Jeff Timmons switches gears with
solo career
Sunday, December 12, 2004
By CHRIS WELCH
Times Entertainment Writer, chrisw@htimes.com
Jeff Timmons of the once-hot boy band 98
Degrees laughed at the question.
Did he have any plans to film a reality show
like his bandmate Nick Lachey and his wife, Jessica Simpson, have done on MTV
("The Newlyweds")?
"No, I don't think so," Timmons
said in a phone interview. "I think I'll leave that up to Nick.
"It's really crazy to see people you toured with being on television in
such a personal way. It's tough enough to be in the public eye and the
spotlight, but to go out and put yourself on television - your private life as
well - I don't think I could do it.
"In fact, I can't watch it since I know these guys. My hat's off to them
for giving it a shot and I wish them the best."
Timmons prefers to get his exposure the good old-fashioned way - singing in
front of audiences that aren't necessarily trying to tear his clothes off.
He's certainly changed gears and doing well after forming 98 Degrees with
Nick and Drew Lachey and Justin Jeffre in 1995. The group went on to sell
millions of records. The band has been on hiatus since February 2002 and Timmons
has taken up a solo career. He's released his first solo album, "Whisper
That Way," and is currently performing with "Jim Brickman &
Friends - the Holiday Concert," which comes to the Von Braun Center Concert
Hall on Wednesday night.
He was also in the Macy's Day Thanksgiving Parade, appeared on ABC's
"Nick and Jessica's Family Christmas" show and will begin filming his
first feature film, "Newport Heights," due to hit theaters next
summer.
"98 Degrees was a great experience," Timmons said. "There were
two or three other guys with me and I could always rely on them to pick up the
slack.
"It's a little different now. I'm trying to hone my skills as a solo
artist and it's a lot different audience. It's a little more mature and you can
actually hear what you're singing. We'd think we sounded good, tape the show,
and go back to the bus, and it was so loud we couldn't discern whether it was
good or bad."
Timmons said he's proud of his career with 98 Degrees and thinks the group
deserves more credit than just the "boy band" label.
"It was weird to us because we never really considered ourselves a boy
band," Timmons said. "We put ourselves together, as opposed to others
who were put together by somebody else. We modeled ourselves after Boys II Men -
we wanted to be more like the old Motown sound of The Temptations - but we got
lumped in with the others.
"So, it was both a blessing and curse. There was so much public
attention in that genre that people never took us seriously. Things started
winding down three years ago because of the over-saturation of the other groups.
The TV show 'The Making of the Band' didn't help and people put us all together
in a cookie-cutter mold."
Timmons said the guys in 98 Degrees got together for the first time in three
years during Nick and Jessica's TV special and sang "I'll be Home for
Christmas." It got the guys interested in doing another project together,
so it may be too early to write 98 Degrees' obituary.
"I would leave it open," Timmons said. "We did something for
the Nick and Jessica special and it went great. We hadn't seen each other for
four years, but it was like riding a bike.
"We sang a cappella and that's how it started. Everything sounded good
and we really missed it." |
