Eve 6 Photo: RCA
"When I drink I just feel like being naked." — Eve 6's Max Collins

When penning Eve 6's "Think Twice," singer/bassist Max Collins bucked the first rule of writing. Instead of writing what he knew, Collins put himself in someone else's shoes and the fit was less than comfortable.

"No one was touching my girl at the time," Collins said of the song whose chorus threatens that an adulterer reconsider fooling with his woman. "I didn't write the song about anything that I was going through, so it was a bit of a struggle because that's not the way I normally write songs. But as I was writing it, I put myself in that place and I can't say that I liked it."

On Monday and Tuesday, Eve 6 were shooting a video for the tune, the first single off the band's third album, It's All in Your Head, due July 22, according to an RCA spokesperson. Directed by Bryan Barber (Outkast, Jagged Edge), the clip features Collins in a party setting, futilely trying to escape an intrusive camera's eye. That scenario is interspersed with performance footage and scenes of a couple's relationship gone awry.

"It's supposed to mimic the paranoia of the song," Collins said of his role. "[It's about] feeling alone even though there are lots of people in the room."

It's hard to say if he felt alone — or just a draft — when he bared all to roam the halls of a Pennsylvania hotel last month, an act that resulted in his arrest and a fine (see "Eve 6 Singer's Naked Romp Through Hotel Ends In Arrest").

"When I drink I just feel like being naked," he revealed. "Being around our group of guys — bandmembers and crew — who are all friends from high school, it's easy for us to digress ... You know, when you're little and you're doing something you shouldn't be and you get overcome by laugher. That's sort of the goal when we get that bored. So it can be anything. Normally it's just silliness. Harmless stuff. A little too much booze probably plays a small part of it too."

Not too long ago, Collins and bandmates guitarist Jon Siebels and drummer Tony Fagenson wondered if they'd ever get the chance to lose their pants in a hotel again. Following their 1998 self-titled debut, which went on to sell more than 1.4 million copies largely due to the quick-worded hit single "Inside Out," the trio was poised to pick up on the high point where they exited. Instead, the decidedly more poppy Horrorscope debuted at #34 on the Billboard albums chart in July 2000, and promptly sunk. Less than three months later, it was out of the top 200.

Horrorscope would be resuscitated a year later, however, thanks to second single, "Here's to the Night," and it would go on to sell more than 657,000 copies. But while the band was on the road supporting it, doubts and anxieties that Eve 6 might have just been a passing fad were it not for a second wind on the wings of a prom theme surfaced.

"There was a feeling like, 'We want to keep doing this, but are we going to be able to?' " Collins explained. "There were times when we weren't sure we wanted to keep going, even."

A constant source of inspiration through those troubled times was Eve 6's fans. Despite sluggish record sales, concerts were packed — all Collins had to do was look at the line of faces in the front row singing along to all their songs — not just the singles — to know that Eve 6 had much more to offer.

"The touring was awesome at that point," he said, "so we just had to throw ourselves into that gear and forget about all that other stuff."

The new album's title alludes to that bout of uncertainty and Collins said he's since adopted it as something of a mantra whenever undue panic sets in. The result is an older and wiser Collins who said It's All in Your Head is the band's most honest album yet.

"We've grown up as individuals and with this record, we realized what we are. We don't have to try to be anything we're not. We write simple songs about life in general. We're not a band with a lifestyle that we're advertising. We're far from that. By realizing that, it's allowed us to write more honest, vulnerable emotional tunes."