Here's To Darker Days

10/13/1999 4:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Dan Epstein

You're 18 years of age, your debut album is a smash, and your band is hailed by fans and the press alike as a younger, more intense Pearl Jam. Okay, kid--what are you gonna do for an encore?

Well, if you're Travis Meeks of Days Of The New, you fire your bandmates for failing to comprehend your expansive musical vision, then you retreat to the privacy of your home studio. The result: Days Of The New 2, a record that sets Meeks's distinctive acoustic strummings and world-weary growl amid complex layers of violins, cellos, oboes, horns, and standard rock instrumentation. An intense and occasionally impenetrable work, Days Of The New 2 serves notice that Meeks (now positively long in the tooth at 20) is far more than just another late-'90s grunge-alike.

"Days Of The New 2 may seem like a radical departure to everyone else," says Meeks, speaking from his home in Louisville, Ky. "But it really isn't--I wanted to make the first record sound more like the second, but I wasn't really allowed to take the first one by the balls and do what I wanted to do with it, you know?"

In the wake of such first-album hits as "Touch, Peel And Stand" and "Shelf In The Room," the folks at Outpost Recordings agreed to cut Meeks some more creative slack. Meeks produced and tracked most of Days Of The New 2 himself, though he also enlisted the help of vocalist Nicole Sherzinger, guitarist Craig Wagner, and drummer Ray Rizzo in creating a record whose influences range from the Doors and Dead Can Dance to classical composers Orff and Stravinsky.

"The best artists take things and mold them," says Meeks. "Human beings are not creators; we think we are, but we just take elements that are already there, and make things with 'em. I like to make things--it's like working in a laboratory for two years, and finally coming out and showing the world your invention."

Though he ranks the Doors at the top of his list of musical influences, Meeks says that he most admires the career trajectory of Peter Gabriel. "What he's done with his Real World label, and the way he's taken all these talented musicians and molded their playing to his own vision, is so awesome. As cheesed-out as he used to be with Genesis, man, I still dig that motherf--ker!" But while Meeks does aspire to run a label of his own someday, he's currently more concerned with making sure that Days Of The New sticks around for the long haul.

"I see Days Of The New being kind of an all-around thing," he says. "We're so versatile, we can appeal to a lot of different people. I don't think we'll ever be as big as Michael Jackson; but 20 years from now, I see Days Of The New being as big as Led Zeppelin or the Grateful Dead. It's a big leap from Led Zeppelin II to Led Zeppelin IV to Physical Graffiti, but those are the kind of leaps I want to make."