It all started a few years ago. A fivesome from Atlanta known as Crawlspace was just another band trying to make it in the impossible world that is the music industry.

But it all changed in 1996 when the band was signed by indie powerhouse TVT Records. Due to legal reasons, Crawlspace were forced to change its name to Sevendust. They recorded an album, and the rest is history.

Turned onto music by his father, John Connolly formed Sevendust with drummer Morgan Rose.

“He wanted to get together and have a bunch of guys that like to get fucked up together without any problems,” Connolly says.

Now the band is constantly touring after two years on the road. Pushing its self-titled debut release (which has been certified Gold), Sevendust went immediately back in the studio to record the follow up, “Home.”

This time around, the band had the honor of hiring big name producer, Toby Wright, who has worked with the such artists as Korn, Alice In Chains, Fishbone, Chris Cornell, the Wallflowers, Jeff Buckley and Primus.

“Toby Wright made it just a whole different experience, he just took it to a new level,” Connolly says. “He came in and focused the band and made us work really hard and find something we wanted to try and believe in.”

Coming in straight off the road to record, Sevendust, consisting of Connolly, guitarist Clint Lowery, bassist Vince Hornsby, drummer Rose and frontman Lajon Witherspoon, found themselves secluded to a barn in the middle of nowhere.

“You have your whole life to write your first album and then three months to write your second,” Connolly says. “That was a time that was needed and was fun. We were able to come back together as a band the way we like to and not have to worry about doing a show or interviews. We were able to concentrate on the music. Everything was right; it was a magical time.”

Along with the success and the new record came a newfound maturity in the group’s music. With sales towering higher than 500,000 copies, Sevendust was able to be more creative with its.

“I feel like an album is like a piece of art, and you can’t always draw the same fucking picture on the same canvas,” Connolly says. “We had to change and weren’t afraid to change, and we can’t wait to do the third album.”

With “Home” gaining momentum, the band has already released its second single off the album (“Waffle”) and brought in another big name to direct the video.

Marcos Siega, who is responsible for Blink 182’s “All The Small Things” and 311’s “Flowing,” was ordered to work his magic with Sevendust.

“It was cold as hell but it was great,” Connolly says of the video shoot. “Marcos made everything really relaxed and comfortable. We just did what we normally do naturally and did our live show with a little bit of acting. It wasn’t nothing too hard; we won’t win no fucking awards from it, but it was actually real fun.”

“Waffle,” along with Sevendust’s first release “Denial,” are building steady growth on MTV and the band couldn’t be happier. But there’s just something about that channel.

“I don’t always like MTV and stuff like that, but they’re backing us and that’s cool,” Connolly explains. “Cause I feel like they tend to hurt bands at times. They’ll play you for a fucking week, and the next thing you know, you have to do a new album ’cause you ain’t the buzz clip no more.”

So Connolly says that by building the band’s following and having people come out and respect the group as a live band is working just fine.

At one point during a 21 month long tour, Sevendust found itself occasionally doing two shows a day — one in the afternoon with the Ozzfest tour and then a club show at night.

But when musicians love playing live, they can play as much as they want … almost.

“It’s got a lot of energy; it’s an onslaught man, a wreck. We try to wreck shit every night,” Connolly says with an obvious evil smile on his face.

Sevendust is currently doing a few warm up shows and will soon fill an opening slot for Creed, a spot they welcomed with open arms.

“We’ve been friends with Creed for a while now, and we weren’t really surprised. They’ve been standing up for us and trying to work with us for a long time,” Connolly says excitedly. “It was just a pleasure for them to even ask us to go out for three and a half months.”

The Creed tour raises the eyebrows of skeptics, who wonder how the bands will click stylistically. Sevendust has a much darker image than Creed.

“I don’t find it any problem at all, because we’ve played shows before with good crowd response,” Connolly says. “I think [Creed’s] second album is a lot heavier than that first one. We look forward to having a good time on the tour.”

Though Sevendust has met a lot of people, sold a lot of records and has made it onto MTV, the band is the first to admit it owes it all to the fans. Hence the reason it tours as much as it does, even when it becomes so hectic is because it has the motivation.

“Those people that come out and see us, never being able to take this for granted, because we’ve always had a dream to be able to do it, and I think it would be foolish for us to not be able to have the energy to do the show when this has always been our dream,” Connolly says.

And that dream reached a peak last summer when Sevendust landed a spot on the Woodstock ’99 bill.

“It was probably the best experience we had,” Connolly says. “To be embraced by so many people, it was just a great time. We smoked a joint on the stage; it was beautiful. It was huge, man, to be able to see all those people, and I met Perry Farrell and everybody was there, Willie Nelson. It was an incredible day with so many different kinds of music.”

In their early days, Sevendust had a following no bigger than 500. But now, with 500,000 fans and counting, the guys are still blown away at the amount of success the band has begun to endure.

By keeping so busy, the band has barely had time to take notice, which has simplified handling success. Connolly and his bandmates couldn’t even make it to their own Gold party when the first album reached the 500,000 sales mark.

“Everyone’s fine; I think we don’t really know what hit us ’cause we work every single day,” Connolly says. “So to us it’s the same thing, 13 guys on the bus.”

After the Creed tour, the band has no plans of slowing down as it has planned shows and tours with Korn, Slipknot and Pantera among others.

But Connolly and his bandmates like to take things one show at a time and make sure they spread a little Sevendust everywhere they go.