Singer-songwriter Angie Aparo back 'home'

Island music fans generally know Angie Aparo for one of two reasons: 1. He's been a regular face on the local scene throughout the past decade or so, or 2. He penned the ballad "Cry," which country singer Faith Hill turned into a monster radio behemoth in 2002.

Aparo, in turn, knows the island for its early support. For whatever reason -- "by luck or fortune," Aparo says -- island spots like Monkey Business and the Old Post Office were some of the first clubs in which he could appear and reasonably expect people to show up. "[Hilton Head] is kind of one of the first few towns where I had something going on," he said, "It's always remained one of my old homes."

The Atlanta-based singer-songwriter performs at Stages in Park Plaza (formerly Monkey Business) on Sunday, where he kicks off what the club hopes will become a recurring Sunday night singer/songwriter "Storytellers" kind of showcase. Aparo and his regular drummer Derek Murphy will perform with frequent collaborator Martin Lesch. All told, it's something of a reunion for a guy who's spent many a night in these parts.

Aparo's jagged career path began in 1996 with his self-released debut "Out of the Everywhere," and before long he'd hooked up with producer Matt Serletic, who'd manned the boards for albums by Matchbox Twenty and Collective Soul, among others. Aparo's own melodic major-label debut, "The American," dropped in 2000.

The record received warm reviews -- the first single "Spaceship" made some noise and an expensive-looking video was shot -- but the album didn't gain much traction on radio.in 2001, he pulled back, self-releasing "Weapon of Mass Construction," a collection of mostly covers that included peeled-back versions of Elton John's "Rocket Man," Oasis' "Champagne Supernova" and a memorable, Casio-fied take on the Beastie Boys' "Fight For Your Right (to Party)." The Beatles-influenced "For Stars and Moon," was similarly independently released in 2003.

Around that time, Aparo found himself on Faith Hill's radar. The singer pulled "Cry" from "The American" and made it the title track and first single on her 2002 album. Country audiences weren't in love with Hill's version, but it was huge on the adult contemporary charts, spending a full 11 weeks at No. 1 there (Hill also won a 2003 Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance). That gave Aparo currency in the country universe and he's been able to make the most of the connection; he's since gone on to write songs for Big & Rich ("Big Time") and others.

These days, Aparo is "always on tour a little bit," both solo and with his band, the Infidels. He's played a handful of shows a month throughout the Southeast, where his cult fan base is at its most lively.And last summer, Hill invited Aparo to perform "Cry" for a week or so on her Soul II Soul tour with husband Tim McGraw, who, conveniently enough, was planning a new label that will hopefully release Aparo's new album later this year.

"I really had no intention of signing or doing anything," Aparo said. "I didn't even know he was doing a label. But then he said he had this idea, and it just kind felt right. So far we're moving in the right direction."

But despite McGraw's potential involvement, the new disc won't be a country project. "It probably falls more in folk-indie land," Aparo said. "It's a really stripped-down thing, which I just have been in love with my whole life. You know, the voice is God. It sounds like such a simple idea, but it's amazing when it sounds like just a singer singing to you, as opposed to fighting his way through guitars and huge drum sounds."

The timing, Aparo said, couldn't be better, too, given the generally lousy state of the record industry. "To make a record costs nothing," he said, "To promote it costs millions. I've done sessions for the new record in a friend's bedroom on Hilton Head, done them in my house, I'm about do some in Nashville. Everything I need to make a whole record fits in my trunk. It's crazy."

Aparo's is one of a fast-increasing number of musicians looking to explode the possibilities offered by the Internet and explore more multimedia avenues, including what he calls a sitcom/reality show about his life and career, although he's careful to use the term "reality" loosely. It's all part of what Aparo sees as a Web-fueled Renaissance of sorts.

"My theory is that there's a 4-year-old kid somewhere right now, and by the time he's 18, he'll be able to speak about the world in all mediums. He'll have an 8-megapixel video camera in his phone, he'll be writing poems, painting, using iLife or whatever it's called then -- it'll be a complete mosaic of his expression," Aparo said. "I love music, but at the end of the day it's just an audio soundtrack of the artist's life -- you don't really get to see what the artist sees. I think it's leading to a multimedia artist revolution."