If you pass

be rocking.

Ultima Thule,

a progressive rock band and the brainchild of Fayetteville resident Bob

Hutson, will be performing a free concert. The band will be playing selections

from the album Formation Projeckt as well as a tribute to those progressive

rockers from Canada known as Rush.

Ultima Thule

was a city on the continent of Atlantis. It was where magicians and politicians

trained and was a gateway to Atlantis. The band was around over 20 years

ago and toured the Southeast in the early 1980s. Hutson went to on to

the business world and was vice president of a logistics company but rock

and roll never left his blood.

Over the past

few years, Hutson worked part-time on the album, Formation Projeckt, playing

all of the string instruments, including the six and seven string guitars

and all five string bass work. He wrote the lyrics with his wife, Colette,

and then had a drummer friend in New Orleans lay down the beats. The album

was originally going to be about the formation of the universe but Hutson

felt that the theme limited him lyrically so he opened it up a little

bit.

The rest of

Hutson's family is musical as well. His son, Robert, is a student at Georgia

Tech and has been playing guitar since the age of 13, while his daughter,

Bailee, is a freshman at Starr's Mill who plays flute and piano with the

symphonic band and the wind ensemble.

Formation Projeckt

takes on many themes including friendship, religion, current events, the

plight of whales and more. The music is complex and recording the album

too a lot of time.

"There

are a lot of complex chord structures in the music," said Hutson,

who also wanted onomatopoeia in the music, where the sound suggests the

meaning. This is very evident in the song "Plight of the Whales,"

which is an instrumental about whales being hunted. Hutson describes Ultima

Thule and his music as progressive rock.

"Progressive

rock is melodic art rock, like Dream Theater or Rush. It is more complicated

than the typical power chords that are heard in much of pop music today."

Hutson's background

is in classical and jazz music. He learned his trade at World of Strings

and Tulane University in New Orleans. Though this will be the first public

performance with his new bandmates, Union City's Charles Sanders on drums

and Michael Wilkes, a machinist for Delta, on bass, their extensive background

in music and dedication to the music has the band energized about their

future. Both Sanders and Wilkes have played their instruments for over

20 years and have been influenced by some of classic rock's biggest names.

Hutson found

his bandmates through the internet and the Georgia Music Industry Association.

There are several record companies interested in the band and marketing

them in Europe and Canada as well as in the U.S.

"Progressive

rock is huge in Europe," said Hutson, who says that record deals

are the furthest thing from his mind right now. "We are looking forward

to doing more shows in and around the Atlanta area and then maybe going

to the Northeast or Europe. We are also working on our second album and

will be playing a track from it at Saturday's show. It's called "High

and Dry" and was written by my wife. It is about the drought in Georgia."

Ultima Thule

promises an incredible live show. There will be some amazing technology

in the works at the show including guitar synthesizers and sequencers.

"The band

will sound better than the album," stated Hutson. "It will be

my first performance in about 15 years and right now we are all very excited."

Hutson has

certainly worked hard on this project. Not only did he write, produce

and perform on most of the instruments on the album but he financed the

album and is promoting it by himself. He even worked with Rightside Graphics

in Fayetteville on the album cover.

For those looking

to hear a little bit of Ultima Thule's "Formation Projeckt,"

visit www.cdbaby.com/ultimathule . The show will take place at 2

p.m. Saturday at the log Cabin in Fayetteville and is free.

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