Hickam Confidently Concludes Crater Contest

July 11, 2012 - PRLog -- Homer Hickam, whose writing career took off like a rocket with his runaway New York Times #1 best seller Rocket Boys (which became the hit film October Sky), is helping give a Huntington West Virginia based indie band the chance to reach for the stars.
“Ancient of Dayz” entered an on-line contest to record a song with lyrics from Hickam’s new book “Crater”.  The band recorded the song and produced an elaborate music video with computer-generated graphics as their entry and uploaded it into cyberspace. Their guitar and graphics laden version of “Moon Dust Girl” received thousand of on-line votes via social media voting website www.LoadNVote.com and scored a big thumbs up from contest judges, including music and radio industry execs and Hickam himself.  You can hear the Ancient of Dayz Moon Dust Girl song and see the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwyuAL_-TW8&feature=channel&list=UL



As the winners, the band will receive a publicity push from Hickam and his PR, Media and Marketing firm, Washington DC based “Allen Media Strategies”, a one-on-one consultation from the management team of America’s Got Talent winner Landau Eugene Murphy Jr., the chance to meet with Hickam at the “Rocket Boys Festival” in Beckley in October, a personalized set of Hickam’s novels and personal thanks from the best selling author.
 
“We thought all the entrants displayed a lot of talent and we are thoroughly grateful each decided to enter.  With that said, the winner of our contest, after due deliberation, was Ancient of Dayz.  We thought the music was great, and the graphics were a fantastic touch!” said Hickam, from his writing studio in Huntsville Alabama near the Marshall Space Flight Center, aka Rocket City USA.  Hickam is also sending the other top four on-line vote getters prize packages as well.

Ancient of Dayz members include Chris Carrere on guitar, Chad Fowler and Lisa Brogan on vocals, Randy Bowen on drums and Jeremy Bowen on bass.  Using digital editing and the magic of file sharing, the members, who live in several different states, contributed their individual parts via email to make the song complete.

“We are honored with the win and had a great time recording “Moon Dust Girl”. We are all into sci-fi and the space program so this was right up our alley. Using “Crater” as a reference, we endeavored to create a song that would harmonize with the book, fresh, futuristic, interesting”, said Carrere, the band’s spokesperson.

As for the Moon Dust Girl song itself, the indie band was almost finished recording their second album when they decided to enter the contest. Carrere threw together a quick demo and sent it to the other band members in Virginia, Ohio and West Virginia via email. The rest of the band was enthusiastic and quickly recorded their tracks, which Carrere assembled in his home studio in Huntington. To pay respect to the history of the Space Program, the band added the moon landing audio included in the song.

For the video, Carrere spent over fifteen hours straight on the CGI. All the objects and scenes were scratch built. He spent two evenings finding and extracting the astronaut audio online. “When I put it all together I was amazed that the total length of clips that I cobbled together worked out almost exactly to the length of the audio”, said Carrere.  

The members of Ancient of Dayz say that it’s a real treat to win.  “Everyone in the band has a great feeling of satisfaction, as we had made this song and contest our #1 goal.  It is an honor to be associated with Homer Hickam in some way. It gave us an opportunity to break new ground as a band…who knew that ground would be on the Moon?”

Ancient of Dayz debut album is available on line at over forty digital distribution sites, including CD Baby, ITunes and Amazon.com at the following links:

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/ancientofdayz2

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/i-know-somebody/id532865...

http://www.amazon.com/AoD2/dp/B008B584DQ/ref=sr_shvl_albu...

Homer Hickam’s “Crater” is about a 16-year old boy, Crater Trueblood, who lives in a rough frontier-mining town on the Moon.  Crater is a Helium-3 miner who also has a band that plays at the local bar and grill.  In the novel, he sings a song titled "Moon Dust Girl" to a very special young woman.   Hickam includes the lyrics to "Moon Dust Girl" in the novel and readers have been wondering what the song would actually sound like.  
Hickam encouraged the bands and performers who entered to really stretch out creatively. "The idea was for the artists to use the lyrics for Moon Dust Girl in the book as a starting point," Hickam says.  "They could add any chorus they wanted and tweak the words any way it helped them musically.  But context is everything so reading the book and entering Crater's world was a good idea for entrants."
This isn't the first time Hickam has combined his writing talents with music.  He's completed several successful co-promotional music campaigns with platinum selling and Grammy Award winning artists Jim Brickman and Kathy Mattea.  He's also the co-writer of Rocket Boys The Musical, a Broadway bound musical based on his famous memoir.
 
Ancient of Dayz can be found online at www.ancientofdayz.net.  Find out more about “Crater” at www.helium3novels.com and www.homerhickam.com.  For tickets and more information about Rocket Boys The Musical August 1st-16th at Grandview State Park, visit www.rocketboysthemusical.com.  More information on the Rocket Boys Festival October 5th-7th in Beckley WV is available at www.rocketboysfestival.com.