Mere minutes before they took the stage at the Loudoun Summer Music Fest's special Saturday performance, members of Fatally Yours and White Elephant were calm. They looked over their instruments, talked to each other and their families. None of the junior-high and high-school students showed any nerves about playing a stage that has held Styx, Little Feat and would hold Switchfoot later that same evening.
"I am just really excited," White Elephant's bassist, Rob Daitzman, 14, said. "We just want to get our music out there."
The two bands were the winner and runner-up of the Loudoun Foundation's Battle of the Bands in May. As part of their prize, each group was paired with a professional musician to create an original composition that they would perform for the first time at the Loudoun Summer Music Fest. None of the Battle of the Bands participants knew that winning would give them the opportunity to play in front of such a large audience.
"We went into it blind," Alex Harris, 15, Fatally Yours' singer and guitarist, said. "We were all surprised when this happened."
Winner Fatally Yours was paired with Phil Brown, who recently released The Jimmy Project, an interpretation of Jimmy Hendrix's music and has worked with artists from Cher to Deep Purple. Runner-up, White Elephant, was matched with New York City-based singer and songwriter Derek James, whose music has been compared to Jack Johnson and Coldplay.
IN ADDITION to being able to work with professional musicians, the bands were asked to create their song around the theme of antidomestic violence.
"It is about teens educating teens," said Jonathan Horowitz, manager of the Loudoun Citizens for Social Justice's Teen Violence Prevention Program. "I'm never going to be able to prevent violence if it is just me speaking, but someone standing up with a guitar is automatically a leader. The goal was to get teens up and speaking about the issues."
For both of the groups, the opportunity to write about something important was a rewarding experience.
White Elephant wrote "Father to Son" about the cycle of domestic violence as it is passed down from father to son as the son begins to abuse his own children.
"He realizes if you don't stop [the cycle] it is just going to keep going," drummer Matthew Harrison, 12, said.
While the band members say that most of their original songs do not contain a message, the experience of writing "Father and Son" has inspired them for the future.
"This is the only one we have that is really deep," Daitzman said, "but these are really good to work on because they make you think."
The members of Fatally Yours said their other original songs have dealt with important issues, everything from politics to what they are feeling, lead guitarist Nick Hosta, 15, said, and when it came to writing their song "Everything" the words flowed easily.
"It is about a guy who's had a bad day, comes home and beats his wife and kids and she leaves him," Hosta said.
The song, which chronicles the event from the perspective of both the abuser and the abused, was the result of two work sessions, Hosta added.
"We didn't want to do a general standard 'make love, not war' song, so we decided to go with a story line," Harris said.
WHILE BOTH BANDS were already working on their songs when they first began collaborating with Brown and James, both say they still learned a great deal from the partnerships.
"I learned just by watching him play," White Elephant's singer and guitarist, Taylor Berrett, 13, said of James. "He taught us the little things that made all the difference, especially harmonies. We really lucked out working with him."
James, 25, said he was impressed when he began working with Berrett, Daitzman and Harrison.
"These kids are so good and so advanced for their age," he said. "Their stuff was 10 times better than the things I was doing in the beginning. I can't wait to see what they do in the future."
Brown said he had a very easy job working with Fatally Yours, who had completed their song before the first meeting.
"I was really impressed by that," Brown said. "I didn't have to touch the lyrics, we just broke it apart musically. Part of being a mentor is letting them find their own way and I think they caught a big one [here.]"
"[Working with Brown] will make use look at our songs," Hosta said. "It will make us go back and make them better."
Both mentors were advised by Horowitz about the theme of domestic violence and the goal of the project, who then sat down with their bands and talked about the issue.
"We talked about what the theme should be about, what they see in the world," Brown said. "How it is not so much about getting along with others, but about getting along with yourself."
Each of the members of Fatally Yours and White Elephant said that they hope to make music a part of their lives as they get older and the experience of working with professionals and playing on a large stage on whetted their appetites.
"This is an outlet for everything else that I am feeling," Berrett said. "Music is my life."