By ROBERT LINNEHAN
Almost 16 years after singing his final song with the Moorestown High School Madrigals, Scott Terry and his band Red Wanting Blue took the stage for their first national television performance on the Late Night Show with David Letterman.
The band capped the Wednesday, July 18, show, playing its highest profile gig to date so far.
The nationally recognized band was founded in 2000 by Moorestown Township High School alum Scott Terry, who graduated with the class of 1994. He met his fellow band mates while studying theater performance at the University of Ohio.
He hooked up with Eric Hall Jr., Dean Anshutz, Mark McCullough and Greg Rahm, successfully reforming the band in Columbus after graduating from the university. Red Wanting Blue quickly became a successful touring band, Terry said, performing 150 national shows a year.
“We’ve averaged about 150 shows a year since 2000. We are a full-on grass-roots band. We’re a complete do it yourself band. I wasn’t really interested in signing with a label that wanted to just own us and all of our recordings,” he said. “I wasn’t really looking for the types of deals that most bands were getting. We figured we could do it ourselves, and we did for more than 10 years.”
Terry is a native of Moorestown, graduating from South Valley Elementary School, then William Allen Middle School, and then Moorestown Township High School. During his time at the high school, Terry performed with the Madrigals, the school choir and the church choir at First Presbyterian.
He credited Jeanne Haynes, his old music teacher from the high school, for giving him a successful voice and music foundation.
The band has put out six independent albums, selling them through its website and independent record stores throughout the country. The band also put the albums up on iTunes, which have sold fairly well, Terry said.
However, in 2010, the band was approached by Fantastic Records and figured they could grow with the young label, signing on for their first major deal.
They put out their first album with Fantastic Records this past January, “From the Vanishing Point,” which can be purchased at their website www.redwantingblue.com.
Using its new connections into the music world, Red Wanting Blue is looking at a national tour beginning this fall and a possible Canadian tour coming after that as well, Terry said.
They were able to procure a spot on Late Night through a bit of luck.
Terry said that while playing a show in New York City in the mid-2000s, the current music director of Late Night was in the audience of one of their sets and enjoyed their show. When Fanatic Records contacted the various late-night shows on television recently to gauge interest in the band playing their productions, the music director remembered their New York City show and invited them to play.
“We kicked ourselves around the country under the radar for such a long time. When Cheryl, the music director for the Late Show, gets a phone call from our label and remembers our band and remembers that she is a fan, that’s just great,” he said. “I am happy to say that this is a band that is sought after to play across the country. Usually Letterman is pretty good about not allowing junk on the show. By comparing us to what else has been on the show, I would say we’re doing pretty well.”
As a self-described “rock and roll” band, Terry said he compares their sound to the all-American rock and roll groups like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band.
There are so few “true” rock and roll bands now, Terry said he’s proud of the roots that the band has followed and where they’re going in the future.
Playing on Letterman’s show doesn’t hurt either, he said with a chuckle.
Want to know more about the band and buy one of their albums? Check out their website at www.redwantingblue.com or search for them on iTunes.
