Behid the Scenes: Beyond 5

When I was preparing to write this post about Beyond 5, I had to interview the guys to get their take on the process of what they were doing.  So we arranged for them to come over for breakfast one morning.

Which was not something I was allowed to say "out loud" at the time because apparently they were receiving a lot of request for exactly that from quite a few people, but they like the way I wrote and wanted to work with me.

So I prepped breakfast, swore my die hard fangirl daughters to secret, sent them to school, because no, you can't stay for this, and went to my early morning math class.

When I got home I sat down with the boys and their manager and we talked.

And then we did a photoshoot for advertising of the blog.  I spread the pictures on my social media best I could, but really, now that we're a few years out from it, wanted to clean this pictures out of my phone.

So, the day I had a boy band over for breakfast.

 

And made them do some porch pictures, because that's what we do here in The Circus.

 And then the time I got some of my neighbors to go to one of their concerts with us.

Makenzie, me, Gail, Gail's two friends, Gail's mom Belle.

 And the logo that I designed for the fanclub that was running rampant.

 As well as the version that we made for the guys.

The moment we gave the shirts to the guys (and the fun the girls had afterwards spotting them wearing those shirts on social media afterward.

And two of my most favorite shots of why I really supported those guys as a mother.

Ammon

Zac

They've all served missions (minus TJ who is not LDS) and returned home again.  While I unfriended them all on facebook, we still have some Instagram interaction going on.  Basically, I've said it before and I say it again, I really like to support good people who are doing good things.

And these boys were/are.

These Are The Best Days Of Our Lives: Meet Beyond 5

Beyond 5 (here) is a new band that is gaining momentum, and fast.

Photo cred: Mormon Newsroom here and Beyond5official here.

"Competing against 500+ talented young men who submitted to the auditions from over 40 states and several countries around the globe, these 5 prodigies were carefully selected and constructed like a compound formula- each of their voices, personalities, and dancing abilities meshing together like a strategically-woven fabric.
The songs they sing have obvious potential to be chart-topping hits with their infectious melodies, tight harmonies, driving beats and cutting edge production." (Jellyfish PR Blog here)

The boys, Ammon, Patch, Tanner, TJ, and Zac, came together from various backgrounds after going through the audition process under the direction of music producer Tyler Castleton (here), who's no lightweight when it comes to the music industry, having co-written songs with Martina McBride, Gladys Knight, and Marie Osmond, as well as Producer Russ Dixon who is also an accomplished song-writer.  (Info pulled from Jellyfish PR Blog here).

I think it's safe to say this group is in good hands.

Before I continue, check this out, and I don't mean skip over it, I mean hit that play arrow, no cheating.

In all honesty, I could stop there.

'Nuff said.

'Nuff sung?

But then again, even with the "infectious melodies, tight harmonies, and driving beats," which is certainly enough, it's so much more than that.  Did you hear the layers of harmony?  I get lost listening to the multiple layers of voices they weave together in every song.  It's even better in person.

Would you believe that on top of that harmony and passion, is energy and enthusiasm that just explodes?

The conversation is easy, the banter frequent, and the laughter non-stop.

Until you ask them what the journey has been like so far.  Then it gets quiet and in all earnestness they express that it's been "kind of crazy", "amazingly fun", and "incredibly amazing".  They express that none of them knew how much hard work would go into something like this.  It's a pay off in both ways, they told me; it's the best time but they're working harder than they ever have before.

I say "they" told me because the comments came from one and then another, building on each other to create one solid answer.

The unity between them is a sight to behold.

"We're closer than a married couple," Ammon joked.

I paused, thinking I ought to defend my closeness with my husband, as any good wife should, but, as they tend to do, the others jumped in and built on it.  That's what you get when you live together, work together, go to the gym together, travel together, drive everywhere together (which is the only way TJ's going to get anywhere, having just turned 16 and his driver's license still in the works.  "That's what I have them for," he laughs.)... and the list went on.

One has to wonder how life is handled when you have a group of five teenage boys living together under one roof, but as you listen to them talk (and laugh) about life it's easy to see that these guys are driven.  They're building their dream, which in and of itself is a full time job, and then some.  Most days they're putting in 12 to 15 hours of solid work, and on top of that Ammon and TJ are still in school.

Photo creds: @Beyond5Official Twitter 

Days off?  On Saturday.  But after "this," and "this."  Then there's "this" in the morning.

It's paying off though.  Just ask the fangirls. Five of them live in my house and are more than willing to have an excuse to tell you as much.

