The Story Continues—Jareth's POV

It was October 1991 and Beck, Mark, Dan, and I had been writing, rehearsing and searching for a new singer for HitnRun for a good 4 months at that point. The search had thus far been fruitless, but things were about to change.

At the time, we had been sharing our rehearsal space with another band. Apparently, a friend of theirs  visited one of their practices and found our flyer. That friend turned about to be Eric Montoya, a vocalist from a New Jersey-based band who was looking to make a change. Eric soon got word to us through a mutual friend that he was interested in learning more about HitnRun.

A few days later, I called Eric, and we discussed our musical interests and goals over the phone. He mentioned that he was currently digging Tyketto and their singer Danny Vaughn, whom I was vaguely familiar with and respected, and it turned out we were both big fans of Lynch Mob. We agreed to meet in person so I could share our current demo with him and discuss things further. That meeting went quite well, and we soon scheduled Eric for a rather unique audition.

Instead of jamming with the band, we decided to throw Eric into the fire by having him literally record vocals on that very same demo we gave him. The existing vocal was just a scratch track from yours truly, so we wanted to hear what our tunes would sound like with this guy singing on them.

I couldn't make it to the studio that night, so Beck attended the recording session and picked me up later to share the results of the recording session. To say Eric had passed with flying colors would be an understatement. I will never forget that night sitting in my brother's car listening to those recordings. Hearing Eric sing our power ballad "Forever" practically gave me chills. He had it all. Excellent pitch, rich tone, and just the right amount of rasp. I thought to myself that night, "Holy shit! We did it. We found our singer. We found THE singer we always envisioned for our band."

The next day I called Eric to tell him he had the gig. He was excited, but seemed a bit nervous about giving his notice to his current band. I told him it wasn't an option. We were the band for him, and he was the singer for us. It was destiny. His talent was being wasted in that other band.

Eric soon quit his NJ band and joined HitnRun. Our line-up was finally complete and the next chapter of our story was about to begin.