The Sad Story of Travis Meeks

To say that Days Of The New’s history was tumultuous, would be an understatement. The band’s origins date back to 1995.

Travis Meeks’ Unstable Childhood

Going up in Charlestown, Indiana, frontman Travis Meeks had a musician father, named Gary who recorded with The Box Tops, fronted by Alex Chilton. Gary bonded with his son over their mutual love of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. However, despite their shared love of music, Travis had a very unstable upbringing that likely contributed to his volatile behaviour.

To distract himself from external events in his life, Travis found comfort in music. His father would recall to LEO Weekly, “I had a little recording setup at home. When he would get all whacked out, he’d get in his room and record these songs, acoustic. I was just blown away by it. That’s when he went ahead and said he would take the bull by the horns, doing the acoustical stuff. Travis was a real introvert. I always knew he was. The music was kind of his saving grace. It was his therapy and his way of communicating.”

Travis Meeks Follows in His Father’s Footsteps

You can’t really understand Travis Meeks without first knowing the story of his father. His father wasn’t a great role model. In fact, Travis’ later life would mirror that of his dad.

At the age of 13, Gary Meeks would start playing guitar professionally. It was a local radio DJ who took notice of Gary. The DJ knew people in the music industry in Memphis and opened doors for Gary to start working in the studio at the young age of 16.

By the mid-70’s, Gary’s manager was urging the young musician to relocate to Nashville and try a stab at being a country artist. He recalled to LEO Weekly, “At that time, in 1974, all the Memphis guys moved to Nashville, and it ultimately led to the Nashville sound. I wanted to rock n’ roll, and wasn’t much interested in Nashville at the time. The Memphis thing was more rock and blues.”

By the age of 19, Gary was a touring musician, but life on the road was difficult and he took a liking to alcohol. He recalled to the same publication, “I’d hear all the stories about Elvis. I’d see him and think, ‘He’s the king, and he don’t seem like he’s having too much fun.’ You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist. It’s so hard in the business because everybody wants to stroke you. It gets pretty sick.”

Travis’ Father Disappears For Several Years

Gary would marry Travis’ mother but the couple split up by the time their son was just 2 years old. Gary would disappear for several years and wouldn’t reemerge in his son’s life until he was about 6 and finally sober. Around this time, Travis started living with his father.

Travis struggled in school due to his psychotic episodes but it wasn’t until he was an adult that he would be finally diagnosed as having Aspergers, a milder form of autism. He became entrenched in drugs at a young age and was in and out of treatment centres between the ages of 11 and 15. Gary transferred Travis to special schools, but it did little to alleviate his behaviour problems. Despite all this, Travis still had his music.

In the mid-90’s, Travis would meet drummer Matt Taul and bassist Jesse Vest who shared a mutual love of bands like Metallica and Pantera. The trio originally played experimental rock and groove metal calling themselves Dead Reckoning.

Dead Reckoning Becomes Days Of The New

The band would move to Louisville, Kentucky and play clubs in the city. They changed their sound to be more acoustic and added guitarist Todd Whitener. Meeks’ vocal style would see comparisons to both Alice in Chains’ frontman Layne Staley and The Doors’ Jim Morrison. The band also underwent a name change around this time to Days Of The New.

“To make that first album happen, I had to pull my hair out to make these guys focus.” – Travis Meeks

Travis had written Days of the New’s first album pretty much all by himself, admitting to Billboard magazine that his bandmates were little surprised at his proposal to change the group’s sound, “Bringing the band together, Days Of The New, was one of the most difficult things. Because we’re talking, the music was already written, the guitar player didn’t know how to play an acoustic guitar. I had to teach the drummer how to lay back and understand that the acoustic guitar was the main instrument. To make that first album happen, I had to pull my hair out to make these guys focus. I spent all my time trying to get these guys to focus.”

Days Of The New would win a Battle of the Bands competition in Louisville, which brought them to the attention of R.E.M. and Nirvana producer Scott Litt who signed the group. Days Of The New was the first band Litt signed on his label, Outpost Recordings, which was distributed by Geffen Records. Litt would go on to produce their debut album which was released in 1997.

Their first album, also known as Yellow, would spawn three huge singles including “Touch, Peel and Stand”, “The Downtown” and “Shelf in the Room”. The album would go on to sell over 1.5 million copies.

