A nine year labor of love has produced a rockin' rendition of nine on fire Christian pop-rock originals for kids! Get inspired to walk with God. Get challenged. Find answers. Sing, Rock, Dance- Live the Dream! Life to the full! Dynamic Lead Singer/ Guitarist and Song writer Julie Kinscheck teams up with the masterfully creative Keyboard playing, sequencing composer Ralph Kinscheck (yes- they are married!) and a host of talented musicians (PTB) to make The Force a reality. Youth Workers: Are you looking for resources to fire up your youth ministries? The Force CD and Lyrics could be helpful tools; Bible studies for some songs are also available. All of the songs on this CD were written with the challenges and joys of the young or would be Christian in mind. The lyrics tackle struggles with drugs and alcohol, girls/boys, school violence, insecurities about your body, feeling unloved or not listened to, and the existence of God. The words point the listener toward God first, then toward spiritual heroes such as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and of course, Jesus. With a spirit of fun, the songs instill the courage to stand up for your convictions. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us to be salt and light to the world. All the songs on this CD are meant to inspire and challenge youth, especially preteens—those on the cusp of making their personal decision for Christ—to make godly decisions in real life situations. The Story of The Force CD PTB has taken many shapes, and had many members over the years- but it all started with Ralph and Julie Kinscheck and a mission! We started this labor of love in 1997 When we wrote "Hope for the Children" - originally for Hope World Wide- Later we changed some words and had our church preteens sing it at camp at the talent show. 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 the 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 wrote "POWER OF GOD (Deep Impact)" 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. We had worked on "The Force" with 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 around 2001/2? Carl Alleyne, our own Christian Will Smith, did a fantastic job on the rap on the CD- Kamar Calixte worked it live at CD release concert in 2006. 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 (daughter of singer, dancer, percussionist Jamie Galarza) and Raissa Macklin (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 spiritual take off on the Tom Cruise movie, Mission Impossible. 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 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... fixing and adding guitar parts by the great Jim Peterson turned out to be the biggest head ache of the CD. But it rocks! 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! 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. 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. 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" for the theme song, it was now called "Battle for Your Soul (Is it In You). As for the recording of "Battle For Your Soul (Is It In You?)" Think Pat Benatar with a twist of Bonnie Raitt. The Keys might make you think more of Emerson, Lake and Palmer, though! 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". "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. "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. This is likely the most adult song of the group. 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 in 2006! 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!!!!