CHANGE OF HEART

Vena Cava by another name will still be unclassifiable. BY JIMMY FOWLER On a recent Friday night at Rubber Gloves in Denton, there was barely enough room onstage for Fort Worth-based Vena Cava and the red candle that flickered at their feet. All six members and their multiple instruments -- Sean French, for one, plays pedal steel, percussion, and harmonica -- were squeezed into a space that barely allowed breathing. (Fortunately, the guy who sometimes plays trumpet and the occasional cellist weren't in the lineup this night.) The band's inability to move was compensated by the two dozen or so audience members who swayed like slow ocean waves to the forlorn guitar twangs, psychedelic xylophone, and tribal rhythms. But ask anyone in the audience to describe Vena Cava's sound, and you're likely to get silence followed by tentative adjectives that don't completely cut it. Alt-country orchestral pop? Ambient honky tonk? And as for potential influences, fathom this -- how can a band manage to remind you of The Velvet Underground and Steely Dan, yet not really sound much like either? Keyboardist and percussionist Aprell McQueeney-Feagin is glad I'm writing about Vena Cava, if only because "maybe you can tell us what kind of music we make." Aprell is married to guitarist-singer-songwriter Don Feagin. They live in a three-story brownstone tucked inside Fort Worth's hospital district. That's also where they and the rest of the band -- French, guitarist-singer-songwriter Curtis Heath, drummer Nick Prendergast, and bassist Mark Castaneda -- rehearse and record. Don Feagin founded the band five or six years ago, when they began as -- you guessed it -- "guys sitting around in a room playing guitars." Members came and went, but it was only with the addition of Curtis Heath in 1998 that a core sound gelled. The current incarnation of Vena Cava -- which everyone agrees is its most mature and harmonious yet -- has been around for about six months. Because the band finally feels like an organic whole rather than slacker music lovers strumming on the side, everyone decided it was time for a name change. They had practical considerations, as well. "We've discovered there are at least three other bands called Vena Cava," Feagin notes. "One of them is in Southern California, and they're really big on the indie scene. We could never play there. We'd run into problems with unfair business practices." After much discussion, Vena Cava members narrowed their choices to two new names written on different slips of paper. One was The Early Years, from the title of a Willie Nelson boxed set. The other was the one eventually drawn from a glass bowl. Fate has determined that Vena Cava will now be known as The Theater Fire. But a new moniker drawn from an old metaphor about First Amendment limitations doesn't help much in representing this ensemble's tunes, either. They've recorded an untitled four-song c.d. that they distribute free at concerts. "It was never mastered," McQueeney-Feagin explains, "and we don't feel right making someone pay for something that doesn't sound just right." Still, it's a decent-quality recording augmented by the acoustics in that wood-floored brownstone room, giving narrative songs out justice and vengeance like "Brothers in Blood" and "Ego the Kid" an ethereal, ghost-town quality. Feagin and Heath say they try not to write lyrics in the first person because they're sick of so many artists singing about themselves and their lovelives. For Feagin, Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen are idols. Heath admits he nearly busted his fingers trying to emulate Smiths' guitarist Johnny Marr when he was younger, but also worships Johnny Cash. But if you expect any of that quartet of influences to be audibly conspicuous at a Theater Fire show, you may be disappointed. Feagin and Heath share a major love of The Velvet Underground. The Theater Fire draws much of its sound from Nick Prendergast's compellingly primitive drumming and the way Don and Curtis blend a watercolor palette of guitar notes onto the tracks ˆ la the ballads on V.U.'s eponymous album. As for the Steely Dan comparison, I make that at my own peril, because it's more about a vibe than an explicit style and because of a coincidence of names. The Theater Fire, founded by Donald Feagin (pronounced "Fagen"), is rootsier and rougher than Steely Dan, founded by Donald Fagen. But it too has male vocalists singing in harmony about enigmatic, sinister third-person characters (Feagin's high-pitched quaver on "The Lamb" is a near dead ringer for David Palmer's lead on "Dirty Work"). Titles like "Ego the Kid" and "Hey Jimmy" wouldn't look out of place on the LP jacket of one of Steely Dan's '70s chart-toppers. The Theater Fire also shares a certain deliberateness of placement. Each tune has a beginning, middle, and end, like a short story. Although Feagin denies their tunes are heavily arranged -- he claims the planned-out sound comes through a democratic rehearsal process -- he also admits they're not much into improv, either live or in the studio. Curtis Heath thinks he knows what I'm getting at with the Steely Dan comparison. It's a part of The Theater Fire's philosophy. "It's a matter of space," Heath says. "By that, I mean we space out the instruments and sort of let them breathe. When Walter Becker and Donald Fagen wrote a song, you know every part was put there for a reason. We work that way, too. I'm not into that 'math rock' sound -- where a band makes a million chord changes in three minutes just to show you how talented they are. When they play live, it all gets muddled together." With a new name and fresh creative confidence, you might assume The Theater Fire is gunning for a major-label contract somewhere down the line. Unless, that is, you're aware of the treatment area artists like Tripping Daisy, The Toadies, and Sugarbomb have received from the corporates. The Theater Fire's attitude about the majors -- they refuse to rely on them -- was once considered settling for the small time; now it may just be the vision of music's future commercial/creative landscape. "I'm very suspicious of major labels," Feagin says flatly. "I mean, we're just thinking realistically. How would they market us? We're definitely more indie material." "Clubs never know who to book us with as it is," Heath says. As far as promotion, he cites "a whole network of support out there" that includes independent companies and, especially, the internet, where "you can buy or trade music from all over the world and from every style and decade." Other Theater Fire members point to local faves like Centro-matic, The Baptist Generals, and Pleasant Grove, who get radio play and paying gigs in Europe thanks to savvy hired promoters, rather than major-label support. Right now, The Theater Fire concentrates on touring Texas, maintaining contacts like their friends The Baptist Generals to reach out of the state, and finishing their first full-length album, which should be released within the year. What's important to this sextet is that old Vena Cava fans remember their new name and that new listeners realize they're a band that's been evolving for a while. In the end, Curtis Heath thinks definitions and categories are phantom issues to most music lovers. "Everybody I know has the biggest record collection," he says. "People don't just listen to one type of music. They get influenced by a thousand different styles."

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