Kelsy Rene Devereux was born in New Orleans, Lousiana on February 14th. He was born to a fairly unremarkable family and lived a fairly unremarkable childhood. Like most little boys he had a penchant for running around and causing mischief, though it was never intentional. They had a hard time keeping him in school at first because he was the type of boy to get distracted by little things on the walk there and because of this he never quite made it, or at least never made it on time. On more than one occasion he ended up being brought home by the police after his mother panicked and called them when the school called her to notify of her of his unexplained absence. But for the most part, aside from a little restless wandering, Kelsy managed to keep himself from getting into too much trouble. Kelsy's love for music started around the time that he started skipping school. Walking through the city on his way to school he often had a lot of trouble keeping his focus on anything for too long. All the street vendors and musicians playing as he walked by tended to be overwhelming to him. He'd stand on the sidewalk and listen to musicians play all day if he could. When he was old enough he asked for a guitar for Christmas and he started teaching himself how to play. It took a while for him to be good enough and to be brave enough to start playing in front of other people.

At fifteen, too broke to afford a second guitar, Kelsy's mother talked him into getting an after school job so he could save the money to buy what he wanted. An electric guitar and an amp, something with which he could make more noise and do new and interesting things. He applied at all the normal places. Fast food restaurants and as a bus boy in a bunch of sit down restaurants, but when he passed by Birmingham Black Magic and Guitars he knew that was where he had to work. Named after the owner's hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, the little occult music shop was a one of a kind store. Patrons shopped there for all of their guitar and magic needs. From guitar strings and picks to candles and ouija boards, Birmingham had it all. Once he managed to get himself hired on, Kelsy met the boy who was going to help change his life. Harvey. Harvey Mulligan was a kid from school that he hadn't ever really had the chance to get to know but they hit it off the second they started working together. The job was really a fairly lazy job. The two boys spent most of their shifts bantering back and forth about guitars because really they knew more about those than they did about black magic and hoodoo. Sure, they could sell candles and occult paraphernalia but their real love was centered on music.

All through their junior and senior years of high school the boys kicked around the idea of starting a band. They'd write songs here or there and just play a little. It wasn't until they were both coming up on graduation that they started getting serious about it. In May of 2005 the Birmingham Audio Network was formed. BAN as they so lovingly called it. And because neither Harvey nor Kelsy had any aspiration to go to college they had all the time in the world to get the band on it's feet. The pair had been saving their pay checks week to week, and after school ended that May they went in together to rent a small house. 716 Clover street, owned by Kelsy's parents, was rented at a very affordable price and quickly became the home base for anything and everything that was BAN. Once settled in the small home, Kelsy and Harvey put all of their attention on the band. Writing music for the album, finding members to fill out the rest of the positions. However, it became apparently rather quickly that they functioned best as a two piece. Harvey on the drums and Kelsy on guitar and vocals. There wasn't a single person they found that fit with their sound and in the end that suited Kelsy just fine because it meant there was only one person to argue with him about the lyrics and everything else that came with writing their album. They spent all of their time at the tiny house on Clover street, working on writing what they thought was their ticket to a record label. They ate there, slept there, and wrote there until they were finally forced to leave.

In August of 2005, Kelsy and Harvey were forced to leave Clover street behind in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Ultimately, Harvey's decision to evacuate when they did saved their lives, but Kelsy griped the whole way. A last minute scramble to collect all of their writing saw them running out of the house with little other than their notebooks shoved haphazardly into bags padded by a few changes of clothes. Kelsy and Harvey were among the last of the arrivals at the Superdome but they didn't arrive unscathed. When it was safe to leave the Superdome Kelsy was intent on going back to see the damage done to their house, but Harvey convinced him not to. Instead the pair headed off to seek refuge with friends and family in Key West. The hurricane put a lot of Kelsy's dreams and aspirations on the back burner. He still had all of the music he had managed to save, but without his guitars, and without any money, he had to start from scratch. He's spent the last four years trying to keep a job, and trying to get his life back on track.

There were times when procrastination was seemed less dire than this. No matter how stressful putting off writing a six page essay until two am the morning it was due might have seemed, it was certainly not life or death. And maybe he got off a little on the rush of adrenaline that came as his fingers clacked against the keys. And maybe he did it because he enjoyed how good it felt to finish it and turn it in. To turn around and say, I cranked that bitch out in two hours with just half an hour to spare before school started. The panic was there but it was never so overwhelming that he couldn’t function. What was the worst that could happen anyway? A docked grade because the paper was late? A frown on the face of the teacher as he walked into the class room empty handed with some lame excuse. Blaming this or that instead of owning up to the fact that instead of writing the paper a week in advance he kept putting it off in favor of playing guitar with Harvey, or going with him to check out that new band at the blues club down the street.

