If tour coordinator Judi Kerr likes your pitch, she'll call back and try to route you on one of the duo's three or four local concert stops.
What's captured their fancy so far? Everything from a gathering of laid-off auto workers in Detroit to a recylcing promotion at the city dump in Albuquerque, a stripper's bachelorette party, a quilting bee, a corn roast and even a funeral.
"The original idea was to be modern-day troubadours and play for anybody we can play for," says the group's Richard Aven. "Our intentions are just to
put us in front of anybody you want and we'll do our best. That's the only way we can approach our music and be honest about it."
The Cages are Atlanta based, with one foot in the woods and the other in the urban malaise, evoking the spirt of a post-modern Simon and Garfunkel. ("She was a bottle-blonde bitch from Beaumont, Texas/With an Elvis tatoo on her solar plexis.") Aven (who doesn't often admit to having a first name) is a multi-instrumentalist who's classically trained, sung new wave and played sax with the Four Tops and Temptations. Partner Clayton Cages is a smart singer/songwriter/guitar strummer with warm pipes (evoking Jackson Browne) and caustic lyrics in the Neil Young jugular vein.
In the past three months, they've already rattled the cages twice on Jay Leno's Tonight show, done numerous radio shots and appeared on MTV, apart from all those unusual one-night stands. On days off, they're prone to wander around college campuses, casually striking up conversations with lines like ''Hey man, have you heard about the Cages?"
"For a new band trying to break these days, it's a jungle out there," allows Capitol publicist Sujata Murthy. "It's really hard to get somebody to shell out $15 for a group you've never heard of. But this tour is not real hype-hype. Wherever the Cages play, they're getting really positive feedback . . . and moving product."
CLUB OPENING
