Life started revolving around music early for brothers Danny and Ben Hance. While still in elementary school in southern Johnson County, older brother Danny was given a guitar and Ben a bass by their guitar-playing father. Before long, Ben and Danny, who were raised in a Seventh Day Adventist environment, switched instruments.
“Music is all I really care about,” said Ben, who dropped out of Grandview High School to focus on writing and playing music. Now both in their late 20s, the Hances have expanded musically and are devoting themselves to a new project, Secret Ghost Champion.
As teens, the brothers had formed Paper Lantern, a rocking catchall band that eventually evolved into Wolvaire. In addition to writing his share for Wolvaire, Ben also played drums in a cover outfit named Southern Exposure with his father and stepfather and started writing his own songs. “I used to record songs on my own to practice writing, recording, and playing,” the younger Hance said. “I was thinking about making cohesive songs on my own. … The songs had a better format than [Wolvaire’s]. When everyone is doing his own thing, it can get progressive and busy.”
Ben set up an eight-track recorder in his bedroom and got to work playing everything but bass for the Southern-psychedelic songs he had penned. Drumming for a number of local outfits, including Scott Copeland and Big Brown Shoes, helped Ben translate his guitar ideas into full-blown songs, he said. Writing on his own was a much different and more rewarding experience for him. “You keep it simple because you don’t want to take things away,” he said. Inspired by Ben’s handiwork, Ben and Danny splintered from Wolvaire and formed Secret Ghost Champion.
The band has allowed Ben to delve into his other life obsession: spirituality. “I worship truth,” he said, “And it’s hard to figure out what’s true.”
No longer a member of the Seventh Day Adventists or any organized religion, Ben, who has the Fourth Commandment (“Remember the Sabbath day”) tattooed on his forearm, said that thoughts about religion consume him daily. “Your world is opened up to another world which is not real, at least not right now,” he said. “It’s hard,” because finding truth is so important to him.
The instrumentation on Power Mouth — Secret Ghost Champion’s 2008 debut, a collection of Ben and Danny’s home recordings with guitarist Roby Scott and multi-instrumentalist David Vaughn — is sparse and plaintive, with Ben and Danny sharing vocal duties. None of the band members overplays, leaving the brothers ample space for their reverb-laden harmonies. Ben uses his classic rock guitar tones to accent the points about life he makes through his lyrics.
Ben isn’t the band’s sole songwriter, however. Danny wrote “Blood Monkeys,” the band’s favorite song and a manifestation of Danny’s own struggles with religion. “Everyone’s opinion is as good as anyone else’s,” he said, “as long as it involves basic humanity and morality. … Monkeys don’t kill members of their own tribe.”
Ben wrote most of the parts for Power Mouth, though in a live setting every member, including drummer Mike McGill, is free to play what he feels.
Secret Ghost Champion is in the middle of an unwanted break — guitarist Scott recently injured his hand. They’re still rehearsing, though, at the usual place: the house Danny shares with his wife and three children in Midlothian. Harmony comes naturally in those sessions. “We haven’t fought since we were children,” Danny said.
Secret Ghost Champion also is recording two new discs penned mostly by Ben, who recently acquired a high-tech digital recording machine. “I’ve learned that my initial idea is usually the best one,” he said. “It’s a complete image of what I want to do. … It’s related to my train of thought, and if I don’t blast it out, it’s not going to happen the right way.”
Ben isn’t so much a control freak as a pure musician who knows his sound. He prefers self-producing because he hasn’t found anyone who understands his aural visions. As far as the business aspect of the band goes, Danny simply would like to earn enough money through the band to quit his day job at a pipe factory. Ben’s aspirations are equally realistic. “Success is relative,” he said. “I feel like I’ve already achieved it.” l
