Teen band influenced by Catholic faith

By Rebecca Bostic, The Catholic Sun
June 7, 2007

Many high school students spend their time away from school and homework doing chores, playing video games or surfing the Internet.

The five teen members of Anarbor still do a bit of that, but the majority of their free time is spent on a future as a rock band.

The five-piece East Valley alternative rock band has been together for nearly three years. Anarbor, formerly Troop 101, has a solid alternative rock sound with a few unique twists, but the factor that makes this band different from others is the way its members are all influenced by their Catholic faith.

Our faith “definitely affects our writing — it affects our lyrics a lot,” said Mike Kitlas, a guitar player in Anarbor and a junior at Brophy College Preparatory.

“Our faith plays into our everyday life, which is what we write about,” he said. “So naturally our faith comes into our writing.”

On their way home from summer school at St. John Bosco a few years ago, Kitlas decided to start the band with friends Slade Echeverria, vocals, and Greg Garrity, drums. They were in the seventh grade.

The rest of the band formed when a couple of mutual friends — Jess Myers, bass and vocals, and Adam Juwig, guitar — joined the group.

Although Anarbor would not call their music or band exclusively Christian, all five members are Catholic and the band makes decisions based out of their faith.

No practice on Sunday and praying before every show as a group are just a couple of ways the Catholic youth live out their faith in alternative rock.

“We just take things from different angles” as Catholics, Garrity said. “We’re not sitting there singing about God, but the way we put things and say things definitely has a faith connotation.”

Anarbor hopes to tour other parts of the country this summer after they re-release their current album “Hearing Colours, Seeing Sounds.” The coming-of-age album broadly hones in on relationships: good ones, bad ones, jealous ones and more.  A band favorite is “Where the Wild Things Are (Monsters),” written by Myers.

The song is about “relationships going bad with people and people expecting too much out of you,” she said.

Some of the songs on the album are nearly three years old, but the band decided to release them because “we’ve experienced so much in the last three years,” Kitlas said.

Not surprisingly for a band whose members have literally grown up together, deep and lasting faith-based friendships are at the core of Anarbor.

“We just all get along so well and have the same thinking process,” Myers said. Her fellow band members nodded in agreement. “We blend really well.”

Echeverria attributes the ease of songwriting, which is done by all the members of the band, to that good communication.

“The bond is just that much bigger and it’s, like, just that much easier to write,” he said.

While writing together is important, the band also enjoys playing live.

“You get to meet so many new people,” Echeverria said. “You get to play in front of people that have never heard you before. It’s just a good experience.”