The Story of The Force CD

The scripture tells us to be salt and light on this Earth.  Our flesh tells us we want to heroes.  As Christian musicians- we can be both!  The Force is our first recording aimed at bringing light to the dark world of Popular Music!  And to be righteous heroes in a world of bad examples.  We try to live what these songs teach! We hope you will want to, too!

PTB has taken many shapes, and had many members over the years- but it all started with a couple named Ralph and Julie Kinscheck with a mission!

We, Ralph and Julie Kinscheck, started this labor of love in 1997 When we wrote "Hope for the Children" - originally for Hope World Wide- (but they didn't use it)- so we changed some words and had our AMP preteens sing it at camp at the talent show in 1997.

We did basics for the recording a couple years later- then continued to work on it- adding Sal Difusco on Guitar, Jim Cafarella on back up vocals and more preteens in our home studio in our Medford,MA apartment. The bathroom was the vocal booth! Equipped with dripping tub faucet and lumbering huge dog running around upstairs from us!

We wrote the theme song: "Preteen Alliance" for 1997 after camp video. It started as an adaptation of a Spice Girls song- then Julie changed it to make it entirely original! Now it’s more straight ahead pop-rock, like early Madonna (partially because of the chic rap) or more current like Avril Lavign, Michelle Branch or Kelly Clarkson gone Christian!

The basics of that song were recorded in Tom Scotto attick with our old band Sound Doctrine plus Suzanne Clark and host of Greater Boston Preteens. Most of those kids are now in college! Original players were Tom Scotto on drums, Phil McKenna on Bass, Mark Randall on guitar along with Ralph on Keys and Julie on guitar, too.  We did a bunch of ‘fixing’ on that song at our present home studio, The Shed, in Billerica, MA - Julie redid the lead vocals, rhythm guitar - and Ralph- yes Ralph, added the wawa guitar parts! He plays Keyboards, and does most of the bass, drums, strings and other background instrumental parts on most of the songs. This is the only one where he plays guitar.

We obviously wrote "POWER OF GOD (Deep Impact)" (we should have reversed that title!) after the microburst at the famous 1998 preteen camp. It was an amazing spiritual battle- it really strengthened our faith! We recorded that at Mindtree Studios in an all night session with bass player Kenny Hester. It was on reel to reel (or was it 8 track tape?) - anyway- it was too hard to convert it and edit any of the tracks or mix years later- so we kept it as is.

The style of it is kind of open- like Alicia Keys, but more dramatic like something from Evanescence. We has really wanted to play the video from that year's camp with the tornado wreckage at the CD release concert at this year’s camp (2006)- big bummer that the camp decided not to let us use the AV equipment at the last minute. 

We had worked on "The Force" with our Amp kids to do for the 1999 camp talent show- but it didn't come together in time. We didn't do a good recording of that until Medford, around 2001/2? Carl Alleyne of Eye 2 Eye, our own Christian Will Smith, did a fantastic job on the rap on the CD- Kamar Calixte worked it live at camp.

This song is as hip hop as we get- very relatable to kids,we think. Julie enjoyed doing the ‘Chic rap’, too. The prominent back ground vocals are Marina Valdez (a former voice student of mine, daughter of singer, dancer, percussionist Jamie Galarza of Eye 2 Eye and Raissa Macklin (the flower girl at my wedding when she was five- she starts college this fall!) daughter of pianist, vocalist Rebecca Harold-DaSilva of Faith in Action.

The next year (2000) we did our first movie for camp: Mission Possible! It was a fun take off on the Tom Cruise movie, Mission Impossible. In the major motion picture he had these sun glasses from which he received a mission- our preteen (and his sister) got spiritual helpers: A Rock Star (King David), Zina, The Warrior Princess (Judge Deborah), Obi One Kenobi (the prophet Daniel), and an Arnold Schwarzenegger super terminator character (Joshua)- whenever he put on his glasses- they taught him how to pray and to depend on God in many real world situations at school and in the neighborhood. Julie wrote the script and Ralph shot the footage while Rich Fischer, a former actor turned preacher, then leading the preteen camps, directed.

