Around Hear

Contrary to what was printed in this column a few weeks back, Shallow still exists. According to singer Julie Shields, if and when the band does decide to end it all, she'll be the first to tell you. "We wanted to leave that opportunity (to play together again) open," says Shields. "Ryan (Newton, guitar) is out in California for a while trying to figure some things out. We still talk and write stuff, and we've never, ever said we're not going to play together again. It's just that right now, the time is not right."

Too bad for fans of the band. Although they haven't been on stage, the Shieldses (Julie and husband/bassist Jason) have not spent the past year idly. In fact, the group has been working on new material that might cause Shallow's fanbase to skew younger.

"We just wrote a song for Spongebob Squarepants, a new cartoon by the creators of Rocko's Modern Life," Julie Shields says. It turns out that the show's creator, Steve Hillenburg, who has solicited everyone from Junior Brown to Ween for contributions, is a Shallow fan.

"We always talked about making some CD with songs for soundtracks that we might send out to people, but we never actually did it," Shields continues. "But then our old manager in Atlanta got us in touch with these people, and they asked for a song that was supposed to be all instrumental so there could be characters talking over it. When the creator got it, he was like, 'Where's the vocals?' We had, like, a week to come up with those."

In classic Shallow style, they came up with a ditty Shields calls "a happy pop song about being underwater." A character tune plays the theremin-driven tune at a teenager's house party.

In between writing songs for cartoons and exploring the possibilities of classic 20th century instruments, the high-flyin' kids have written soundtracks for video games to be distributed in the coming year by the New Hampshire-based company Dark Knight Games. And, Shields says, Shallow has even considered coming out of its self-imposed exile in the near future. Although the band isn't actively searching for a label, it has started working on a demo to circulate, which would mark Shallow's first recorded output since it released Jumping Away From Something Exploding on the San Francisco indie Devil in the Woods. "We're going to start playing shows in October again," Shields continues, "and if Ryan's still gone we'll do that under a different name, because we won't be Shallow until he gets back.

"Everything that we do without Ryan is supposed to be different from Shallow. With what we're doing now, Ryan's guitar is missing, but our sound is just as good. It's just different. The sound is a lot more mellow and not poppy like Shallow. It's more moody."

If you're interested in hearing a sample, visit www.shallowcommand.com, and, after signing the band's "e-mailing list," navigate your way to a secret area that lets visitors listen to the new songs. "We want some feedback from people that check it out," says Shields. "It may just become its own new thing outside of Shallow, but there are no immediate plans to ever shut Shallow completely out. We just want Ryan to relax, enjoy himself, and come back whenever he's ready."

They Love Jeff Brown
Lawrence's mi6 also has a little something cooking on that World Wide Web, and the feedback it has received has exceeded expectations. Visitors to www.garageband.com, a site that randomly selects and plays tunes by independent artists and lets listeners rate and rank the songs, have voted mi6's homage to Pitch music writer Jeff Brown into the number-one position in all categories. This track has remained at the top slot for three weeks, sparking interest from e-music junkies all over the globe and even from The New York Times, which featured the band in an article on Thursday, July 20.

"They called me and I just happened to be home in the middle of the day recovering from throat surgery," guitarist/singer Ken Peterson says of his first brush with fame. "I didn't think anything of it at first. I thought they were doing a small article in the middle of the paper somewhere about bands on the Internet, so I just started answering all her questions and it just started blowing up. By the end she was like, 'We're going to send a photographer out there,' and so I thought then it would be a decent article, and it turned out to be on the front page and we started getting phone calls. It's been cool."

Cool indeed. The front-page feature, which included quotes from the head of Farmclub.com and Garageband.com as well as input from an accountant and an apartment manager who are hip to the e-music thing, has directed some well-deserved attention mi6's way, including some contact from a few major labels. Not bad for a band that is currently unable to perform live because of Peterson's surgery.

"The whole Internet thing's working really well for us right now," Peterson says. "We've sold CDs through our Web site, through Amazon.com, and pretty much everywhere else on the Internet. You name it, we're there. It's a lot of work and time setting up home pages and Internet sites, but I've been on Napster and found our song, and it's getting our name out there, so that's a good thing."