Local band hopes hot-label affiliation will propel them to fame, fortune
By Megan Moseley
September 15, 2008
While the raspberry-wheat beer flowed continuously on tap at Casa Cantina, the up-and-coming local band Wheels on Fire performed its top hits while fans watched from the crowd.
When the band kicked off its show around midnight last Thursday, many in the audience probably did not know that this Athens-based band recently signed a record deal with Big Legal Mess, a publishing company owned by Fat Possum Records in Oxford, Miss.
Fat Possum is a highly regarded label whose roster includes both legendary Southern blues acts and rising indie-rock and folk acts such as Andrew Bird and Akron’s The Black Keys.
Wheels on Fire guitarist and singer Michael Chaney said the recent signing to Big Legal Mess is a good sign for the group and pushes the band in the right direction.
“We hope that with this signing, we will be playing more and gain a wider distribution. It’s a big step for the band,” he said.
While smoking a cigarette outside of Casa after an hour and a half of jamming out on his guitar and bellowing out some high notes, Chaney and his girlfriend/fellow band-mate and funky pianist Susan Musser talked about the band’s progress over the past fews years and his optimistic visions for the future.
“We played in Europe last year and did well there,” Chaney said. “We played shows all over and performed somewhere around 23 shows in a month. It was crazy. When we weren’t playing, we were driving to where we were going to play.”
The hard work seemed to pay off, and with the signing to Big Legal Mess, the band is expecting to go on tour in Europe again and spend the next couple of months promoting its seven-inch single that’s expected to come out in November.
Though promoting the single and spreading their fan base is an important part of Wheels on Fire’s future, Chaney said that the band plans to stick around Athens for a while, seeing how it’s one place that they all care about.
“We are all from Athens, and this is home for us. I could never get used to this town,” he said, apparently meaning he couldn’t take it for granted.
The band is a regular at the Union and has been recording its music in the basements of Chaney and his brother, Wheels on Fire drummer Matthew Chaney, for years.
So from basements to big leagues, the band that consists of two guitarists, a bass player, a drummer and a female organ player is moving on to bigger and better things.
The band played in Lafayette, Ind. all weekend performing at a music festival and various live-music venues.
Guitarist John Garris said that booking gigs and staying up late playing music might be tiring to some but is his favorite pastime.
“We try to play as much as we possibly can,” he said.
When Garris isn’t playing to music junkies at the Union, he’s staying up late working the night shifts at O’Betty’s Red Hot.
“I’m kind of a night person,” he said.
Garris’ late-night obsession seems to fit right into the lifestyle of a rock star. And by signing record deals and touring in Europe, it seems as if he’s got a lot of late nights ahead of him.
Like Chaney, Garris said he’s optimistic about the new single that’s coming out and getting signed to Big Legal Mess.
“It’s pretty exciting. Definitely something that we’ve been looking for,” he said.
In November, Wheels on Fire’s single will be out and distributed to their fans here and overseas, but until then, those interested can get a taste of the group’s music by checking out its Myspace page at www.myspace.com/wheelsonfie.
The Web site has some cuts to listen to, notes the band’s upcoming shows, offers a blog, and claims that the group sounds like “that dusty old organ at your grandma’s house being played in the back of a truck, on an old dirt road, just outside of Memphis, while the radio screams out a song from 1956 on its way to Hitsville, USA.”
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