Dereen Shirnekhi Photos
Wally's Teo Hernandez, Lucas Hernandez, and Alex Blair perform at WNHH FM.
“Everything’s meant to be broken /
Everything’s meant to pass …”
Alex Blair wrote those words back in junior high or high school; he’s not sure of the exact year, but he knows his heart was broken.
A decade or so later, he was singing those words with brothers Teo and Lucas Hernandez, sliding into pitch-perfect harmony they’ve honed since those school days.
After singing the chorus to the song, called “Hiding Behind The Moon,” Blair, on his Ovation guitar, and Teo, on his Martin, added a newfound twist: a chromatic descent influenced by Blair’s newfound interest in Bossa Nova music.
Blair and the Hernandez brothers form the core of Wally, a band they formed while growing up together in Hamden after they met in the Trinity Church boys’ choir. They play what they describe as “dream-pop indie rock,” buttressed by the intuitive harmonization born from growing up together and spending countless formative hours melding their voices.
At the ages of 24, 25, and 26, they already have enough original material to have a backlog of songs like “Hiding The Moon” that they can “rediscover” years later and season with new flavors.
The trio were performing “Hiding Behind The Moon” during a live performance on the latest episode of WNHH FM’s “Acoustic Thursday” tiniest-of-all-tiny-desks program. (Click on the video above in the story to watch the full episode.)
They drew on their transportive vocal harmonies to brush off a rendition of Neil Young’s 1970 “Tell Me Why.” Then, after “Hiding Behind the Moon,” they performed two new songs, one by Teo that to date lacks a name (with the chorus proclaiming “I laughed so hard my head fell off / ‘Cause I played this song / And you just mimed my part.”)
To date, Wally has released two EPs and a half dozen singles. (Find them here.) You can catch a six-member version of the band Saturday night at Tolland’s Knowhere; then the three-person acoustic version next Thursday at Witch Bitch Thrift on Whitney Avenue.
You can also catch the Hernandez brothers at Best Video, where, among other staff duties, Teo hosts karaoke night. He makes sure to catch your name.
Previous “Acoustic Thursday @ Studio 51” performances:
• Ceschi
• Sketch Tha Cataclysm
• MJ Bones
• Johnathan Moore
• Charlie Widmer
• Sam Carlson
Wally’s “Acoustic Thursday” set list:
• Tell Me Why (0:30)
• Hiding From The Moon
• (Unnamed)
• Golden