And they're not the only ones noticing.

In March, the group was invited to sing the National Anthem in the Senate Chambers during the legislative session on Utah's Capitol Hill.

Beyond 5 with Governor Herbert and Lt. Governor  Cox. phot creds: Beyond 5 Official Team

It's not all work and no play. The pranks inside the Beyond 5 house are abundant.

The favorite prank of the house?

Scaring each other.  On video.

If you ask TJ about this he'll tell you that there are four pranksters, and he'll point to the others.  And one, he points at himself with a grin, who's afraid to prank because the other four could beat him up.  That's his claim and he's sticking to it.  Apparently the squirrels are in on it as well.  The B5 yard at their current home in Nashville is full of squirrels.  Unsuspecting TJ took the garbage out one night and, as he lifted the lid, a squirrel sprang out at him.

The guy just can't catch a break as far as that's concerned.

I can't fail to mention that they opted for a ping pong table over a dining table.  Fans learned at a VIP concert (my account of it here) in March that Tanner is the resident ping pong champion, and as such has high expectations when it comes to the treatment of the table.  "I used to like ping pong," Ammon joked with a grin and a side glance at Tanner during the concert. It can't be set aside, even by Tanner, that this table must also double as their place to eat.

"We're not allowed to put anything hot on the table."

"It will bubble," Tanner defends.

"We can't spill on it."
"If we do we have to clean it right up."

"It gets sticky," Tanner persists.

"We can't put anything on it unless it's on top of a napkin."

Tanner's holding his ground on this one.

Work and play, the goals of these boys are simple and straight forward.  They didn't even hesitate when I asked, listing off easily:

Write songs.
Create amazing, positive music.
Do their best not to sacrifice their spirituality or their standards.
Continue being as healthy as they can with their eating and exercise.
Keep relationships with their families strong.  The boys call or email home daily.
Hold weekly meetings to make sure they're on the same page not only with finances, but their social media as well.
Hold regular "Honest Planet" sessions as a group where they can discuss whatever they need to freely, with open minds, and without judgments from each other.

"It's more about putting good music out there than what we can get for ourselves," TJ said, as the others nodded in agreement, "It's all of us, not just the five of us but the whole team working and building together to put good music out."

Their desire to leave their mark on the world and make it a brighter place is apparent.

"It doesn't matter what the number of CD's sold is, or the number of performances done," Ammon replied, adding to TJ's statement, "It's what we learned through all of this that's going to be important."

Zac adds, "We'll be useless to society if all we can do is perform when we're done with all of this.  We need to be able to do more than that."

All you have to do is look at the wake they leave behind them  to know they're sincere in this.  They began their careers with a service tour in Asia where they delivered thousands of books to youth groups and performed concerts in eight countries, all free of charge. They put actions behind those words.

On May 2nd Beyond 5 will be performing a concert in Odgen, Utah.

I want all of you to take the opportunity to see these guys in action, so Beyond 5 is letting me do a give away for a 4 pack of concert tickets, as well as the Beyond 5 CD.

Three winners will be chosen.

What do you have to do?

Follow.  And share.  It couldn't be easier.

The give away is open until Wednesday, April 30th at midnight.  

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Winners will be notified by email.  

Introducing our featured client: BEYOND5. (2014, January 2). JellyfishPR Blog. Retrieved April 24, 2014, from http://blog.jellyfishpr.com/post/72025648805/beyond5

Give Away: Beyond 5 Concert Tickets and CD

I'm in the process of writing a post that will introduce you to the guys of  Beyond 5.

If you follow my social media (especially instagram) you know I post about them a lot, and I want you to get a better feel for why I love and support them so much.

Beyond 5 has allowed me to do a give away for my readers, but as the post is still in a process stage, and as the concert is coming up on Friday, I'm going to do this post right now to get the give away rolling.

I do want to show you this though, click play on this video and get a taste of what I've been talking about.  Don't cheat!  Really take a listen.



Did you hear it?

Katy Perry's version is ruined for me now.  It sounds so bland after listening to Beyond 5's version.

Not only do they have tight harmony, but they have layers and layers of harmony.

I can get lost in focusing on all the layers their songs have, and the fact that they're a boy band means that's not done with fancy gadgets.  They do it vocally themselves, together, so you get those layers at the concerts too.

It's even better live.

But you don't have to take my word for it.

I have the opportunity for you guys to win a 4 pack of concert tickets (general admission) to their concert coming up this Friday, May 2nd in Ogden, Utah, as well as a Beyond 5's self titled CD.

