ONE of Guyana’s longest existing musical bands, the Heatwave Band, has released their first Soca single named ‘De Stage’ and it is definitely creating a hype all over the media, as we are drawing near to the Mashramani season.

In one month, Heatwave will be celebrating their 11th anniversary and this new release is a collaborative effort by all the members of the band.
Since their existence, they were known to be a backing band who would have backed several top ranking artistes such as Alkaline, Tommy Lee, Glen Washington, Duane Stephenson, just to name a few. They later recruited Guyanese singers who made them not just a backing band, but a performance band.

However, though these individual artistes would have had their own songs which they perform, the band never worked on producing their own music. They would most times perform covers along with the artistes’ individual releases.

This 11th-anniversary celebration is the mark of a new direction in which the band is taking. Road Manager, Chenille Bowen told the Pepperpot Magazine that they needed to be more than a cover band to be marketable in the Caribbean and internally, and this year the Band’s focus is to reach further heights in the music industry.

“This release was a dream I had. I woke up with the melody in my head and I just put some words to it and sent it to the band members to add their pieces. And with everyone’s input, we came up with this energetic song produced by Devon Roberts in the Vizion Sounds Studio,” Bowen said.

When asked about details of the song and the inspiration behind the lyrics, she said that the whole idea is to set a new trend of having Guyanese artistes being the central focus of local shows and also shows overseas.

“The song is a proclamation more or less, that we are taking control of whichever stage we are performing on and be in command of our audience behaviour when we perform… Most times the international artistes take the front stage but the Heatwave Band is about to change that in 2019. We are declaring, through our song ‘De Stage’ that Guyanese artistes are taking over our local stages here in Guyana and overseas.”

The band’s first performance of their new single will be at the Soca Monarch Competitions slated for later this month and into February.
Bowen said the band will continue to produce and release more music and they are currently working on an EP that will be released later in the year.
“Once everything goes as planned, we will have an album of 13 songs by May for the Guyana Carnival season,” she unveiled.

The members of Heatwave Band are Earl Bishop -music Director and keyboardist; Joshua Dennis – drummer and keyboardist, Anthony Johnson – Band leader and Bass guitarist; Selector Andre – sampleman; Ian Gonsalves – rhythm Guitarist; and Devon Roberts – engineer, drummer and producer. The singers in the band are Mark Batson, Calvin Burnett, Kady Kish and Tennicia De Freitas.