Georgetown is: 

Lois – Lead Vocals 
Jason – Keyboard and Vocals 
William – Guitar, Bass 
Allan – Drums, Vocals 
 

This is not a typical band story. 

The first time the members of Georgetown played together, they were in a church in Suriname, South America, and the youngest of the four, Jason, was three years old.  Throughout their early years in South America, they performed in Guyana, Venezuela, Suriname, Trinidad, and Barbados.     

The story of the Fiedtkou family is a fascinating one.  Born at Georgetown Hospital in Guyana, South America, these four siblings endured incredible hardships to simply make it to the United States.  Music was their ticket, and their sole means of survival.

      In 1980, Forbes Burnham became president of Guyana, and began to establish close ties with the Soviet Union and other communist countries.  He also gave the police unlimited power of search and seizure, and was widely accused of corruption and fraud.  These policies resulted in a mass exodus from Guyana.  Burnham was also known to take talented children away from their parents, and since he displayed a keen interest in the Fiedtkou children and their talent, their parents were justifiably fearful.  So, one dark night on the shores of Guyana, Allan Sr. and his family boarded a small boat bound for Suriname, not to see their home again for more than four years.  They were only allowed into Suriname because their grandfather was Dutch.  There they went to school for the next four years, attending classes taught in Dutch, and playing music, at one point performing for the President, and the Prime Minister. 

      When President Burnham died in 1985, the family moved back to Guyana, and performed for the new president.  At this performance was the Vice President, and Allan Sr. informed him of his desire to take his family to America.  The Vice President obtained the necessary visas to grant them entry to America, but they would have to arrange transportation themselves, a large concern as they didn’t have the money for tickets.  So, they went to Trinidad to raise money, but ended up in Barbados because the main record company in the Caribbean was located there.  The CEO of the record company paid for them to record an album, which was called The Musical Family.

      Still needing money for the journey to America, the family remained in Barbados, singing in churches for donations, and moving from place to place.  Finally, they raised enough money for the trip.  Though they had always planned to go to California, it was easier and cheaper to start in New York, as they had an uncle who lived in Brooklyn, the only person they knew in the US.  So the family flew to New York, and spent their first night in America sleeping in JFK Airport. 

      The Fiedtkou’s lived on their uncle’s floor in Brooklyn for some time, until a local church let them stay in one of it’s warehouses.  “I think there was sort of a shower there,” Allan says.  “The water wasn’t heated thought.”  Adds Lois, “We never had hot water in Guyana.  We used rain water, so it wasn’t a big deal.”  They stayed in the warehouse until a local woman asked them to move in with her in Queens. 

      The dream was still to go to California, so the Fiedtkou’s contacted a missionary group they had met in Barbados, who offered them a place to live temporarily.  With help from the woman they were staying with, they purchased bus tickets to California, and arrived in Los Angeles three days later. 

      The Fiedtkou’s lived with the missionary family until they found a two bedroom apartment, the family helping with the move in cost.  At this time a music producer friend of the missionaries took an interest in the kids’ talent, and offered Allan Sr. a contract for the kids only, which he refused.  They mostly got by from the charity of the different churches where they would sing.  Says Lois, “We never knew if we would be able to make the rent, and we never knew where we were going to get food.” 

      With the help of a church, the Fiedtkou’s moved into a house in Chino Hills, but they were soon forced to move out because they couldn’t pay the rent, due to the fact that they spent some of their money on a keyboard.  They slept in their car for some time after that, and charitable church people would let them bathe at their houses.  Sometimes, when they had a little bit of money, they would stay in cheap hotels., until they got a motorhome at a junkyard for a few hundred dollars.  After that, they found a house for a short time in Rialto, but it was such a dangerous gang area they were forced to leave and ended up staying at a large church in Norwalk where they were singing.  They lived in the Sunday school room, and cleared out on the weekends when there were church activities.

      After an altercation between the Pasteur and Allan Sr., the Fiedtkou’s had to move out of the church, though they were still allowed to use the facilities for a time.  Soon after, they were invited to sing at a church in Carpinteria, CA, where they met a nice couple who offered them a place in their three bedroom Santa Barbara home.  This couple had four children, so in one room there were seven kids.  They stayed there for several years in the most stable environment the Fiedtkou kids had ever experienced.  Lois graduated High School at this time.

      Things began looking up for the Fiedtkou’s.  They rented instruments and began singing at the farmer’s market and the mall in Santa Barbara, and acquired other gigs, eventually garnering some big name celebrity parties.  They gained a reputation as a band of the highest quality and enjoyed their first taste of success. 

      It was while playing one of these parties that the wife of billionaire businessman Adnan Khashoggi asked them to play his birthday party in Lake Tahoe.  There they made such an impression that they attracted the attention of billionaire casino/resort real estate developer Steve Wynn.  Wynn offered them a standing gig at the Mirage Resort in Las Vegas, which they accepted.

      When they returned to Santa Barbara, the band had some personal differences and stopped performing officially.  With their parents retired from the band, Lois, Jason, William, and Allan played together sporadically over the next couple of years, sometimes in random gigs, and sometimes under the name Unlabeled. 

      One night, Lois was having dinner at Jason’s house with their friend Tommy Flynn.  Jason was messing around on the piano, and Lois revealed a couple of song ideas she was working on.  Tommy happened to be listening in the next room and suggested some alternate lyrics and a different way of singing the song.  That night, Jason, Tommy, and Lois wrote their first song, Can’t Hear Your Words.  “It was sort of an accident,” says Jason.  “We’d joked with Tommy about writing songs, but I wasn’t sure we were ever going to do it.”  With Flynn collaborating and writing the lyrics, more songs soon followed and over the course of the next few weeks, they had enough material for an album.  They played the songs for William and Allan, who became excited and decided they wanted to record an album, which is in production at the moment.  Since this is the first original album that the siblings will release by themselves, they searched for a new name that would incorporate their family situation and South American roots.  One day over lunch, Tommy asked Jason what city they were born in, to which he replied, “Georgetown, Guyana.  We were all born at Georgetown hospital.”  And that’s how the name Georgetown came about.