I'm going to give you as many chances to enter as I can because I want it to be easy for you.

This give away is going live now and will end Wednesday. April 30th at midnight.  That gives you two and half days to enter.  Some entries can only be done once, but there are some that can be done every day, so keep coming back and entering.  Winners will be notified by email Thrusday, May 1st.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

As if this give away weren't good enough all on its own, I get to pick not just one winner, but three.

Three winners!

What are you waiting for?  Go enter!

Beyond 5

Today I want to tell you guys about a band that is on the up and up and has completely captured my attention.

Which is a little crazy, being as it's a boy band, and let's face it, boy bands have never been able to live up to my New Kids on the Block expectations.

Air fist, I know you moms out there hear me.

The Circus made it through Justin Bieber with a small scratch.  I think Casidee liked him for about a month; long enough for me to make a cake with his face (and hair) in fondant.  The highlight of my caking, to be sure (here).

And One Direction has settled into the bedrooms of my girls for the last few months, thumping out a rhythm into the walls, their faces even covering the walls of, again, Casidee, whom I think is just in love with the idea of being a fan girl in general.  But she takes it hard core and if she's going to fan girl on something then she is in it heart and soul (and bedroom walls).

But me?

Not so much.

I mean, One Direction is okay and I don't turn the radio station when their songs come on, like I do for Bruno Mars, and I even sing along, but they're not on my iPod or anything.

I just haven't found a boy band that does it for me since NKOTB.

But then I was introduced to Beyond 5 and I found myself with a free cd in hand and some concert tickets to give away to a Logan concert back in December (here).  So I took a few of the girls and we drove for two hours to see a band we'd never heard of before (here).

The rest is history, as they say.

I find that I'm following their social media (links below).

And I have their entire cd on my iPod (check them out on itunes here).

I can sing every word with The Circus when we break out into impromptu singing in the kitchen, because the songs are constantly running through our heads.

I'm not going to claim to be a fan girl because I can't tell you their birthdays, or favorite colors, or even their exact ages, and I certainly don't have their faces plastered to my bedroom wall (do you think The Man would go for that?  Yeah, I didn't think so either...) but what I've realized is...

I've become a groupie.

With my daughters.

Am I too old for this?

Maybe.

Perhaps it's because we've had the fortune of rubbing elbows with them a little bit so they're real to me.  I've talked with them personally and know how down-to-earth, polite, respectful, and witty they are as individuals.  Maybe it's because I know what it is to chase a dream and see them as they're working so hard at theirs.

And it's good.

I tell you, this music, their harmony, is good.

We got tickets (for Casidee's birthday) to a special VIP event with  Beyond 5 on Friday night.

It wasn't assigned seating so as soon as the girls were all out of school we grabbed a $5 pizza to go,

and some McD's pies

because Friday was pi day, yo, so we had to have our pizza pie and our apple pie, and we ate it while sitting on the sidewalk, playing Fluxx, and waiting for the doors to open.

The doors opened, we found seats third row, though honestly, with only 250 seats in the place, there wasn't going to be a bad spot, and waited just a little bit more.

Cali didn't attend the concert back in December and she'd been hearing all about Beyond 5 ever since then.  She tends to fan girl about as hard core as Casidee does, and often takes her sister's lead when it comes to music so she had 3 solid months to fall absolutely in love with Beyond 5.

When the guys finally showed up on stage, Cali's happiness and excitement in that moment proved to be too much for her to bear and she pretty much bawled through the entire first song.

This VIP event was cool.

The guys talked and told stories, showed behind the scenes videos and joked with each other a lot.




They sang new songs that we hadn't heard them do before.





(a better video of their Unconditionally here.  Go listen.  So worth it).

And they did a Q&A session and sang their songs that we all knew well.


And they sang to their moms which was super cute.

We were given swag bags at this VIP event which was full of pictures and Casidee's One Direction wall has now become a full bedroom of Beyond 5.

I support this.

I probably feed it.

After the show we got to meet the guys and get autographs.

 

And just for the record, I totally got grounded for the quality of this picture:

Mom fail.

And somehow they had time for this old groupie mom too.

Double chins and all.

They even let us have our own little moment with them, when all was said and done, and tables were cleared out and people were gone.

Beyond 5 and The Circus.

A special thank you to the band's dads who helped us with the picture.

And an extra special thank you to Zac's dad, Corey for helping Cali with her lost, autographed poster.  Cali had set it down, in true Cali fashion, and when she went to get it, it was gone.  Corey grabbed a new poster, ran out to the the bus where the guys were already settling in after the antics of the night, and had them sign it again.

