Travis Come to America for Obama, New Album

Travis frontman Fran Healy is more excited than most foreigners about the today's U.S. presidential election.

"My God, you're going to have a new president," the Scottish musician tells Spinner of his prediction that Barack Obama will win. "He's such a cool guy."

Healy, calling from his vacation home in New York, is wrapping up a conversation about his band's forthcoming album, 'Ode to J. Smith,' but he can't help but gush about the Democratic candidate.

"America's got such a bad rap because of Bush and it's going to change overnight," Healy says. "It's amazing. It's so exciting. I'm coming back especially for it."

As part of his trip, Healy and the rest of his band will perform one show in the United States at the Troubadour in Los Angeles Tuesday, Nov. 11, as a precursor to a tour Travis will do next year. The date is in support of 'Ode to J. Smith,' a concept album about a man who dies, goes to Heaven and is ex-communicated to Hell, which in his eyes, is Earth.

"I called it 'J. Smith' because he's a faceless guy," Healy says. "There's this idea of a John Doe character, this unidentified person. Why not call him the most basic name you can get in the English language?"

For the first time since his band's 1997 debut 'Good Feeling,' Healy wrote the entire album on electric guitar -- a process that came about by accident.

"Last year, we went on tour and we did some shows with the Killers in South America," Healy explains. "We came back on an airplane and they sent back our equipment, but they lost our guitar amp. They just sent one that they thought was the same one but it was a Vox amp. I plugged my guitar into it and it sounded like s---. I said, 'Oh bloody hell, man. I can't use this.' Out of interest, I had this guitar that never sounded good before through the amp that they lost. I plugged in to this Vox amp and it sounded amazing."

Much like the album's concept itself, here's to things being always being what they seem.

Meanwhile, the band recently finished filming a video for the first single off of 'Ode,' the haunting 'Song to Self.' Check out the new video below.