Long Island newcomers Nine Days are getting ready to head out on the road for a summer tour in support of their major-label debut, "The Madding Crowd," and its lead single, "Absolutely (Story Of A Girl)," which is currently climbing the pop radio charts.

The video for "Absolutely (Story Of A Girl)" is currently in heavy rotation on both MTV and MTV2, and Nine Days frontman John Hampson and guitarist-vocalist Brian Desveaux recently dropped by the MTV Radio Network and talked about the song's jealous origins.

"It's actually kind of funny," Hampson said."[We were] doing a show on Long Island. It was an outdoor show, and there was a big deck that we were playing on, and we got there really early for sound check. I was there with my girlfriend, and as typical, we were annoying each other.

"She's

just aggravating me, so she walked [away] and started talking to somebody on the side of the club. So I'm just sitting there, and I was literally thinking to myself, 'Man, she drives me nuts. She totally drives me crazy.' But as I was thinking this, I was watching her, just looking at her, and she was having a conversation with someone and just started laughing.

"And I swear I thought to myself, 'Y'know, she totally drives me crazy, but I absolutely love her when she's happy, when she's smiling," Hampson continued. "I don't know what happened, but it just came out of my head. I started singing that chorus, and I kind of picked up the guitar, and the song kind of wrote itself. Pretty much ten minutes later, it was done. It was one of those things."

"Which is the best kind," Desveaux interjected.

"It was a welcome thing to happen," Hampson said, "but it's pretty funny how the slightest thing can just influence you and set you down some road.

That's what came out of [that incident]: a three-minute song." [RealAudio]

After wrapping up its own stint of dates, Nine Days have signed on to open several separate shows for Savage Garden and Sister Hazel, and on June 22 Hampson and Desveaux will serve as celebrity judges for "Say What Karaoke," live from the MTV Beach House in San Diego.

Nine Days have also signed on to appear at this year's edition of the Hard Rock Rockfest, slated for July 22 at the Chicago Motor Speedway, featuring Metallica, Kid Rock, Stone Temple Pilots, and Third Eye Blind, among others (see [article id="1430795"]"Metallica, Kid Rock, 3EB Rev Up For Rockfest 2000."[/article])

Dates where you can catch Nine Days in the next few weeks:

• 6/16 - Vancouver, BC @ Richard's On Richards
• 6/19 - Santa Cruz, CA @ The Catalyst
• 6/21 - San Diego, CA @ The Casbah
• 6/22 - Santa Ana, CA @ Galaxy Theatre