Cali got a special "I love you" message from Ammon on it.

These guys are good people.  They're surrounded by good people.

And they have good music so go follow them.

Youtube HERE
Instagram HERE
Facebook HERE
Official website HERE

They'll be back in Utah this summer.

You should catch a show.

The Circus will probably be there too.

Jayme Has a Birthday Party. We Met Beyond 5. Christmas Eve Eve. A Catching Up Post.

On Friday (the 20th) Jayme had her birthday party.

She invited a few friends over to watch Harry Potter.  Along with her food requests (pizza, root beer, brownies, cake balls...) we threw in some jelly beans and called them Bertie Bott's every flavor beans.  The girls made up a chart with their own flavor names, which included earwax, vomit, and prune juice, among others.

Pictures to come, as soon as I can steal them off of The Man's phone.

On Saturday we got to go check out a new band called Beyond 5, which my girls instantly fell in love with.
We stopped and grabbed Panda Express via drive-thru and then hit the road for our 2 hour trip to the concert, which was up in Logan.  Yeah, you heard me, 2 hour trip, one way.

That right there makes me mother of the year.

Since they're a new band we hadn't yet heard much about them.  They've just released their first cd, and have just gotten back from touring Asia, so the girls didn't quite know what they were getting into (check out some videos on them on the post I did here).

But as soon as that first song started, my girls were smitten.  Completely, number one fans.

And that might even be an understatement.

I waited with the girls for an hour after the concert for a chance to meet the guys of Beyond 5 and get some autographs.  We bought a poster for each bedroom and while standing in line one of the crew from the band walked up and gave Tayler a cd.

We had both posters and the cd cover signed.

And the girls snuck some selfies with their favorites.

I was so impressed with these boys, watching them interact with everyone after the show.  They were polite and genuinely nice.  Their music was upbeat with a good vibe and none of their songs has anything that would make me uncomfortable having my daughters listen to it.

I'm behind this group of guys 100%.

We listened to Tayler's cd on the entire 2 hour drive home.

Obsessed.

On Monday we celebrated Christmas eve eve.

Since it wasn't our year for Christmas with The Circus and we needed to take them to their other parents the next morning.

I left work early and went home and made wassail, and put a ham, rolls, and funeral potatoes in the oven.

Papa Mike, Granny Suzann, Lindee, Sam, and Morgan came over and spent the evening with us.

Granny made fancy hot coca.  Papa gave the kids his two cents worth.

We talked and laughed, and chilled.  And opened a few presents.

We thought about joining Lindee and Sam to go see the lights at Thanksgiving Point, but we didn't make it that far.  We stopped at a gas station for slurpees or hot chocolate, and then went home to let the kids open presents.  We wanted them to have some time in the morning to fiddle with their new stuff and check it out before we had to take them to their other parents.

This year I put code names on the presents. (I wrote a guest post on that here).

Tayler had some suspicions on a couple of presents and was hoping that she was reindeer.

When we sat down to open presents I told the kids to grab one present and make sure that they each had a different name.

The kids grabbed presents they had guessed could be something that belonged to them.

Cali grabbed reindeer before Tayler could and Tayler was not a happy camper about that.

I told them to open them and then we would see if they were right.

Cali happened to grab a present that could have been for her so she guessed that she was right.  And we went around the circle, the kids saying who they thought the present they had opened was for.  It finally came to a point where we told Cali she was wrong and the reindeer present was not for her, but the candycane presents were.

Tayler, misunderstanding what was said exclaimed, "She gets to be both reindeer and candycane?"  She was completely frustrated.  But then we told Tayler that no, Cali wasn't reindeer and Tayler's Christmas became perfect as she realized she really did get to be reindeer like she'd been hoping.

This was such a fun way to do the presents, especially as they unwrapped them and tried to figure out who had whose.  I'll definitely be doing this every year.

The rest of the week has been pretty quiet for us.  The Circus doesn't come home until after the New Year and I miss them so much.

I'm not used to them being gone for so long.

We usually do pretty good in how we handle the holidays that we don't have kids for, but we haven't quite found our groove with Christmas yet.  We visited with family on Christmas Day, but we'd already opened our presents with the kids so we kicked back with all our Christmas treats and the pile of new movies that I'd given The Man and enjoyed the holiday the best we could.

Next kidless Christmas, we're taking a cruise.  I'm pretty sure I might feel better about it if I'm sitting on a warm beach somewhere.