Tonight, however, procrastination was more than dire. Bordering on life and death as he scrambled around the small house on 716 Clover. Kelsy had never been the most organized person but when it came to his music he liked it a certain way. And cramming loose leaf sheets of paper into notebooks and shoving them into his backpack had never been the way he planned on keeping the album he was writing. So much was riding on this, he thought, as he haphazardly stuffed the lyrics to songs into the spiral bound notebook that had seen so much travel that year that it was frayed at the edges. Their album could make or break them and he didn’t want to be one of those bands that never quite made it because the their debut album was mediocre at best. Kelsy didn’t want to be mediocre. Which was why he had put off evacuation until the last fucking minute. When he was in the groove he was in the groove and when they started evacuating his block he simply refused to leave his house behind until he had finished the song he was writing. This was made all the more difficult by the impending doom hovering over them as the weather grew increasingly worse. Made all the more difficult by the fact that he wasn’t even risking his own neck for this, but Harvey’s as well.

When it became clear that he had no choice but to pack up and go, or stay and die, he decided they better get the hell out of dodge. Which left them with a last minute scramble to get all of the work they had done on the album so far, to protect it as much as they could, and to get out of the house while it was still standing. Once he had the last bit of paper he gave one more sweep around the house, trying to find just anything that he could. In Harvey’s room he had made a grab for the framed picture of his mother, the one he knew the boy would miss if the house was gone when they came back, and he wrapped it into his t-shirt from the Zoso concert he had taken Harvey to see on his fifteenth birthday. It had been the closest thing he could do to taking him to a real live zeppelin show at the time. Of course it wasn’t the same, but it had been fun. Now that was all he could think about as he held the picture in his hand, he was about to duck into his room to grab the stuffed bear he had had for as long as he could remember when he heard Harvey yell from down the hall that they needed to go. Now. Instead of going back to get it he just jogged down the hall where he put the picture down on the table and stopped to tug on his shoes. Then he was running out to the front door. Okay. They were going. Now.

The door ripped clean off of the hinges and the irony was not lost on him. If the wind hadn't been threatening to uproot the tree in the front yard he might have taken a moment to reflect upon the doorless house and how now it was the perfect domicile. No, there was no time for reflection. Only time to tuck his head down and lift his arm up as some sort of shield for his face as he made his way as quickly as possible down the brick path towards the truck that was waiting. In typical Kelsy fashion he had put this off until the very last second and if it weren't for Harvey he would have allowed himself to be taken down with the house anyway. Halfway to the van he remembered the picture. The frame that he had wrapped up in a t-shirt, tucked away with such great care, and that was still sitting on the table just inside front door frame. The people in the truck were waving frantically to him but he turned back and ran to the door, stopping just long enough to grab the picture and tuck it into the completely soaked through backpack. Of all the belongings in the house the only one he went back for didn't even technically belong to him. Yes, he and Harvey shared nearly everything, but the photo was of the other boy's mother. One thing that Kelsy knew he could not, and would not want to live without. There wasn't anything in the house as important as that, he thought, not even the music, which he had put in his bag before he left. The music was what Kelsy would give his life for. What he treasured most. Words written on paper, words that would be gone if he lost the notebooks. Yes, he could remember some of them. He could piece the songs back together like a puzzle, but pieces would be missing. It wouldn't be the same.

By the time he finally made it to the van, Kelsy was certain that there would be harsh words waiting for them. Luckily, the rain was so heavy and the wind was blowing so hard that there wasn't time for Harvey to tell him how stupid he was for going back, or how stupid he was for making them wait so long in the first place. Their eyes met, only for a moment but the moment was long enough. His own gaze was apologetic, enough I'm sorrys to last a lifetime. The sound of metal on metal tore his attention from Harvey and he turned to see the street sign at the end of the block being pulled off of the metal post. There was no time to jump or duck. Instead there was only time to shove Harvey out of the path of the street sign that had become a projectile in the wind. Harvey went backwards into the van, falling through the open panel door and onto his back and Kelsy went down. Everything happened so fast that he hardly had time to feel the pain of the connection. Metal to skin and bone. The force of it knocked his glasses clean off and his hands came up to his face, both pressing tightly over his eyes and his forehead. Before he had a chance to work out in his mind what was going on he felt hands under his arms, hauling him up off of the street and into the van. The panel slid shut and the roaring sound of rain dimmed to a softer beat. Kelsy's heart was racing so hard he could barely hear anything else and he kept his hands were they were. The sound of his own heart was quickly drown out by the rush of blood in his head and the aching throb beneath the palms of his hands. The sign had hit him, he was certain of it now. All he could think about in that moment was that this was the way their band was going to end. The storm would wash them away and no one would ever get to hear their vision.

facts

• Kelsy Rene Devereux; born Feb 14; 21 years old
• Born and raised in New Orleans, Lousiana
• Aspires to be a musician in spite of all of the setbacks in his life
• Currently resides in Key West, Florida, though he plans on touring soon
• Isn't all that well acquainted with one side of his family
• Lived through hurricane Katrina, but lost nearly everything in the storm