As a founding member of the six-man vocal a cappella group "Eclipse," Shayne Taylor has learned that the group's music has more appeal than he originally imagined.
"When we were first starting out, we thought our target audience was going to be high school and college-age people," he said, "but we find that we're a big hit with the toddler demographic, as well as a lot of — well, my grandma comes to the shows and enjoys it as much as the kids do."
Perhaps it shouldn't be too much of a surprise when one takes a closer look. Pop, R&B, big band, jazz, vocal ballads, "a little bit of everything," Taylor said, is what they do. The group, currently comprised of Taylor, Jake Despain, Paul Hansen, Kirk Mecham, Dan Kartchner and Kevin Jones — are even planning to add sacred music to the list when they record their next album.
"Our next CD project is a sacred album," Taylor explained, "It's something that we've always wanted to do. It's the same feeling as with the Christmas album: We've always just wanted to, we love that kind of music and wanted to record a CD."
And all of it, he said, is purely vocal. "If you listened to a CD or saw us live and weren't familiar with this type of music at all, you might think that we have bass or percussion, backup tracks or this sort of thing going on. But we have one guy in particular, his name is Kevin Jones — he's what we call our vocal percussionist. He makes drum noises with his mouth.
"We pride ourselves on having a show that has all the heavy, driving rhythms of a normal concert, but it's all produced vocally."
The group started, Taylor said, when the six were singing for a musical group at Utah State University. "It was a Glenn Miller Broadway-style floor show, put on by 12 singers and 12 dancers. We were the male part of the singers." The guys in the group started getting together on the side, he said, and put together arrangements and wrote songs.
Then they started performing around campus.
But what really got them launched, he said, was a tour to Thailand in 2000. The school-sponsored group was doing an exchange, and they asked the six guys to do an additional performance. They enjoyed what they did so much that they kept performing together — even after they graduated from college.
In fact, five of the original members are still together. Brandon Ellison recently left the group to attend law school, and Despain was brought aboard. Despain is a Sandy resident and graduate of Alta High School.
The international appeal of their music became evident again with the 2002 Winter Olympics. The director of the opening and closing ceremonies heard their recording of "Danny Boy," and asked them to participate.
"They had this part where they re-created the pioneers coming into the valley," Taylor said. "They wanted this moment around a campfire, where there was this moment for giving thanks for safe arrival, so they approached us to sing this song a cappella around the campfire called 'Hard Times Come Again No More.' We did that, and we ended up performing at all the competition venues throughout the whole Olympics — three nights at the medals plaza, and then the opening and closing ceremonies, as well."
After four CDs, four Pearl Awards, a Utah's Best of State award for "Best Vocal Group," and other national and international honors, Taylor said he's not sure what the future holds for Eclipse.
"I don't know if we really expected to sing together five or six years down the road; we just enjoyed singing together and kept on doing it, and that's still our main goal: Just to be able to keep singing together. We enjoy performing, we enjoy the creative process — writing and arranging music and recording."
If you go
What: Eclipse
Where: Sandy Amphitheatre, 1300 E. 9400 South
When: Tonight, 8 p.m.
How much: $7-$10
Phone: 467-8499 or 568-2787
Web:sandy.utah.gov
E-mail: rcline@desnews.com