Teen band Deceptively Innocent has been gaining attention for their charity work in raising funds for embattled musical education programs in Tucson.
“Think of us as VH1’s Save the Music on a local level” says lead singer, Brent Burdett (age 14). “Music is such a big part of our lives and keeps us out of trouble; we want to do everything we can to help encourage other kids to get involved in school music programs as alternative to drugs, gangs, and violence.”
Burdett’s band is a trio which includes Toby Chivers (age 13) and Daniel Blanchard (age 15) and has been playing together for about five years when they started as an elementary school talent show project.
Since then, they have played nearly a hundred gigs, many for charities such as school fundraisers at Collier Elementary, ACES, Magee Middle School, Tucson Public Library, U of A Festival of Books, and more.
Most recently, and independently of Sabino High School, they put together a fundraising event at KonaBeri, a northeast side frozen yogurt shop, to raise funding for the Sabino High School music program. The event drew in literally hundreds of local teens and subsequently hundreds of dollars for music education.
Ed Shapiro, owner of KonaBeri, will be presenting a check for the funds at the next performance of Deceptively Innocent this Saturday (June 11th, 5:30pm) where the kids will be featured on the main stage at Tucson’s Downtown Second Saturday’s event.
The band’s catchy original songs have become very popular with younger audiences; however their multitalented performances have a much broader appeal which clearly attributes to their local success.
“When our drummer left us we all decided that since we could all sing, play the drums, guitar, bass, keyboards and other instruments, that we would just rotate throughout our shows to make a more interesting live performance” says member Daniel Blanchard. “If we aren’t out rocking the stage, we’re in our studio writing new songs or recording.”
Deceptively Innocent’s music and performance dates can be found on their Facebook page at Facebook.com/deceptivelyinnocent or Reverbnation.com/deceptivelyinnocent.