The hysterical thing then- was that Julie had surgery to remove nodes from her vocal cords that summer and couldn't even whisper when we were filming! She had to write all her ideas and direction on a notebook she carried around her neck! That is why the song "Mission Possible" is a male lead vocal- and Ralph is the sole songwriter- Julie couldn't sing!

Thomas Kivlin sang the original version of the lead and did a great job trying to interpret what Ralph wanted the melody to be (a challenging task since Ralph is NOT a singer!!!)  His version is on the movie sound track. Our good buddy, Ricardo Nuche (Eye 2 Eye) also laid down some drum parts.

Later, we heard Rich Evans sing at a marriage retreat. Apparently, Rich enjoyed singing Black Sabbath and Judas Priest stuff before he became a Christian. He reminded us a bit of Creed, too. Ralph immediately had vision for what he could add to the song. We approached Rich some weeks later and he said he would give it a shot. You must understand, though, that this song is written in 5/4 time with other odd time signatures thrown in- true to Ralph's progressive rock influences from Rush, Kansas and other great bands of the 70's... So re-doing the vocal (changing the melody), cleaning up drums... (another problem had been that Johann Narcio's, lead guitar parts also of Eye 2 Eye, were recorded at too low a volume- so when we cranked them up they just distorted- so we also had Jim Peterson redo the lead guitars/ sitar parts etc) turned out to be the biggest head ache of the CD.

Then Julie had this vision for a Middle Eastern sounding female back up part- And even added a touch of vocal improvisation in a transition section. She can throw a little Ella Fitzgerald- or Bobby Mcferrin into anything!  (the may be why a fan nick named her "The Queen Of SCAT!"- at last we have the version on the current CD! Listen NOW.

By 2001 Julie was in good voice again and we wrote "S.P.Y. Kidz (Spiritual Powerful Youth)." We did a movie that year, too, called S.P.Y. Kidz- Search For the Cross about these kids who had to rescue their parents and find the truth of the cross. We had a neighbor of ours we had been inviting to church, who was an actress, star in the movie as the mother- she later disappeared. Hmm?

Ralph was at the height of his health troubles and at that time had no answers- he was scary thin and too sick to do the filming. John Dorleen (JD) stepped in to help and became our partner in our film projects to come. Unfortunately, since we had all of one day to shoot- our marvelous script that Julie had labored over was scrambled and the final product was very different than we had envisioned- but the kids were encouraged- mission accomplished!

We recorded the basics of the song "S.P.Y. Kidz (Spiritual,Powerful, Youth)" for the sound track. Later we redid the lead vocals and added more preteen singers. This song may be Julie's personal favorite. Listen Now.

In 2002 The Kinscheck's were trying some extra medical procedures to try to have children and we didn't go to camp. They were doing a lot of praying! Julie really wanted her own children! Sometimes you have to sacrifice something good for something even more important. For her, that meant not going to camp at all. Boo hoo! Julie loves preteen camp!

That year was called "Fear Factor". Ralph ended up doing the camp concert with Sal Difusco, Aaron and Zahra Belyea, Reggie Paggan and others...They did current hits by Pink, Vanessa Carlton, Smash mouth and others; No originals. But this spring (2006) Julie wrote a song called "Fear" to represent that camp on the CD- but we had no time left to record it. Maybe there will be an acoustic version of it on the website at some point!

In 2003 we did our most ambitious project yet! We made the mini movie: The X-Project! That year camp was called Is It In You? but The X-Men was a huge popular movie at the time- so we combined the two and rewrote a song I had previously written called "Battle For Your Soul" and spent 5 days shooting (and much more writing and preparing and auditioning for and editing etc) The X-Project.

