Long Island Sound: Nine Days will dawn again

For a moment, Nine Days was everywhere.

In the summer of 2000, blaring out of car radios and TV sets was the unmistakable sound of Long Island. "This is the story of a girl," the song began memorably, before releasing a torrent of images and catchy guitar riffs that lodged themselves into so many brains that summer. And on Aug. 5, 2000, "Absolutely (Story of a Girl)" pushed Aaliyah's hit "Try Again" from the top spot of Billboard's pop charts to become the No. 1 song in the country.

Nine Days singer-guitarist John Hampson says it was a week the band from Deer Park will never forget. "We were at Z100 in the morning, and they announced that we were No. 1," Hampson says. "We were playing a sold-out show at Irving Plaza that night. We got our first tour bus that night. We also got our set cut that night because we were the middle band in a three-band show. And we fired our road manager that day . . . and lost a few grand in merch money."

"It was certainly eventful," says Hampson with a laugh, remembering the experiences nearly 10 years later. "What a day!"

Brian Desveaux, the band's other singer-guitarist, said those memories seem like a dream now. "We never thought we'd put out a single, let alone have a No. 1 hit," Desveaux says. "But I'd been dreaming of that happening since I was 7 years old, when I first heard KISS."

A lot has happened in the past decade to Nine Days - Hampson, Desveaux, keyboardist Jeremy Dean, bassist Nick Dimichino and drummer Vincent Tattanelli - but that summer remains their biggest triumph. To commemorate it, the band, which still tours together occasionally, wanted to hold a special anniversary party to celebrate "Absolutely" and its gold album "The Madding Crowd" at the YMCA Boulton Center for the Performing Arts in Bay Shore July 30.

"That album is really important to us," Desveaux says. "We're going to do the entire album from front to back. It'll be interesting to play 'Absolutely' in the middle of the set, since we usually play it at the end. We got the idea to do it from the last Springsteen tour, where he played one of his albums in the middle of the set. It'll be the first time we've ever played the album in its entirety."

Hampson says the show will basically be in three parts - "the pre-'Madding Crowd' days, back when we were playing the Village Pub all the time, 'Madding Crowd' in its entirety and some newer stuff."

"There was a lot of hard work that went into that moment - five years went into those moments," Hampson says. "And it turned into a lifelong memory. My kids are six and a half now, and they're at the age where they can watch our videos and say, 'That's my dad.' I can totally appreciate what we accomplished with no pressure to try to get it back. . . . Even when it was happening, I was grounding myself, thinking, 'It can't stay like this. It can't keep going at this level.' "

After all, it was a pretty heady time.

"When we went to L.A. to record the record, we thought we were living the dream then," Desveaux says. "I remember John and I were in a hot tub after a long session at the studio, saying, 'Can you believe this?' And it got even bigger. We played the inauguration party of President George W. Bush with Destiny's Child. We played RFK Stadium with Rage Against the Machine. We went on the road with Tonic and Third Eye Blind and bands we listened to in the '90s. We had a bus that we're pretty sure used to belong to Mötley Crüe. . . . It was great, but we didn't really want to touch the sheets."

For Hampson, the strongest memories came closer to home, playing on "Live With Regis & Kathie Lee" and launching the album at Roosevelt Field Mall. "We did an in-store at Sam Goody, and I think we sold 400 CDs that night," he says. "It was just an incredible moment looking at all the displays, and all the endcaps were ours. It was completely surreal. I kept thinking, 'How is this actually happening?' "

Like so many bands from the early Aughts, Nine Days ran into problems with its record company when it came time to release the follow-up to "The Madding Crowd," and it never came out.

"We had a really hard time in the industry," say Desveaux, who lives in Nashville now and recently toured as part of Miranda Lambert's band. "And we're still slowly just getting back on our feet."

While Desveaux is eager to put out a new solo record and start touring full-time again, Hampson, who has released two solo projects, including last year's "Shiny New Album," while teaching English full-time at Wantagh High School, isn't quite so sure.

"We were really put through the wringer," he says. "I honestly have to stop and think, 'How can I put myself through this again?' I want to make music, and I will keep writing songs, but I have to do it without having to sacrifice my family and my dignity.

"If the opportunity to do it full-time came again, it would be an interesting choice I would have to make. I hustled from the time I was 18 until I was 30 - I killed myself hustling. Right now, I'm very fulfilled, and I keep finding cool situations to get people to hear my music."

After all, Nine Days doesn't have anything to prove anymore. It's already reached No. 1, and nothing will ever change that. It is permanently woven into their story.

WHO Nine Days

WHEN | WHERE 8 p.m. July 30, YMCA Boulton Center for the Performing Arts, 37 W. Main St., Bay Shore

INFO $22; 631-969-1101, boultoncenter.org

More LIers who topped the charts in the '00s

BY GLENN GAMBOA, glenn.gamboa@newsday.com

When Nine Days topped the pop charts in 2000 with "Absolutely (Story of a Girl)," it joined an elite group of Long Island acts landing a No. 1 single in the Aughts. Here's a look at the others in the exclusive club:

ASHANTI - Glen Cove's "Princess of Hip-Hop and R&B" took the top spot twice in 2002 with Ja Rule on "Always on Time" and on her own with "Foolish."

MARIAH CAREY - The Greenlawn native landed at No. 1 four times in the Aughts - with "98 Degrees" on "Thank God I Found You" in 2000, the long-running "We Belong Together" and "Don't Forget About Us" in 2005 and "Touch My Body" in 2008.

SHAGGY - The Valley Stream-based reggae star snagged No. 1 in 2000 with "Angel" and "It Wasn't Me."