Back for Seconds

It's been a year and a half since Warren was asked to write songs and sing with the reconstituted band, a proposal that Thorn and Smith made rather nervously at a backyard barbecue, like a sophomore asking for a date. And this is actually the group's second jaunt across the country. (The first, booked in small venues and bypassing D.C., was a successful toe-in-the water experiment to determine if anyone cared.) But performing again as Blind Melon -- the veterans here are still getting their noggins around it.

"It's like the dog you loved when you were a kid came back from the dead and just showed up back at your door, wagging his tail like nothing had ever happened," Smith says. "That's what this feels like to me."

"Twelve years of feeling like you weren't where you were supposed to be," says Stevens, "and all of a sudden, you're there."

Now in their late 30s, these guys look like only marginally weathered versions of the longhairs who pretended to play in that green field for the "No Rain" video, except for Stevens, who looks pretty different because he shaves his head. Warren, who just turned 28, speaks with a drawl from his native Texas and wears a T-shirt with Woody Allen's face on it. He steps outside to smoke every few minutes and lets the rest of the band do most of the talking, in part because a lot of what they want to talk about is him -- his talent, his pipes, how they couldn't have found a dude better suited for this gig if they'd been looking.

If it's possible for a guy to be too much like Shannon Hoon, Warren is that guy. He had enough difficulty with drugs and drink that he swore off both a year ago, and for a while toured with a "sober coach." But he fell off the wagon a few months back, in Ohio, and when this tour is over he'll have to do a little time for a DUI charge. He retains, though, the slightly reckless, up-for-anything air that rock seemed to invent. It comes through when he says he's a little bummed about that Hoon tattoo on his back because the artist just didn't have the chops for a convincing portrait. Asked why he didn't stop her, Warren says, "I didn't see it until it was too late. It's on my back."

All five of these guys understand that they are now attempting what is arguably the most ill-advised stunt in rock: resuscitating a band with a deceased lead singer. Not just any lead singer, either. Hoon was the only member of Blind Melon whose name anybody knew. And the goal here isn't a nostalgia act, but new songs, starting with an album called "For My Friends" to be released in April.

Does this ever work? Well, AC/DC achieved heavy metal world domination with a new singer after its first one expired, but that was after a relatively brief hiatus. After 12 years? If there is a precedent, no one here can think of it.

"It sounds like a terrible idea, doesn't it?" says Thorn.

"Yeah," says Graham. "Reform band with dead singer? Bad idea."

Everyone agrees: If they weren't in Blind Melon and they read about the reunion of Blind Melon, they'd smell fiasco.

"You always hear bands say, 'This new stuff holds up well against our old stuff,' and everybody knows it doesn't," says Stevens, a sentiment that provokes laughs. "I've been hearing guys in bands say that my whole life. And now I'm one of those guys!"

When the band decided to get back together, Stevens was on the verge of returning to college so he could finish his undergraduate degree, so he could eventually apply to law school. Graham was just hanging out in North Carolina in a house he'd built with Blind Melon money and his funds were just starting to dry up. Thorn and Smith were running their studio. All four had tried their hands with other groups, but they never jelled. Not like Blind Melon. In hindsight, that seemed effortless.