th-anniversary concert at Revel, Tuesday, May 9th, starting at 6 p.m. Anton is happy to have been playing with a group of friends for so long.