FORKS — Some Twilight fans rock.
Bands inspired by the Forks-based fable are popping up all over the nation, and three of them will be in town Saturday for the Twilight Symposium.
Their tunes, based on the enticing tale of forbidden love, will rock out at the “Forks Prom” planned for the end of the “Summer School in Forks” symposium at 8 p.m. Saturday at Forks High School.
Prom only tickets for those who don’t want to participate in the three days of classes are available for $50 each from http://litfanevents.org/summerinforks.
The symposium, which will focus on a literary evaluation of the series, is offering a special registration fee for Washington state residents — $300 for two people for the entire weekend.
Teachers in Washington may also receive continuing education credits, Ann-Laurel Nickel, the organizer of the symposium, said.
The Bella Cullen Project, Mitch Hansen Band and Bella Rocks! will all perform for the first time in Forks, the home of their inspiration at the symposium “prom.”
The Twilight series spins the story of the star-crossed lovers Bella Swan and Edward Cullen.
Bella — a graceless human girl — finds herself head over heels for the cryptic Edward, who she later discovers is a sparkly vampire.
To hear the bands speak, the story is music to their ears.
“The story is very fantasy oriented, but the love story is very much a real love story, and people can draw parallels in their own lives,” said Mitch Hansen, of the self-titled band which performs all Twilight-themed songs.
Hansen isn’t your typical Twi-hard.
The 28-year-old Atlanta man picked up the books at his “day job” at a bookstore.
“Not every book grabs my attention — especially novels,” he said.
“But this one really grabbed me.”
So when he was practicing a new guitar lick, his wife, Kim — who was equally enthralled with the series — suggested that he use Twilight-inspired lyrics for his new tune.
“Just for fun, I put it up on a MySpace music page, and people really responded positively to it,” he said.
So he wrote more. Eventually he had an entire album worth of songs.
“I made a little homemade CD in my master bedroom closet,” he said.
“I thought I’d order 100 or so and started to sell online.
“I was amazed, but people were buying it.”
Now Hansen has recorded the CD in a studio through Harper Music LLC in Las Vegas.
Though the lifelong musician had always dreamed of singing for audiences, he said he never imagined it would happen in this way.
“Music has always been a passion of mine, but it is such a saturated market that I never thought in a million years that I might make a CD,” he said.
“It has always been a dream of mine to travel around doing the music thing — it is a huge dream of mine.”
For more information on Hansen, visit www.themitchhansenbandblog.com.
Hansen will hold a CD signing in Port Angeles at Dazzled by Twilight, 135 E. First St., from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. Friday.
A similar tale unfolded for the 21-year-old Katie Parr of Bella Rocks!
The one-woman band began as just a song here and there until the demand for her album began to grow.
The media studies major at Northeastern Illinois University recorded her own music using techniques she learned in classes, she said.
“After I started reading Twilight, I knew that this was a story that was dying to be sung about,” she said.
She started her first album “Diary of a Forks Girl” about a year and a half ago, and her second “Nostalgia” was released last week.
“The first one I wrote as I read, and I called it that because it was really from Bella’s perspective,” Parr said.
“The second one I wrote looking back with nostalgia.”
At first she was resistant to make an appearance at the symposium, she said.
“When I was first contacted I was really flattered, but I hadn’t really told my family that I had a Twilight band, but I’m really glad that they were persistent, because I’m really excited about coming to Forks.”
She said the exposure she has gotten from her Myspace.com page and her shows around town is surprising.
“It is like a dream come true — I never thought that the music I was writing as a crazy Twilight fan girl would be heard in Forks, that I’d be standing in Forks one day singing my songs,” she said.
For more information on Parr, visit www.myspace.com/bellarocksmusic.
The same is true for the three teens in The Bella Cullen Project, Chandler Nash, one of the singers, said.
Ally Kiger and Tori Randall make up the rest of the trio, who formed the band in eighth grade.
“We were best friends in junior high, and Ally had gotten both Tori and I into the books, and since Tori had been a big fan of Wizard Rock, which is music inspired by the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, she suggested starting a Twilight-inspired band,” Nash said.
The three best friends were captivated by the books and agreed with Parr that there was something that needed to be sung about in the books, Nash said.
“There’s just something special about the series,” she said.
“As soon as you open the book, you’re just sucked into this world.
“You just get so wrapped up in the story and the characters and the impossible emotions that they feel, and you just can’t put the book down.
“Twilight has anything you could want in a great story.
“It’s got romance, action, horror, comedy, tragedy.
“It’s hard to not be inspired once you finish it.”
Nash said that while she hopes to pursue singing beyond the Twilight genre, Randall hopes to pursue acting and Kiger plans on being a pathologist.
For more information on the band, visit www.myspace.com/thebellacullenproject.
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
