Travis's catchy radio single "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" is as inescapable these days as a spring storm. But when the Scottish band signed on as the opening act for Oasis's U.S. tour last month, nobody could have predicted that the upstarts would not only win over audiences from coast to coast with their dreamy tunes but also proceed to beat out the tour's headliners in weekly record sales. Travis--the hottest U.K. music export since, well, Oasis--went on to play 12 sold-out shows on its own, performing for a raucous crowd on Late Night With Conan O'Brien and watch their first U.S. release, The Man Who, start marching up the charts. Their video was just added to MTV's Buzz Bin, they're playing The Late Show With David Letterman on June 28, and they're touring the States again in July and September.
"It's been totally amazing," says Travis's frontman, Fran Healy, in his thick Glaswegian brogue. "At every single show, there's been a standing ovation. People are going mental. We come out of the theatre at the end of the show, and people are going, 'That was a great show. Who was that band that came on first?' They get the flier in their hand and they're like, 'Ah, that's who they are: Travis'."
Americans are just figuring our who Travis are, but back home they're already superstars, having sold 2.5 million copies of The Man Who overseas last year and winning two Brit Awards--the U.K. equivalent of the Grammy--for the Best Band and Best Album. And they're not exactly newcomers. The band got together ten years ago, when they were students at the Glasgow School of Art. They played bars and festivals before recording 1997's Good Feeling, which was never released in United States.
Healy still looks more like a pensive art student than a rock star, wearing khaki cargo pants and a green army jacket with a patch that states what could be the band's slogan: Mean People Suck. His closest confidantes are his mother, Marion and his girfriend, makeup artist Nora Kryst, 33, to whom he dedicated the album and his awards. Modest and calm, the members of Travis don't bicker, have never broken up, and haven't grabbed headlines for drug-fueled ways. Travus have no limelight seekers, and Healy cites ego as a "pain in the butt."
"The most important thing of all is the song, and without songs, a band is nothing," he says. "A band is like a medium. Artists come and go--the art stays around forever."
Indeed, Travis may be the savior of thinking man's rock. "We don't fit in with Korn or Limp Bizkit or Blink 182 or anything like that," say Healy. But if their thoughtful songs are popular on the radio, that's just fine with them. "For us, winning all the awards is just a nice indicator that the music and the songs are touching people in a good way," says Healy. "Generally, people the world over will be leveled by the same thing."
Healy has been leveled plenty himself: His mom left his father when he was just a toddler, and his parents fought viciously for custody. Now that Travis are successful, his father, Frank, whom he hasn't seen in ten years, continually speaks to the British press about Healy. He posed, for example, for Q magazine watching Travis on TV with a sad expression on his face. "He's a total embarassment," Healy says of his estranged father, a retired truck driver.
As if he needs to prove himself more humble, the singer-songwriter says that he really believes that Travis's songs belong to the fans. "We did a signing yesterday, and people came up and said, 'These songs have just gotten me through loads and loads of stuff.' And I say, 'That's great, they're your songs, they're not mine.' This ownership thing--I hate that. I don't believe in that at all."
US Weekly
June 2000
Thanks to Victoria for sending in this article.
Scottish sensation Travis wins big on radio and the road
