The Fray knew its second album was a big deal. So the bandmates sat down in intense writing sessions. They threw away songs they'd already tested live.

And when they got done with a six-week recording session in Sausalito, Calif., they knew they'd blown it.

Instead of handing in their album, they went back to management and their record label and asked for another chance - more time, more money.

"We didn't quite have done what we'd planned on having done. We had to call the manager and label and say we had to wait," drummer Ben Wysocki said earlier this week.

And despite sales of more than three million worldwide for the 2005 debut album How to Save a Life, requesting a little more time felt like a huge failure.

"At that moment it was extremely difficult," said guitarist/songwriter Joe King. "Going into Sausalito I thought we had all the songs written. We went right from the road to the sessions and writing for months. When we realized we didn't have everything it was deflating. How are we going to pull anything out?"

The pair, along with singer/songwriter Isaac Slade and guitarist Dave Welsh, knew they could do better.

"You don't wanna be another one of those bands that had one good record and didn't quite have it in them to do it again. We definitely had those doubts ourselves. We wanted to prove to ourselves and to other people we could do it," Wysocki said.

"There wasn't any specific aim other than making sure this record was a step forward. The worst thing we could do is make How To Save a Life II."

"Maybe it's my perspective because I'm here right now, but it feels massively important," King said. "Artistically we've made the next step. I can't guarantee more sales, but there's no doubt the sophomore record could be the record that could make the band fade away or not be relevant anymore.

"What do you do if it does flop, or you're completely rejected?"

Complete rejection doesn't look likely at this point. The new single, You Found Me, already has sold more than 700,000 copies. The album, titled just The Fray, is due out Tuesday and could debut at No. 1.

And that only builds on the success of How to Save a Life, a record that took them all over the world, not to mention making them Denver's biggest-selling band ever.

"We sold three million copies worldwide of something we didn't think would get out of our basement. Now they want us to do it again," Wysocki said.

"We could have gone another year on that record. We cut that off short. We were sick and tired of touring," King said. "We still didn't go down to South America. We didn't go to China. We didn't go to India, we didn't go to all these countries that were wanting us to come. We just had to cut if off."

"It got super crazy. We got super tired. We didn't pace ourselves very well," Wysocki said. "It's a blessing and a curse. There are bands all over wishing they could travel to radio stations around the world promoting their music . . . I make it out to sound like we had a miserable couple of years, when it was our dreams coming true every day."

Which begs the question: With millions in sales from the first album, was there ever a temptation to simply walk away?

"We definitely joked about that," Wysocki said. "The jokes sort of turned into a fantasy - this 'quit while you're ahead' mentality."

The overwhelming success left the four questioning their own motives. During the wild ride, some of the members got married and had the usual life struggles. Wysocki moved to San Francisco for his wife's school.

"We got five months off after finishing the record, then we played the American Music Awards," said King. "Literally, the day before I'm in my house washing dishes. The next day I'm on the red carpet, cameras flashing, getting interviewed by 100 different people. It's not normal."

"A lot of internal questioning, figuring out who you are," is how King described it. "You go from this normal kind of life - where you're writing songs in the basement and performing at Herman's Hideaway in front of 10 people - to 20,000 people screaming at you, security guards . . . you actually have to find out who you are again.

"You have two different people almost - you've got Joe at home in Denver, where I go down the street or go biking or go to Wash Park. Then the other Joe is on late-night shows, onstage in front of 20,000 people. You almost have to find who that person is again."

That translated into the songwriting process.

"A lot of the first record was about meeting a girl. You want to marry her, you want the togetherness, that honest yearning feeling," King said. "This record, there's a lot of trying to keep the girl. Trying to say, 'OK, I've screwed up in a lot of ways and I'm learning about my self, but don't leave me. Just wait for me. I'm going to get through this.' It's a lot of that."

Return to roots

Getting the aborted album back on track turned out to be easier than expected.

"After being in the studio for six weeks you kinda go crazy. You're tired and drained," King said.

So it was back to Denver and to the drawing board, and the breakthrough came quickly. They'd already done the bulk of the songwriting there. King and Slade used a room at University of Colorado at Denver, their old haunts, to write the new songs.

"We were in a dark room with no windows. It felt like I was in college again in a good way. I was taking a scooter, parking it, paying the meter, getting a ticket when I forgot to pay one day, going in with my laptop and backpack and notebook and writing . . . it had a great feel," King said. "We did that for three weeks or so and probably half the record came out of that."

And the message of the songs was becoming clearer.

"We realized all the songs recorded reflected the year prior. It was a different emotional state, what we were going through," King said. "We were writing about the weird things we were going through at that time . . . Fortunately and unfortunately, our lives and what we've gone through has created a lot of those moments on both sides of the spectrum."

New opportunities

Despite the Fray's insistence that its second album be just so, the fact is a second album may not be as important as it once was.

That's because there are so many other ways to get exposure these days. For example, The Fray's first single, Over My Head (Cable Car) got great exposure through the TV series Grey's Anatomy; this time around, You Found Me got a boost on Lost.

Big Head Todd & the Monsters had a platinum album with Sister Sweetly in 1993, but that was followed by sharp drops in sales for its next two albums. Yet the band thrives to this day, making a good living from playing live music.

"Unless you were selling mega units you didn't make money," said Mark Bliesener, who managed BHTM during the '90s. "But it was a great loss-leader for building your live gate and the quality of the venues you could play."

Today's tanking recording industry is able to help fewer bands these days, though The Fray is one of them.

"Is the sophomore slump still a realistic threat? I guess," Bliesener said. "But everything today is so much about setup. They've had four years of setup (since the debut album) for this new record. It sounds like they're off to a great start."

The Fray is doing numbers that veteran acts can only dream of. The 14-years-in-the-making Chinese Democracy from Guns N' Roses sold only 530,000 copies. In the old days, "that would have sold a million in the first week," Bliesener noted.

BHTM managed to grow their fan base without major hit albums. After Sister Sweetly sold 1.2 million copies, the follow-ups sold less - Strategem sold 284,000 and Beautiful World 315,000, according to Soundscan.

"They've done a fantastic job of inclusion on their Web site. They've always cultivated the fan base since the earliest days. They instinctively understood that you have to build a base," Bliesener said.

"Even in this day and age, there's nothing more powerful than doing killer word-of-mouth shows - great shows where people stand around the water cooler and say to their buddy, 'Hey, I saw this great band last night.' "

The Fray's success, Bliesener said, "helps everyone in this town. It sealed the deal - it's not just a country rock place."

That success continues, and the madness is gearing up again, Wysocki noted.

"You Found Me is the No. 1 single in Australia. We have to go there in March."

brownm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2674

Selling points

A look at U.S. sales figures for The Fray:

* Album: 2.36 million copies of How to Save a Life (includes digital and CDs)

* Digital download sales: Over My Head (Cable Car) single (2.13 million); You Found Me (708,000)

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