Blind Melon: new music available online
Three brand-new Blind Melon tracks — "Make a Difference", "For My Friends" and "Harmful Belly" — have been posted online at www.blindmelonmach2.com. Also available at the same location is a video of the band performing the song "Harmful Belly" live in the studio (with the studio recording of the song partly dubbed over the video footage).
11 years since the death of singer Shannon Hoon effectively put an end to Blind Melon, the group's surviving members — guitarists Christopher Thorn and Rogers Stevens, bassist Brad Smith and drummer Glen Graham — got back together under the Blind Melon banner, with a new singer, 25-year-old Amarillo, Texas, native Travis Warren.
According to Greg Prato of Billboard.com, Warren met Smith and Thorn through a mutual friend and was initially interested in having the pair help produce his own music. Then, a joke email from Smith to Stevens got the ball rolling towards getting back together last summer. "Brad wrote a fake press release and sent it to me — it was saying how we were back together and how Travis had brought us together," Stevens says. "It was the first I'd heard of it. I called Brad and I was like, 'What do you mean? You got the band back together without me?'"
Soon after, Warren and the four Melons congregated in the studio. "We decided to get into a room and play — we thought it would be fun," Stevens says. "i was really skeptical in the beginning about doing anything, and none of us are into doing any kind of 'nostalgia trip.' We started playing, and I knew within the first half of a song that [Warren] was nailing it. It was something about the way he did it that it immediately disarmed my skepticism."
Read more at Billboard.com.
11 years since the death of singer Shannon Hoon effectively put an end to Blind Melon, the group's surviving members — guitarists Christopher Thorn and Rogers Stevens, bassist Brad Smith and drummer Glen Graham — got back together under the Blind Melon banner, with a new singer, 25-year-old Amarillo, Texas, native Travis Warren.
According to Greg Prato of Billboard.com, Warren met Smith and Thorn through a mutual friend and was initially interested in having the pair help produce his own music. Then, a joke email from Smith to Stevens got the ball rolling towards getting back together last summer. "Brad wrote a fake press release and sent it to me — it was saying how we were back together and how Travis had brought us together," Stevens says. "It was the first I'd heard of it. I called Brad and I was like, 'What do you mean? You got the band back together without me?'"
Soon after, Warren and the four Melons congregated in the studio. "We decided to get into a room and play — we thought it would be fun," Stevens says. "i was really skeptical in the beginning about doing anything, and none of us are into doing any kind of 'nostalgia trip.' We started playing, and I knew within the first half of a song that [Warren] was nailing it. It was something about the way he did it that it immediately disarmed my skepticism."
Read more at Billboard.com.