The Departure: Departing on a Musical Adventure

There isn't any sibling rivalry for Utah brother and sister Maci and Ryan DeBlanc, who together created The Departure. Or is there?

""I'd say we get influences from a lot of different places - Ryan and I bring different things to the table. Through a lot of fighting and collaboration we come together and create music we both believe in," Maci says.

"I wish people wouldn't spend so much time looking at the image of an artist. I think music was better before the internet, before it was so visual; people look a lot at an image instead of listening to the music. It would be better if people could just appreciate the music. I think to be honest. We are the only teenage brother/sister duo in the industry that takes influences from all over the place and writes all of our own music. No one else writes for us; this is how it will always be."

Ryan added, ""We fight when we write. We tell each other what to do. It starts from an idea, and we branch off of that. We are backing away from what people expect from a teenage band. We're trying to bring it back to being real. People feel real, complex emotions, and we try to reflect that through our music. It is how we express ourselves. We aren't' touchy feely people - so this is the way we communicate."

"I met my idols - the guys from Silverstein. It was very cool because they were super nice guys, super down to earth. And the concert was killer too. I grew up listening to hard core music like punk and metal. That's when I started taking guitar lessons and started to play. My favorite bands took influences from all over, so I started studying and playing jazz, classical guitar, and straight up rock too. I'm not the type of person that would be happy with a desk job. This is our dream, and we are doing it," Ryan says.

"We've both been through hard times, and music has helped us get through that. We want our sound, our music to do that for other people. Our music can come from a dark place, but it can be comforting to hear that sound, and connect to it-so they know they are not alone."

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