What to Expect, and Is New Music Coming?

TV journo Jim Spellman says his past life as an indie rock star comes up in some unusual places. A former CNN reporter who’s now a D.C. correspondent for CGTN America, Spellman was recently in New York covering the United Nations General Assembly when his previous life resurfaced via an unlikely interaction.

“I was interviewing the foreign minister of Laos, and his press guy is like, ‘I love Velocity Girl! I was Googling you and I can’t believe you’re in that band,’” says Spellman. “It’s completely bizarre when it does pop up.”

It’s bound to arise even more often now that Velocity Girl has reunited to perform at a handful of shows, including one on Friday night at Los Angeles’ Teragram Ballroom (with opener Film School). The group’s mini-reunion — which also includes a show in their native Washington, D.C., on Nov. 23 — has been sparked by the release of “UltraCopacetic,” a remixed and remastered version of their first album, 1993’s “Copacetic.” (The new “UltraCopacetic” mix, which also includes a collection of singles, B-sides and outtakes, as well as a recording of the band’s 1993 John Peel Sessions, was released in August.)

For Friday night’s L.A. show, the band — Archie Moore, Sarah Shannon, Brian Nelson, Kelly Young and Spellman — plan to play a mix of fan faves from their three albums, along with some of their earlier singles. “Los Angeles was always a special place for us to play,” Spellman says. “Being from the East Coast, LA is such a 180 from the DC/New York/East Coast thing.”

Velocity Girl was a college radio staple in the early 1990s thanks to hits like “Crazy Town,” from “Copacetic,” and became a favorite of film music supervisors — landing their track “My Forgotten Favorite” on the “Clueless” soundtrack, for example. The band stood out from its Sub Pop labelmates for mixing shoegaze with a brighter indie pop sound — including catchy harmonies from vocalists Shannon and Moore.

The band’s 1994 release “Simpatico!” was a bit of a masterpiece, with songs like “Sorry Again” (which wound up on a Volkswagen commercial), “Labrador,” “I Can’t Stop Smiling” and “Medio Core.” They followed that release with 1996’s “Gilded Stars and Zealous Hearts,” but the group disbanded by the start of the 21st century, save a few one-off performances early in the 2000s.

Throughout their run, “Copacetic” was the one that got away in the eyes of the Velocity Girl members. The album, mixed at Steve Albini’s house in Chicago, didn’t come out quite how they wanted — and the technology hadn’t yet been invented to fix it without having to re-record it all.

“We always felt like there was more we could have done to align the final product with what we were hoping for when we put the songs together,” Spellman says. “But the technology back then would have meant essentially starting from scratch. It wasn’t going to happen. But as years went by, the technology changed. You can do all the stuff on a computer now.”

Velocity Girl’s Moore had been working in TV and film audio in recent years and began discussing ways to remix “Copacetic.” At the same time, the D.C. club Black Cat asked Velocity Girl to reunite and perform at its 30th anniversary celebration in September 2023.

“It was just as we had begun talking about the remix,” Spellman says. “So it felt like things were aligning. And we said, ‘why not’? We kind of really threw ourselves into it, like we practiced a ton, and we really worked to, you know, try to not suck.”

The group hadn’t performed together in 20 years, but had kept in touch. Lead singer Shannon moved to Seattle, where she now fronts a group focusing on children’s music. The rest of the band had stayed mostly in the D.C. area. “We were never purposely out of touch, just life stuff meant that we might not talk that often,” Spellman says. “We had social media and whatnot. And Sarah and I would certainly see each other when we crossed paths.”

Because she’s in Seattle, the home base of their Sub Pop label, Shannon says she hears often from Velocity Girl fans — and that even includes members of her current children’s band.

“It feels amazing, it came at just the right time for me personally,” Shannon says of the renewed Velocity Girl activity. “I got divorced a few years ago. I’m recovering from an alcohol problem, and kind of trying to figure out where I am and what I’m doing and how to move forward. And the band Velocity Girl’s re-emergence has been a big boon for me — not just making music again, but spending time with the guys. Performing live in particular has been, I can’t think of a word big enough to describe how important it’s been to me. It’s fortifying. It’s like, let’s do more of this. I’m not sure if it will be with Velocity Girl. We’re going to be promoting this record, but it definitely reinvigorated me to make more music.”

It had been two decades since they last played, so things were a bit rusty at first. Shannon notes that she couldn’t remember the lyrics to one of the songs on “Copacetic,” and Spellman admits that there’s a few more from the album they can’t play either. “The guitars are in an alternative tuning, and we can’t figure it out,” he says. “This is sort of embarrassing, but there were a couple of weird roadblocks.”

Nonetheless, Spellman says that first reunion show at the Black Cat brought back a rush of emotion, starting with seeing Shannon reconnect vocally with the music. “We went into whatever the first song was, and Sarah exploded,” he says. “She was a complete wild woman in the front of the stage, so engaging, so in sync with the crowd. And I was back there behind the drums, just kind of checking it out, and completely trying to just follow her lead. She instantly was the leader of the whole vibe. It was completely inspiring”

The same goes with fans who have shared how much Velocity Girl’s 1990s releases associate with a certain period of their lives. “We’ve heard that over and over from people where some certain song they associate with some era of their life,” Spellman says. “It’s very humbling.”

And inspiring — so much so that Spellman says he and Shannon have been working on some new music together. “It’s a little bit fits and starts, because of the logistics, but also, I think we have just have to get through these couple of shows.”

Oh, and Spellman’s day job too. “Jim has to get through the election first!” Shannon exclaims.