Leave the sex and drugs to Tommy Lee and Marilyn Manson -- Tonic's rock & roll docket leaves no room for such hedonistic distractions. Since wrapping up their Lemon Parade tour last year, the Los Angeles foursome has stayed busy with far more mundane activities.

This winter, Tonic began clocking twelve-hour days during a feverish campaign to release their most recent pet project: a live and enhanced EP featuring two versions of "If You Could Only See." Simultaneously, the relentless four-piece camped out in a Los Angeles studio and penned nearly twenty songs for their sophomore release, due out in late summer or early fall.

A fan pacifier of sorts, the six-track Live & Enhanced was conceived and nurtured within the Tonic camp without any guidance or interference from the outside. Guitarist Jeff Russo says the live album concept first came to him last summer. At that time, he began sketching ideas for an interactive disc that would ultimately contain live concert footage, a music video and a screen saver. Polydor Records washed their hands of the project, thereby allowing the group to produce the venture themselves and sell it exclusively at Tonic's official web page.

"It's a real treat for us to produce our own stuff because it really gives us an opportunity to work in a different respect on our own music," Russo says. "We didn't have anyone else there, so all the decisions and the pressure was on us."

Such is not the case with Tonic's forthcoming follow-up to Lemon Parade. The band has already lined up producer Jack Joseph Puig to oversee their studio work once again, beginning next month. On their own, vocalist Emerson Hart, bassist Dan Lavery, drummer Kevin Shepard and Russo spent ten months writing and laying down demos for seventeen new songs, with two or three more to follow this week. They eventually will pare that number down to twelve.

With the demos complete, Tonic hope to speed through the recording process and release the album's first single in mid-summer. A small tour may precede the album, which is expected to hit stores in early autumn. Though Russo says it's too early to predict an album title or track listing, he did mention that a song titled "Sugar" will most likely make the album cut. The rest remain a puzzle.

"This album is not a huge departure for us, but we are trying to stretch out," he says. "We have written some great songs, and some of them are a little harder than the last record, some are a little more pop. You are really just going to have to see for yourself."

ANNI LAYNE
(February 16, 1999)