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The Journal Gazette:
Young love, pain find a voice.

Listen to the acoustic band The Dream and The Struggle and you'll have to keep reminding yourself that half of the pop duo is only 13 years old. Their music - a collection of deceptively simple and earnest ruminations of love and life, written with a deft ear for melody and performed with a first-steps kind of charm - are filled with the passion, yearning and intensity you'd expect from someone world-weary, someone who has seen much more than just the halls of Woodlan Junior Senior High School.

"People always ask, you're only 14, how do you write all this stuff about relationships?" keyboardist and vocalist Quinn Wentz says.
"Now that I think about it," guitarist Ben Dehr, 16, says. "I want to ask you that question, too."
Wentz and Dehr, both members of the Woodlan Marching Band, began performing together three years ago in Redemption, a nine-piece praise band that performed regularly at their church. But it wasn't until April of this year that the two formed their own band.
"People are always asking us if we're a Christian band," Wentz says, "because we're really positive, and we don't write bad lyrics. We're both Christians, but we don't tell people what they should believe. Some of our songs have a Christian background and a positive message, but most of them are just about what it's like to live life as a Christian."
The duo's first album, "Notebooks and Fireworks," casts Wentz's earnest vocal delivery as its focus, backed by eight-bit embellishments, harmonies, modern beats, delicate and minimalist piano and Dehr's intimate and, at times, surprisingly accomplished and driving guitar. (He's been playing for only about three years, he says.)
"The whole point of the album was to show people what we really sound like," Wentz says. "Our biggest fear at our first show was that people weren't going to take us seriously. But these are really complex songs, too."
Lyrically, the album explores themes of longing and confusion, the two emotions of everyone's first forays into honest romance. Much of the inspiration for Wentz's lyrics comes from watching his four older siblings negotiate their own relationships, from break-ups to new love, he says.
"Something is always going on at my house," he says. "It's never boring. So, when I write, I try to incorporate things I know, the things I've seen my siblings go through."
"And I'm just starting to write songs," Dehr says. "I'm in a relationship now, so I get a lot of inspiration from that."
Although The Dream and The Struggle is new to the local music scene - performing sporadically at parties and coffee shops - the two see longevity in their musical partnership, Wentz says.
"We never talk about the future," he says. "This is something we like to do. And we're both lucky to work so well together. We're not just in a band, we're friends. Our plan is to keep doing what we're doing - explore every corner of music - and just keep getting better and better."
-The Journal Gazette

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