John Dorleen joined us with a major roll shooting and directing and teaching the kids martial arts moves for the fight scenes; he also co-wrote the script with Julie. Ralph and Rich directed- along with me and JD- Phil Hickman (Then a teen- now in the armed forces in Iraq!) also helped on camera.

As for the recording of "Battle For Your Soul (Is It In You?)" something weird happened to the file on Ralph’s computer- and again we had to just keep the original version- I might have fixed some stuff- but , this song really rocks anyway!! Think Pat Benatar with a twist of Bonnie Raitt. The Keys might make you think more of Emerson, Lake and Palmer, though! It is amazing how technical stuff can have such an impact on the final product! Listen Now!

2004 and 2005 we were too busy with new baby twins, Caleb and Hannah- a fantastic answer to prayer (!), to go to camp or be part of the concerts. But we didn't want kids from those years to be left out- So we took a couple of instrumental pieces Ralph was working on and Julie wrote words and they became "Can You Hear Me Now?" and "Incredible".

You can really tell the songs which Julie wrote most of and Ralph just re-arranged or added stuff to and the ones where he wrote most of the music... look for odd time signatures and more elaborate keyboard parts! "Can You Hear me Now" sneaks in a tiny bit of SCAT singing in the intro- a specialty of Julie's not much represented in these recordings. It also features Pat Loomis on Sax (wow!) and Rich Evans as the voice of God in the third verse. 

Some like this song also for the changing point of view of the speaker in each verse. The first verse is girl speaking to her parents- who obviously aren't hearing her. The second verse the girl calls out to God- who she fears isn't listening either- and the third verse is God responding.

"Incredible" could have stayed an instrumental- which it still mostly is- full of rich melodic themes and beautiful movie soundtrack-like harmonies ala Steven Foster. But Julie could envision this spoken part in the middle. The parts she sang are more instrumental in nature. Hey- Sal Difusco had his wife, Jen, speaking in one of his songs- and Jim Peterson had his wife, Jean, doing a voice over on one of his songs- Julie felt she was following in a cool tradition! This is likely the most adult song of the group.

All in all- "S.P.Y. Kidz" and "PT Alliance" are really the only two aimed so specifically at preteens- the rest are at least applicable to all teens as well- and "Mission...", "Battle", "Can you Hear...", "Incredible" and "Hope..." are really all for everyone, not just youth. And "Power of God(Deep Impact)" is just a neat story. The title cut: "The Force" is definitely for ‘youth’ of all ages! Listen Now.

As you can see The Force CD was a labor of love from start to finish. We never could have done it without the love and support of SO MANY PEOPLE! (Please read the thanks you list on the CD insert!) But on top of the list- after of course our heavenly Father, were Rich and Lisa Fischer who gave us a ministry with the preteens and a way to use our musical, theatrical, writing, filming, editing... talents for the Lord! We were facing challenges of Ralph's health, Julie's infertility and the frustrations of life not turning out like as we once had dreamed... and also not becoming the famous recording artists we had always wanted to be before we became disciples....  The Preteen camps and all that came with them- including this CD gave us an exciting and needed focus.

Finishing this CD is a dream realized! But God is so faithful! He not only gave us a ministry in the preteens, he gave Ralph answers to help (if not cure) his health issues, he gave us beautiful twins, (now 2 1/2 at this writing) Caleb and Hannah- and he has now allowed us to finally, after 9 years- put out this CD!

We were able, with the help of some marvelous musicians: Rich Evans, Angela Perry, Lydia McAnulty, Aaron and Zahra Belyea, Kamar Calixte, Jerry Maday, John Vicaire, Justin Oliver and Jamison Jones) the current PTB, to put on a wopper of a CD Release concert at Camp Laurel South for Preteen Camp this year!

We hope PTB- The Force inspires the next generation to seek his wonderful face and follow his loving commands! - And really enjoy their Christianity along the way! Rock on!!!!

THE LYRICS
In order of songs on the CD