Halo effect: Luna Halo breaking out

Hard work and a fortuitous choice of licensing companies have started to pay off for rockers Luna Halo.

On the heels of a good bit of television exposure in the past year, the Nashville quartet, which performs at Stages on Hilton Head on Thursday, is hoping heavy touring and radio play will take it to the next level.

The band last year found its single "Kings and Queens" tapped as the theme song for the final season of -- appropriately enough -- the CBS sitcom "The King of Queens." Shortly thereafter, the National Hockey League came calling, wanting to christen that same track as the theme song for the 2007 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Frontman Nathan Barlowe said he was surprised to see Luna Halo's Web site bombarded by people after the song aired during the NHL playoffs. "I think it's probably opened us up to a crowd that may not have checked us out before," Barlowe said in a recent phone interview.

Barlowe didn't expect "sports guys" and "ESPN dudes" to be among the band's fan base. "It's an outlet that I didn't foresee us being involved in, so I think it's pretty cool that it turned out that way," he said.

The NHL called soon after the playoffs ended and said the response to Luna Halo's song was so great that it wanted to use the song on the "NHL '08" video game by EA Sports, opening the band up to yet another segment of the population it didn't expect: gamers.

"I'm not a gamer, so it wasn't as big a deal to me as the other guys in the band because they sit in the van and play all day, like constantly," Barlowe said. "As soon as it came out, my brother (guitarist Cary Barlowe) went out and got it and it was pretty cool to see a song I wrote (in the game)."

The comment section of one of the postings of "Kings and Queens" on YouTube reveals many knew the song from the video game.

"If it's moving people to go check us out, then it's exactly what I wanted," Barlowe said.

Life in 'Music City'

Barlowe said a lot of his friends questioned his desire to move from North Carolina to Nashville to start a rock band because of the city's strong country music scene. But Barlowe said the city has room for more than just one style of music.

"What people don't realize is that there's a huge rock scene here," Barlowe said. "My friends and I were talking the other night and said any night of the week you can go out in this town and see musicians that blow away musicians in L.A. and New York.

"A lot of musicians are scared to come play in this town," he added, "because they know that 20 people in the audience can play better than them."

With some successes under its belt, and its current single "Untouchable" starting to get some mainstream radio play, Barlowe said Luna Halo's short-term plan is to expand its touring beyond its home base of Nashville and the Southeast and start to tour more extensively in other parts of the country to capitalize on that exposure.