By: Cary Stemle
Travis Meeks lights a cigarette and curses it for being his only active addiction. "I hate you," he says. The cigarette just fumes. Meeks is all of 19 years old, but he speaks like a man with a soul that’s, say, 300 years old. Why not? Meeks, the undisputed leader of Days of the New, the Louisville area’s only million-selling band, has squeezed several lifetimes into not quite two decades.
The saga began in Charlestown, Ind., about 16 miles northeast of Louisville. He fell in with a bad crowd. Drinkin’ and druggin’ and fightin’ and fornicatin’ were the norm--all before he was old enough to drive. He has the emotional and physical scars to prove it. But, somehow, he turned the pain into a cathartic set of songs that became the first Days of the New album. It’s sold more than 1 million copies.
"I went through a lot of emotions, and my soul just leaped out of my body and I just wrote music", says Meeks, sitting on a sofa in the band’s Louisville studio and jawing with the cigarette. Recording for Days of the New II is under way there; the album is set for a spring release. Meeks says it’s a continuation of the debut’s driving all-acoustic sound, but says the new material is of another magnitude.
"It’s much bigger than the first record", he says. "It’s musical, but it’s big. My voice is bigger. I can scream harder...and the music’s more complex. There’s a lot more sounds, a lot more going on."
Days of the New performs Saturday at the Palace Theatre ($15 advance, $20 day of show, all ages). It’s the band’s first show their and first in Louisville in several months, and Meeks is looking forward to playing for familiar faces. He’s also happy that, unlike the previous show at the Brewery, he’ll be sober.
"I’m seven months sober now," he says. "I quit eating meat, quit drinking caffeine. I’m trying to get the impurities out of my body."
Meeks has an enigmatic reputation, but he says that’s because he wants so much out of life. "Maybe I was raised in Charlestown, but my mind wasn’t. My soul...is huge, because my expectations are so wide. I can’t be fulfilled by one thing. Am I having fun? Yeah, I’m enjoying this. (But) it’s scary sometimes to think all this is happening while I’m 19; I’ve got so many years ahead of me, what am I gonna do if it doesn’t work? All I know is I’m gonna keep makin’ records, man. I want to keep going and going and going."
