HERE TODAY GONE TODAY. It could easily be the motto for emerging bands in
today's world of pop music. Scoring a couple of hit songs on radio and MTV drives sales in
the morning and afternoon, but when dusk settles, the group is no where to be heard --
again.
Southern California-based Eve 6 could fall into this category. The band's encounter
with the David Letterman show almost foreshadows such a fate. Guitarist Jon Siebels
explained to POLLSTAR, "Tonight on the show, they're going to do this little thing where
David's like, 'Tomorrow night, Eve 6. Who's that? I've never heard of them before.' And
then a curtain is going to come up and we're going to play like five seconds of the song."
Then the curtain falls. That short time is just a small taste of the limelight most pop bands
experience but never endure; a few moments in the public eye then, like a magic trick
without the cloud of smoke, they're gone. However, on the upside for Eve 6, the five-second
performance was a teaser to promote the next night's episode. The band returned to the
stage and claimed the spotlight, performing its hit single "Inside Out" -- in its entirety. The
group's "Late Show" experience exemplifies what's happening with Eve 6: The snowball
effect is gaining momentum for the band of recent high school graduates and their self-titled
debut album on RCA. Even early in the group's still-young career, Eve 6 was creating its
tight punk, pop-rock sounds around Los Angeles before garnering attention from the right
music industry people. The band, taking its name from an episode of the popular sci-fi show
"The X-Files," formed during the summer before Siebels' sophomore year in high school in
La Crescenta, Calif. "At that point, we weren't really touring," Siebels said. "We were just
playing around our town a lot, the LA area and Hollywood, out to Orange County." As
somewhat of a surprising move, Eve 6 chose to stay away from the area's popular club scene.
However, the choice reflects the young musicians' mature sense of business. "We kind of
stayed away from doing the clubs a whole lot because a lot of the Hollywood clubs have the
whole selling-tickets-to-play thing.... That's just like the worst, to feel like you're handing
over money to play somewhere," Siebels said. "We'd much rather just pack out a
coffeehouse and have a great time than to have the high stress of selling tickets." So the
occasional weekend party or coffee shop gig became the setting for Eve 6 to develop its
sound. The band moved a step forward in its career after a performance on "Radio Asylum,"
a college radio show. The program's host, Jennifer Harold, "totally fell in love with the band
and started managing." Harold had been working with then-RCA act One Thousand Mona
Lisas and knew label A&R man Brian Malouf. She sent a live tape of Eve 6 to Malouf, who
liked what he heard. "We did a showcase for him [in LA] and he came back to New York,
called us up and said the one band that he couldn't stop thinking about was us," Siebels said.
"So, at the time, he signed us more for what he saw us developing into, not because he
wanted us to put out a record and tour right away." Besides, the band hadn't even entered
its senior year of high school. "[Malouf] basically signed us and left us alone for two years to
keep doing what we were doing, just playing." During a lax final year of high school, the band
concentrated on making its debut album. After recording a demo of the song "Tongue
Tied," Eve 6 shopped around for management; Harold had parted ways with the band for a
career in radio. "[The demo] happened to fall on the desk of our managers, who are Arthur
Spivak and Stu Sobol [of Spivak Entertainment]," Siebels said. "That was one of our best
moves we've made because from there, they hooked us up with CAA -- an amazing booking
agency." With diplomas in hand and the release of their major-label debut this past spring,
guitarist Siebels, bassist/vocalist Max Collins and drummer Tony Fagenson hit the road on a
two-month-long club tour around the country. "We were headlining most of them and if we
were lucky, we would get 30 people." The band was able to play to some larger crowds, such
as Atlanta's Midtown Music Festival. However, with the growing support of radio, the three
piece was added to the Third Eye Blind/Our Lady Peace tour. "When we started the Third
Eye Blind tour, it was like, 'This is our third month straight of touring.' And Our Lady Peace
went, 'Oh yeah, we've been touring 22 months straight,'" Siebels said. "So that was a little
humbling." Eve 6 is on tour with Third Eye Blind for another two months, with MTV
sponsoring the second leg of the tour. But the band is readying itself for the future. "[We
want to] just tour to get a huge fanbase to the point where, whether radio is embracing us or
not at that particular moment, we're always going to have a fanbase and be able to tour and
sell records off of that."
