Exactly eleven years after frontman Shannon Hoon died of a drug overdose, Blind Melon have announced that they have reformed and are working on material for a new album. Twenty five year old Texan singer Travis Warren has stepped in to replace Hoon, after he originally approached guitarist Christopher Thorn and bassist Brad Smith to help him with solo material.

Blind Melon singer Shanoon Hoon died of a cocaine overdose while on tour promoting his band’s second album Soup in October 1995. The band attempted to continue without him but gradually drifted apart and officially disbanded in March 1999. They last released new material on the Nico compilation in 1996, which was named after Hoon’s daughter Nico Blue, and featured various unreleased recordings, including Hoon’s last song, which he recorded on an answering machine.

The band’s reformation initially started out as a joke. “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,” guitarist Rogers Stevens told Billboard. “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?’”

After that, the band (completed by drummer Glen Graham) decided it might be fun to play together again, so convened in a studio. “I was really sceptical in the beginning about doing anything, and none of us are into doing any kind of nostalgia trip,” says Stevens. “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 scepticism.”

Since then the band have been writing and recording and Stevens confirms that they have completed three new songs entitled Make a Difference, Harmful Belly and For My Friends.

They are hoping to have the new album finished in early 2007 and begin touring shortly afterwards.