During the promotional cycle for their first album, Meeks was hinting at where the band could go next, telling MTV, “If you listen to the current album, there’s a world flavour to it, an ethnic feel. There’ll be a lot of that on the new record, too. And female vocals will match that. There’ll be more Spanish influences on the guitar, and we’re going to have a Celtic feel present, also.”

Days Of The New’s Album Success Brings About Internal Problems

The band’s success brought about a lot of internal problems. During the tour to support their debut record, MTV was starting to report that following a cancelled show in Florida, the band members appeared physically injured with some of them sporting black eyes and bruises after an apparent brawl with each other.

Some critics weren’t fans of the group, pointing to their youth and writing them off as a hard-rock version of bubblegum pop stars like Hanson, or America’s answer to the Australian grunge band Silverchair.

“All I know is that I’ve had a pretty f’d-up life but I back it up with music, with the words and emotions I express in the songwriting.” – Travis Meeks

Meeks responded to critics telling MTV, “All I know is that I’ve had a pretty f’d-up life but I back it up with music, with the words and emotions I express in the songwriting. We’re not trying to market my problems, we’re not trying to sell a ton of records with it. We’re just being ourselves, and if critics are trying to dismiss that, well, critics will be critics. I’ve met a lot of people on tour who understand what I’m getting at. And that’s comfortable.”

It was during the same promotion cycle that the band’s label and his bandmates would see just how unpredictable and volatile Travis Meeks’ behaviour could be.

In the summer of 1998, Days Of The New got a strange opening slot touring with both Metallica and Alice in Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell. Given that the band’s sound was drastically different from Metallica, Meeks would criticize the billing, claiming the band should have been touring with Dave Matthews.

Travis Meeks Lashes Out Against Bandmates

Ahead of the tour with Metallica, Meeks would lash out against his bandmates in the press and go on to say he would be firing them from the group. Label executives scrambled to brush off Meeks’ claims in the press, but by the end of 1998, the original lineup of the band was done.

Following the dissolution of the group, Meeks posted a rambling message on a fan board where he apologized for giving the impression that Days Of The New was a band and promoting it as a band format, “It wasn’t truly a band format. It is my fault for leading you on and setting you up to get attached to the prior members.”

Meeks claimed that his bandmates left because they were jealous of him because he wrote most of their songs and collected a bulk of the publishing money. It had been rumoured for a long time that Meeks fired the other band members, a claim that he has since denied.

“That material, injected with lush orchestration, Middle Eastern instrumentation and experimental vocals did not mesh with the band’s Metallica-esque sensibilities.” – Rolling Stone Magazine

Rolling Stone published an article on February 6, 1999, confirming the band’s breakup, quoting the group’s manager who cited “artistic differences,” for the split. Rolling Stone wrote at the time, “That material, injected with lush orchestration, Middle Eastern instrumentation and experimental vocals did not mesh with the band’s Metallica-esque sensibilities.”

The band’s manager was quoted in Rolling Stone magazine as saying, “When you hear the new music, you will understand why these guys had to split. It doesn’t rock towards that metal influence. It’s more symphonic and those guys didn’t want to be limited by that. Those three will be fine. They are in the studio doing their own thing and looking for a singer now.”

Meeks would keep the Days Of The New band name while the group’s ex-members would go on to form the band C14 before renaming themselves Tantric. Meeks’ former bandmates had some success with their own endeavour with Tantric’s debut album going platinum but following their brief success, they saw a further decline in record sales with each subsequent release.

By the late 90’s, Meeks spent time at his Distillery Commons studio in Louisville, Kentucky and by late 1998, he had assembled close to 30 songs which formed the basis of Days Of The New’s second album, also known as the Green album or Days Of The New 2.

Nicole Scherzinger Joins Travis Meeks on Sophomore Album

While the band’s debut record was known for being fairly stripped down and acoustic, their sophomore record was much more bombastic, featuring a choir, orchestral arrangements, female vocals and even electronic percussion and a young female singer named Nicole Scherzinger, who paused her studies at Wright State University to work with Meeks.

The frontman claimed he wanted a female singer on the record to, “Deliver some world operatic textures and sounds.” Scherzinger would perform on six of the album’s songs and toured with the group.

Meeks would claim that the two had a fling, despite the fact that she had a boyfriend. Following the band’s tour to support Green, Scherzinger and Meeks grew apart with Meeks claiming that she didn’t seem to understand music very well.

