Joy of the Secret Band

Day Four of Indie Week...
Of course, one of the best reasons for exploring indie music is to discover a band that you would not otherwise hear.
The indie music world is populated by worthy artists who struggle -- and mostly fail -- to achieve airplay on the radio. Their task has been made all the more difficult by conservative radio programming that worries more about maintaining market share numbers than about musical numbers.
A couple years ago, I stumbled upon the Santa Rosa, Calif. band the Velvet Teen. If I still lived in the north Bay Area, finding the Velvet Teen would be easy: They routinely gig in Santa Rosa, Petaluma and even San Francisco. I don't live there anymore, so uncovering this band required a bit more work.
Singer/guitarist/pianist Judah Nagler and drummer/cartoonist (oh yes!) Logan Whitehurst first formed the Velvet Teen in 1999.
They wanted to hide their activities from their current (and uninterested) current bandmates, so they first titled their efforts "The Secret Band." The pair eventually drafted in bassist Josh Staples, cut a couple of EPs and then their debut full-length, "Out of the Fierce Parade."
I first heard Velvet Teen via the Internet and I was blown away.
Nagler sounds like Jeff Buckley, and the band can completely rock out or slowly burn like Radiohead at will.
After collecting as many mp3s as I could, I finally got my hands on some CDs on Aug. 6, 2003. During a trip to visit my sister in San Francisco, we stopped at the MASSIVE Amoeba Records (the type of place music geeks like me routinely dream about) and I purchased two EPs on one disc -- "The Great Beast February" and "Comasynthesis" -- and the debut full-length. They are a fantastic band... one I had to struggle to hear, but the struggle was so well worth it.
Whitehurst subsequently suffered some health problems and left the band to focus on his cartooning career. You can check him out at this Web site here.
The Velvet Teen keep producing fine music that relatively few people have heard. You can learn more about them at this Web site here.
I would encourage you all to search for your own "secret band." Finding one is one of the true joys of indie music.