Meet local teen band ‘Heroes Turn Human’

The Phoenix Theater in Petaluma, the DNA Lounge in San Francisco, the Sonoma County Fair: these are just a few venues a local band named Heroes Turn Human has rocked. Oh, and they’re all teens.

Back in 2012, Heroes Turn Human won the Sonoma County Battle of the Bands as the youngest band at the competition. The band features local teens Ryan Abshear on guitar and vocals, Ben Koler on bass, Aaron Marcus-Willers on lead guitar and back-up vocals and Tyler Meloan on drums.

Tyler’s dad, Steven Meloan, has acted as their de facto manager since they started, getting them gigs throughout their young career. Last weekend, they even performed at the Vintage Festival.

Right now, however, they are down a member, and are performing as a trio. Two members, Koler and Abshear graduated high school this past year and are starting their first year of college. Koler started attending Santa Rosa Junior College this fall, while Abshear moved to Washington to attend Gonzaga University.

Abshear acted as the band’s frontman throughout their years together; this weekend, Marcus-Willers will be taking up that mantle, on lead vocals and guitar.

“We’re excited to see how it turns out, but we’re kinda sad without Ryan performing,” Marcus-Willers said

After this performance, the band said they will be taking a break from performing, instead taking time to record new material while Tyler and Ben focus on finishing their senior year of high school.

“We’ve progressed a lot and changed the style of music we listen to and play,” Tyler said. “Now, it’s classic rock. All we’ve released so far is pop/punk and alternative.”

The band has two EPs available on iTunes, Google and Spotify; each four songs long. The first, released in 2014 is called “Set Sail for Yesterday,” the second, released last year is titled “Introspect.”

The band got their name from a song called “Hoodie Weather” by the Wonder Years, a pop-punk banda and one of their early influences.

Since their style has changed as they’ve grown, their Vintage Festival setlist was mostly classic rock covers.

“We’re moving in a new direction completely, with more classic rock influences,” Tyler said. “I feel like our music interests have just come full-circle from when we were young.”

The band agrees their most memorable experience performing was from 2012’s Battle of the Bands at the Sonoma County Fair.

“It was a little bit intimidating because we were the youngest there, by far.” Tyler said. “We thought it’d be fun to play, and thought at best we’d get third place.”

For Marcus-Willers, another memorable show was their performance at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco this past summer.

“We’ve been there to watch bands that we liked, and it was fun to play on the same stage,” he said.

This coming year they will hopefully be recording and releasing new songs to reflect their change in style.

“We’re gonna just try to write with just the three of us now,” Marcus-Willers said.

The members all say they’ll be lifelong friends, however, when the summer comes next year, “it will probably be it for the band.”

After graduating from high school, Tyler says he wants to explore a career in the music industry. Aaron, on the other hand, will be pursuing his dream of becoming a park ranger after studying environmental science in college.

For more info on the band, visit facebook.com/heroesturnhumanband or contact Steve Meloan at meloan@sbcglobal.net.