Heather’s Headache putting on benefit concert to ease pain for kids
Drummer James Abbott was raised in Salt Lake City but found a career in Washington, D.C., as an equity analyst.
He moved back to Utah last summer to work in media relations at Zions Bank.
While in D.C., however, he formed a band called Heather’s Headache with some friends.
Lead singer Brandon Heine is a lobbyist for the telecommunications industry, and lead guitarist Jozsef Szamosfalvi is an independent international equity venture capitalist/project finance specialist.
Heather’s Headache, also featuring bassist Dave Meilstrup and keyboardist Mary Klapmust, who will sit in for full-time keyboardist Dan Monson, will reunite and play a benefit concert at the State Room for St. Jude Children’s Center Hospital. Opening the show will be Provo band The Vibrant Sound.
“We formed as a cover band,” Abbott said about Heather’s Headache. “The three of us had small children, and that was a connection for us. And we wanted to do something fun that was easy to do after the kids had gone to bed.
One of their first gigs was a charitable event that led to more gigs and attention.
The band, named in honor of Abbott’s long-suffering wife, was influenced by the likes of U2, Muse and Coldplay.
“We didn’t need the income to do the performances, but we enjoyed playing, and it was a unique way to give back to the community we were in,” Abbott said.
The band eventually began writing its own songs and self-released two CDs and garnered some awards in the D.C. area.
Abbott said the band would always play charity shows whenever it could.
“We had a couple of personal tragedies within the band that led us to want to contribute to children’s charities, to be specific.”
One tragedy was the death of Heine’s second child, who succumbed to sudden infant death syndrome; the other was Abbott’s son, who has had heart problems and spent the first four months of his life in an intensive care unit.
“Those experiences have opened our eyes to the need to help out these kids who are out there and dealt a difficult set of cards out of the gate. And the parents probably suffer on a different level, but very much emotionally so, and it seems the kids handle it better emotionally than the parents do.”
Abbott said the band didn’t choose St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital for the benefit, it chose them.
“My wife and I have sponsored (St. Jude’s) on a small scale over the years, and they approached me to see if I would raise money door-to-door, and I told them I’d rather raise money by doing a concert.”
By Scott Iwasaki
Deseret News
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