MILLIONS OF MILES AWAY TRIO CONNECTS FELLOW INDIE MUSIC FANS IN CYBERSPACE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Staff Writer

It's called alt-country, Americana, no depression, insurgent, twang and maybe a dozen other names in various parts of the land. But what it really is is an independent roots music revival, fueled equally by the easy availability of good, cheap recording equipment and general disgust with the bland, calculated pop that the big Nashville labels are passing off as country music these days.

And now there's a gathering place for the best of it in cyberspace - connected, in the physical world, to an unassuming little warehouse in North Hollywood. That's the international nerve center of Miles of Music, a mail-order outfit with an ever-increasingly indispensable Web site (www.milesofmusic.com) devoted to the exploding Americana music scene.

Founded by Corrie Gregory, Jeff J.B. Levicke and Jeff Weiss, three Valley music buffs who met while working for the Moby Disc record store chain, the operation has grown exponentially over five years, paralleling the surge in independent recordings.

``We specialize in alt-country, roots rock, pop, bluegrass, self-releases and indie titles that you might not be able to find anyplace else,'' explains the tirelessly enthusiastic Gregory, the seven-employee operation's taste-mistress who describes herself as a former punk-rocker whose ``life was changed'' by the late-'80s emergence of such L.A. cowpunk contingents as Lone Justice and the Knitters. ``The basic rule of thumb here is, if we like it, we will sell it. You can't buy your way into our catalog; someone on staff has to dig the record in order for us to bring it in.

``We also carry releases put out on major labels, and imports,'' Gregory adds, noting that it just wouldn't be respectable not to offer the latest works of legends like Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard alongside the younger, quirkier likes of singer-songwriters Amy Rigby, Beaver Nelson and Ryan Adams. ``We are trying to cultivate that cool, indie- store vibe on the Internet and in the catalog; the only difference is that we don't have the attitude.''

Indeed, the North Hollywood facility, which is split about evenly between a section housing offices and work stations and a garage-size area full of CD boxes stacked on metal shelves, has no room for ``high fidelity''-style snobbishness. No time for it, either; even though Miles of Music maintains a friendly, familial vibe while a constant, eclectic hoedown spins over the warehouse sound system, the staff is overwhelmed with a now-endless stream of new product that needs to be listened to, assessed and - if approved - offered for sale.

``I would have to say that, naively, we went into this thinking that our taste was good enough that other people would be interested as well,'' says Weiss, who with wife Gregory initially ran the operation - they were eventually almost crowded by it - out of their Woodland Hills home. ``And so far, we've been pretty lucky. But we are not so arrogant as to think that we know it all, that we are aware of everything that comes out. There have been a couple of times, during our history, when we have assumed that we've tapped it out, we've seen everything there is to see. Then this flood of new stuff comes in.

``We're established enough that we just get albums sent to us, whereas when we started, I'd spend days tracking down albums a customer or somebody would recommend to us,'' Weiss continues. ``But the downside of that is now we're at the point where so much stuff is pouring in, we just can't get around to it all.''

``When we first started, we were so excited when somebody would send us a little indie gem,'' Gregory says, ``but know that we're bombarded with stuff, the hard part is finding those gems because, well, there's a lot of crap. But if you dig hard enough, you do find these amazing artists and your heart starts beating fast.

``We're sort of the gatekeepers,'' adds Gregory, her everpresent dogs Miles and Ella barking in the background. ``There's this idea that if you put something on the Internet, it will sell. We think that if you put something good on the Internet, then it will sell. And there is a huge group of customers that, for some wacky reason, trusts us.''

Indeed, the MoM catalog mailing list is up to around 6,500, and the Web site attracts fans from all over the world.

The Internet itself has been a key element in making this kind of proudly noncommercial, authentic and peculiarly expressive music more economically viable.

``We assumed that by the time we figured out how to run this mail- order business, it would have run its course,'' admits Weiss, who was miserably performing accounting work for his father before the start-up. ``But I didn't know that there was this depth (of both music and interest in it).

``One of the things that has worked to our advantage is the explosion of the Internet, which allowed us to discover that, while we might know 100 fans of this music in L.A., there are also 100 in Dallas, 100 in Nashville, in Miami ... each city had this little pocket of enthusiasts. The Internet allows us to network around and open up selling opportunities, whereas a lot of these bands that had only been able to sell regionally can now sell upwards of 1,000 CDs this way,'' Weiss explains.

And there's no shortage of those releases, now that technologies such as home four-track machines have made creating professional-quality, limited-run CDs an affordable investment of just a few thousand dollars for many artists.

Of course, promoting and selling their wares in a retail system that's hard-wired to the costly, mass-market distribution arms of the large commercial record companies is the real challenge. Understandably, then, MoM is something of a godsend to rebel artists.

``It's a great operation,'' says Will Kimbrough, a sought-after Nashville session guitarist whose own album, ``This,'' was released independently. ``It's mom and pop, but it's also Internet, which makes your stuff available to people in Europe and all over the world who are hungry for this kind of music. Plus, they have a great online magazine (the enjoyably obsessive MoMZine, accessible from the main site), all my friends are on there and I find out about records through it. ... It's a cool thing that I try to turn people onto.''

Just as important, MoM has a reputation for fair financial dealing, a relative rarity in the music business.

``You know, independent labels always have long periods when they're waiting for money from the distributor,'' Kimbrough confirms. ``But they've been really great with that, which is surprising - not because of them, but because of the general nature of the indie music world. These guys are doing their business very, very equitably and well.''

``Our goal is for everyone to make some money and turn our customers on to cool new music,'' Gregory says. ``The coolest thing is that we have enabled bands to make a second record, and in a lot of instances we are the starting point for a lot of bands. We have really passionate customers who are willing to take a chance on new releases that we recommend.''

Still, though, we're often talking about three- and four-figure sales here, an amount any major label would consider less than insignificant.

``We're making an OK living, but nobody's getting rich from this,'' Weiss admits.

As innovative and soundly run a business as Miles of Music is, it is obviously, first and foremost, a labor of love.

``For me, it's about songwriting, about music in which the word is as important as the sound,'' Gregory says. ``It's a hard-edged, real music, it's a traditional music. ... One of the issues we have within Americana/alt-country is this constant battle to define it. That gets you into trouble because what is so interesting about this music is that it is this umbrella of many styles and perspectives. That is its curse and its blessing, because when things are hard to define, they are more interesting and harder to sell.

``That's our dilemma,'' she says. ``But that's where the poets are.''

Besides the Web site, Miles of Music can be contacted at [phone] or toll free at [phone].

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Jeff Weiss, left, Corrie Gregory and Jeff J.B. Levicke decided to start their own North Hollywood-based online company, Miles of Music, to cater to independent music lovers.

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer