Looking back on the chaos of the music business around the world in the late ’90s, the story of Spongebath Records ultimately ended up a footnote. But for those present for the Murfreesboro label’s rise from humble hometown indie to major-label launching pad (and its eventual collapse), the experience was formative. Spend enough time in local-rock circles and it starts to feel like every other thirtysomething you meet has a degree from Middle Tennessee State University, whose recording industry program continues to draw talent to the ’Boro. Friday night at the Lindsley Avenue Church of Christ in Nashville, four of Spongebath’s flagship acts — The Features, The Katies, Fluid Ounces and Matt Mahaffey of Self — time-traveled back to the post-grunge days. The occasion was The Toy Drive Before Christmas, a benefit put on by the church (whose minister Laws Rushing II is also a local musician of note), and the bands played beside a giant Christmas tree to a seated crowd skewing heavily toward friends and family.
I’ve been a Self fan since I was a teenager, but I have no personal ties to Bucket City or MTSU, so arriving at the church felt a bit like crashing someone else’s class reunion. Mahaffey broke the ice with a story. “I remember watching The Cardigans open for Beck at the Ryman,” he remarked, looking out at the church pews with acoustic guitar in hand. “Those guys are from Sweden, and they were totally freaked out at everyone sitting down. They must have just been like, ‘Wow, is everything in Tennessee a church? When does it end?’ [This] almost feels like MTSU too. Welcome to the winter 2019 songwriting master class, everyone. You’re going to learn what to do — and more importantly, what not to do.”
Matt Mahaffey
Self’s reach extended far beyond campus. Mahaffey’s combo of pop instincts, chops and charisma to rival his idol Prince made him the darling of the Spongebath scene. Self’s MTV-approved ’95 debut Subliminal Plastic Motives was the breakthrough and 1996’s The Half-Baked Serenade the cult fave, while 1999’s magnificent Breakfast With Girls — recorded on DreamWorks Records’ dime — signaled the arrival of Mahaffey, studio wizard. All three bore the playful Spongebath block-S insignia. Those three records didn't make Self international superstars (nor did the ones that came after), but they immortalized the group as a defining Tennessee act of the 120 Minutes era.
These days, the 46-year-old musician and producer isn’t much for backwards-gazing. Having semi-retired the project when his brother and bandmate Mike Mahaffey passed away suddenly in 2005, he just doesn’t seem to need Self much anymore. He revives it in the live setting only occasionally, and releases new Self songs even more sporadically. Although at the top of the bill on the show poster, he opened the show unplugged-style, bounding through 11 songs in quick succession. Aspects of the Self songbook are frozen in time, like the hip-hop/slacker-rock pastiche “So Low,” which Mahaffey teased but didn’t play, and the country-tinged “Microchip Girl,” which he did (lyrical excerpt: “Now what do I get her for Christmas? / She’s got it all on hard disk”).
But the hooks endure — and the stripped-down renditions offered an interesting counterpoint to the maximalist studio versions. Those who’d witnessed proper Self sets in the days of MiniDiscs and Blockbuster Music might’ve been underwhelmed, but having never had the chance myself, it was a thrill to finally hear this material in person — even more so since my No. 1 Self song, Breakfast’s epic “What Are You Thinking?”, made the cut.
The Features
The Features broke out of Sparta, Tenn., and blossomed with Spongebath’s support, but ultimately transcended the label. The foursome soldiered on well into the 2000s and 2010s, with their most recent record, Sunset Rock, coming in 2015. Knowing Rollum Haas — also of Coupler, The Robe and most recently Soccer Mommy — as the Features’ drummer, a role he assumed in 1999 and never relinquished, I was bemused when Haas took a seat in the pew behind me while frontman Matt Pelham and bassist Roger Dabbs set up.
It turned out the band was playing in its original configuration, rounded out by guitarist Don Sergio and drummer Jason Taylor. Remarkably, they sounded the same Friday as they did during the Clinton administration, as Fluid Ounces’ Seth Timbs would point out later. That sound: a tuneful strain of landlocked college-rock-meets-British Invasion jangle, more raucous than the psyched-out excursions The Features would take later in their career.
The Features
The set featured eight tight, driving originals bisected by a telling cover of The Who’s “I’m a Boy.” The standout of the set, the ebullient “D-Con (Radio One),” I can’t even find online to listen to — unless you’ve got a copy of the Spongebath sampler Soaking in the Center of the Universe, Vol. 2, it’s lost to time like so much great underground rock of its era. But I am still humming it two days since the show. The group sing-along qualities of other Features songs foreshadowed trends that would arrive later in indie music — like the Lumineers, but with teeth.
Fluid Ounces
The classicist yin to Mahaffey’s futurist yang, Timbs and his four-piece band Fluid Ounces (Fl. Oz., for short) got me thinking about Murfreesboro in relation to its fellow Southern college towns. “Vegetable Kingdom,” the title track of a 1998 EP (which appeared on the album In the New Old-Fashioned Way the next year), evoked a less acid-damaged take on the off-kilter indie pop the Elephant 6 collective was making over in Athens, Ga.
Front-and-center was the expert ivory-tickling that would forever link Timbs and Fl. Oz. to a certain intentionally-misnamed Chapel Hill trio. (“Timbs is a Murfreesboro native who is best known for his band of the never-ending Ben Folds [Five] comparisons,” wrote the Scene’s Tracy Moore in 2007 — which Timbs told Moore he’s “tired of, frankly.”) Unlike Folds, Timbs isn’t one for performative antics, and while his punchy piano-pop’s prog streak probably didn’t help its mainstream prospects in the ’90s, it was impressive to witness Friday. The players (including Mahaffey on drums) had committed all of the songs’ twists and turns to memory. To close the set, Timbs stepped out from behind the keys and picked up a guitar for “Hey Lou,” a rocker with a wink and a nod to Nirvana that was passed between Spongebath bands like a fat joint back in the day, with studio renditions appearing on releases by both Self and The Features.
The Katies
That was the loudest song played all night — until The Katies took the stage. The youngest and most meat-and-potatoes of the four groups, Katies’ eponymous 1999 Spongebath/Elektra debut struggled to find an audience. In its wake, they relocated to L.A. for a spell before dissolving. Unexpectedly, in the last two years, bassist-vocalist Gary Welch, singer-guitarist Jason Moore and his brother, drummer Joshua Moore, have returned, gigging around Nashville while readying the two-decades-in-the-making follow-up to The Katies. The rejuvenated trio kept it short and loud, eliciting much rocking out in the pews.
The band’s signature songs stand the test of time. One didn’t have to have been there in ’99 to feel the emotional tidal wave of “Shiseido,” and the nonsensical-but-anthemic “Noggin’ Poundin” — The Katies’ answer to “I Want You to Want Me” — remains great rock ’n’ roll fun. But a newer number, “Hotel,” was the showstopper, taking the winsome mix of power-pop harmonies and stoner-rock grit that put The Katies on the map and imbuing it with the clearer-eyed perspective that comes with age. At the end of a night where nostalgia reigned, it felt good to see them looking confidently forward.