“The songs are intentionally more direct and more confrontational.” – Travis Meeks

In 1998, Travis told Billboard magazine what he hoped to accomplish with the group’s second album, “I wanted it to be deeper, have richer texture. The album is closer to my creative vision, bigger better sounds in arrangements where all kinds of ideas can converge whether it be orchestral bits or rhythm samples. The songs are intentionally more direct and more confrontational. I want to shake people up. I want them to walk away from this record thinking long and hard, not so much about the music, but about their lives.”

During the band’s tour on their second album, Meeks dealt with a kidney stone and became addicted to pain medication before moving onto other drugs. Despite being well received by critics and fans, the album didn’t meet commercial expectations, selling around 450,000 copies, which was significantly less than their debut album.

Meeks turned his attention to recording the group’s third album when there was a major shakeup at the label. Geffen Records was acquired by Interscope who dissolved Outpost Records, the label that the band was signed to. Jordan Schur, who was responsible for helping Limp Bizkit become popular, was assigned to work with Days Of The New.

“No one at Interscope had any feelings for Travis.” – Rick Smith, Travis Meeks’ Manager

Rick Smith, Meeks’ manager, told LEO Weekly, “No one at Interscope had any feelings for Travis. It was a situation where nobody understood. They wanted a single from him.” The band sank half a million dollars to record their third album, only to have Schur force the band to re-record the material.

Days Of The New released Red, also known as Days Of The New 3, two weeks after 9/11 and it sputtered out, only selling 80,000 copies. Rick Rubin took notice of the band and wanted to sign the group to his Def Jam Recordings label but Interscope didn’t want to let the band out of their contract.

In 2005, Meeks appeared on the A&E’s Intervention which chronicled his struggle with addiction. It was around this time, he started to write Days Of The New’s fourth album, tentatively titled Purple, however, it would never see the light of day.

“I did not have the tools to stand up with Asperger’s and I had no one to back me up.” – Travis Meeks

It was around this time that Travis Meeks was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. Meeks told LEO Weekly, “I did not have the tools to stand up with Asperger’s and I had no one to back me up. People kissed my ass all the time. They enabled me. I got my ass kissed so much that it just cornered me. I would complain because people would kiss my ass. I couldn’t stand it.”

In 2008, Meeks gave an interview to a Louisville, Kentucky publication giving an update on the band’s upcoming record, claiming the fourth release would have a very theatrical sound incorporating instruments such as the cello and harp. Several songs planned for the record would be performed live including “Where It Ends”, “Superhero” and “Nothing is Wrong”.

Mike Starr Found Dead in Travis Meeks’ Home

Meeks stayed out of the news until 2011 when former Alice in Chains bassist Mike Starr was found dead in his home. Starr had been staying with Meeks and his wife and was found unresponsive in his bedroom. The cause of death was ruled an overdose.

Meeks re-emerged in 2014 when it was announced he would be reuniting with the original lineup of Days Of The New to do a summer tour and record a new EP. It was a reason to celebrate for longtime fans, but the reunion tour would end in shambles.

At a reunion show in Missouri, the band abruptly ended their set due to Meeks being too inebriated to play, according to reports. During that show, bassist Jesse Vest abruptly grabbed the microphone and told the crowd this was the band’s final show of the tour.

“We do want to let it be clear that Travis was in no way pressured into this reunion, in fact it was very much the other way around.” – Travis Meeks’ bandmates

Meeks’ bandmates released several statements to fans claiming there are many things to address and they didn’t want to keep feeding the negativity, “We do want to let it be clear that Travis was in no way pressured into this reunion, in fact it was very much the other way around. Travis literally begged us to do the reunion tour on the phone, in text and in person and he had burned so many bridges in his career that no one would hire him to do a show anymore, for the fear that he would not show up. He knew that the original lineup would lend credibility to this project and it would help him rebuild his career.”

In the years that followed, Meeks disappeared from the public spotlight with news of a few arrests and a single performance in 2018 in Madison, Indiana making the rounds.

Those close to Meeks claim he was back living in Utah. In August 2020, Meeks was arrested for being drunk in public in Arizona and earlier this year, reports surfaced of unreleased material or possibly older bootlegged material showing up on streaming platforms including Spotify without any promotion. Some people debated whether it’s part of the band’s long awaited fourth album.

Like this story?  Check out Courtney Love Feud With Kathleen Hanna?

Check out our YouTube channel