Louisville, Ky.-based Tantric [ tickets ], which released its self-titled debut album on Maverick in February, has just landed one of the two support slots on the first leg of Creed's 2002 tour.

The album, which includes the rock radio single "Astounded," features shrewd combinations of acoustic and electric guitar textures. At the core of the group are three 22-year-olds, drummer Matt Taul, bassist Jesse Vest and guitarist Todd Whitener, formerly of the group Days Of the New.

Days of the New was something of a phenomenon four years ago. A platinum debut album landed them coveted opening slots with Aerosmith and Metallica. But when conflicts arose with lead vocalist Travis Meeks (which included fisticuffs between Vest and Meeks at a Florida tour stop), the writing was on the wall--the band split up in November 1998.

Faced with the choice of regrouping or pursuing careers in fast food, Taul, Vest and Whitener chose the former and signed the Maverick deal in late 1999.

"We could've fallen apart very easily and each gone our own way," says guitarist Whitener. "The fact that we were able to stay together says a lot about the band's spirit and determination." The band still needed a lead singer, but that problem was quickly solved when they found Detroit native Hugo Ferreira through a mutual friend.

LiveDaily spoke with Whitener about influences, new vocalists and second chances.

LiveDaily: Kind of a nice turnaround for you guys, after the Days of the New breakup.

Todd Whitener: During the time we were in the middle of touring with Days, everything was going great for us, pretty much. Next thing we knew, after that Metallica tour had ended, we found ourselves at home, jobless, and pretty much looking for some kind of direction in all of our lives. It's pretty lucky for anybody to have the opportunity to make it once in this business, much less a second time.

At that point, Jesse and Matt were back working at Hooters, and I was thinking about trying to go back to school. Pretty much trying to redirect our lives. In the midst of going through all that, came the inspiration--we felt like we had a story to talk about.

Let's discuss writing the material for the album.

After all that went down, we felt like we had it all stripped away from us so fast. We had worked so hard, and all of the sudden, we had nothing to show for it but some plaque on the wall. Which is great, but you can only tell the same story so many times. So we talked and decided to stick it out and give it one more shot, and wrote some songs. Couple months went by and we knew we wanted a frontman, somebody who would be able to carry the whole weight of the vocals and whatnot--that’s when Hugo popped into our heads.

How did you meet him?

We met him on one of the Days' tours. He opened up for us, and we partied with him, so we knew we got along with him. We called him up, and he essentially just packed up a U-Haul of all his s--- and came right down.

It was kind of crazy, the first time we ever played and sang our harmonies together--we just knew it. Got those goosebumps. So he moved on down there, and for months we just wrote and wrote and wrote songs. Probably had about 50 songs that we thought were pretty good.

Out of the course of that is where we got lucky with sending demos out, and we got management off that. Then we got lucky and got us a lawyer, and it was just a whole lot of luck and patience.

How did you hook up with producer Toby Wright (Korn, Alice in Chains)?

That was another luck of the draw thing. We were given a list of producers early on, that the record label thought were good ideas. For some reason, I remember seeing his name, and it just stuck out to me. Every single album in his discography was like one of my favorite albums. A lot of the Alice In Chains albums, and he did Korn albums, and he was an engineer on Metallica's "And Justice For All," which is my favorite Metallica record. After all that, I was sold.

Was there some life-changing event that got you into music, or guitar in particular?

I don't know if there was one life-changing thing in particular, but I started playing piano at three or four, and got my first drum kit when I was six. I thought I was going to be a drummer. So I played drums until I was, like, 12. And me and my buddies, we thought we were going to be rappers, we had this group called Def Bass--it was a joke. We made these garage recordings, and we wanted there to be all this boomin' bass in it, like all the rap stuff, but the recordings were always so s---ty, there was no bass in it.

But I got my first guitar when I was 14 years old, on my birthday. Went into this pawn shop, and I came back home and showed it to a friend of mine. He only knew a couple songs, but he knew "Sanitarium" by Metallica. So I learned it, and I learned it so easy that it completely inspired me. Next thing I knew, I was buying chord books, every Metallica book ever written. From there on, it was just full steam ahead to try to get as good as I could as quick as I could.

After the Days of the New breakup, have you been able to play of those songs?

We don't play any Days songs at all, period. It's kind of crazy. I don't like to talk bad about anybody. I do know that we tried everything in our power to keep that band together. We were dyin'--that was our whole life's work, to stay on the road and keep making music. And like I said, we had absolutely zero to show for it except a plaque on the wall.

But if I had to do it all over again, I think I'd do it twice. I think we learned more out of that whole situation than we could have going through anything in life. We learned a lot about people, about our own closest friends, about the business, and about what it takes to accomplish your goals. At least we got that out of it.