November 21, 2007 Music » Betta Listen

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Blind Melon sees new life 

Band reunites with new singer, album planned

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click to enlarge NOW I SEE: BLIND MELON

  • NOW I SEE: BLIND MELON

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"Yeah, I mean, I think it's changed somewhat or it seems that way to me. Um ... and, you know, my thoughts about when we went out the last time, last month, it seemed to me that, hey, it certainly put the name in people's minds and people talked about Shannon a lot. And, uh, there were defenders of that sort of thing. There was a lot more to him than just that one song and that was a song that he didn't even write, you know?"

Did you guys get in touch with his family when this was all coming together?

"Yes. We ... about a year ago, I called his mother and we all remain close friends with his girlfriend -- Nico's mother -- so she knew about it all along and supported it. I called Nel and spoke with her and I think it was obviously a difficult thing for her to swallow, you know? Us going out and doing this and I totally understand, but I think once she got over the initial shock of it and saw what our intentions were and actually came out to some shows and hung out with us and met Travis and all that. She's fine with it. We brought her on stage a few nights during the tour."

Yeah, I saw a clip of that on YouTube and was going to ask about that.

"Yeah."

There are so many questions I have ... I'm not sure where to go next. I guess a quick question for you is that your name -- not you, but Blind Melon -- got brought up a couple times over the years when the Rock Star show was on for finding a lead singer, with INXS thing. Was that ever the case? Would you guys even look at that? Was that just a rumor?

"I heard things of people kind of putting out feelers, but I ... I mean ... to me, the whole thing was a turn-off. I wasn't really interested. It never went to the point of somebody saying, 'OK, we want you to do it.' But, I mean, really ... what worse thing could we have done? (laughs)"

That's what I thought -- I can't imagine that happening.

"Yeah, and I imagine us being on television like that. I mean, I don't think it would be ... it would be pretty interesting because we would turn fairly sullen immediately (laughs) if something like that was going on."

How worried are you guys about comparisons that are obviously going to be made? Did you ... Are you looking at these songs as trying to recreate them or are you trying to say, "Hey, this is a new version of Blind Melon. We're putting our twist on the old songs." How are you approaching it?

"As far as the old songs go, I mean, we're ... we're sort of, at this point, giving them a pretty straight sort of reading, you know. We're doing about half old songs and half new songs in the set now. I mean, we're not trying to go out and re-imagine those songs, yet ... I mean, we want to go out and play them and let people hear them and remember them and ... cause it really is about, you know, people are gonna remember Shannon. I mean, people get really emotional about it. And, um, and they're fun for us to play. But, as far as the way we're looking at it. We were not gonna do this if we weren't able to make a record and move forward. I mean, I just ... I told those guys when they called me about it the first time, I was like, 'You know, that sounds great, but I'm not gonna do anything that's just sort of a nostalgia tour where you go and it's just sort of a recital every night and do it that way. It just really doesn't interest me. I'd rather make money doing something else with my life, but if we can make a new record and if we can write with Travis then I would be into it.' So, that's what we tried next. When we first went there, I flew out to L.A. about a year ago and we got in a room and we learned about 10 of these songs and we played them over three days and it was just spot on. I knew the first song that Travis was really ... could really sing those songs. We sort of absorbed that and went back maybe a month later and tried to write songs and we wrote three songs right away and it totally worked. That kind of solidified it for me."

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