Ten years ago, Chris Kilmore was a bored kid kicking around the outskirts of Dillsburg, Pa., working a minimum-wage job at McDonald's and playing DJ at high school dances. Perhaps the times wouldn't have been so hard, the days wouldn't have passed so slowly, if he could have known that, a few years down the road, he would be the DJ for one of the world's most successful contemporary bands, the multi-platinum-selling Incubus.

"I started in Dillsburg. You know, not too many concerts came our way," laughs Kilmore (pictured second from right) during a recent Fly interview. "One of the concerts I saw when I was little was the [DJ] Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince concert. And I saw Jazzy Jeff, and I was just like, 'Yo, man, that dude's sick. I don't know what he's doing, but I want to know what he's doing.'"

After scoring a pair of turntables, Kilmore started spinning in all the, er, hottest clubs in Dillsburg. "I mixed some under-21 clubs on the Carlisle Pike and did all the high school dances and middle school dances and stuff," Kilmore explains. "When I graduated, I was like, 'I'm going to Hollywood.' So I just pretty much up and left with a buddy and went out there. And after two years of me doing the same thing in L.A. that I was doing here, just DJing and stuff like that, just trying to make ends meet, Incubus called me up."

So, Incubus just called him up? Out of the blue? "They found out that I was a DJ, and they needed one. And that was pretty much it," he chuckles. "I tried out - you know, they had a couple of DJs try out - and they called me back the next day and said, 'Hey, we leave in two days for a tour. Can you learn 18 songs?' And I was like, 'Tour? Tour? Yeah, sure, whatever!'" And so, with a phone call, Kilmore's life changed from that of a starving artist who couldn't even afford electricity to that of a rock and roll luminary.

Formed in 1991, Incubus squandered its first several years trying to imitate funk/rock groups like Red Hot Chili Peppers and touring with rap-metal pioneers like Korn and Limp Bizkit. By the time Kilmore joined in February 1998, the band had signed a deal with Epic Records and released its first album, S.C.I.E.N.C.E. "They had done maybe half a year's worth of touring already with an old DJ, and they found out that he really didn't work out as soon as they got on the road," Kilmore laughs.

As luck would have it, Kilmore saddled up with Incubus just as guitarist Mikey Einziger started to blossom as a songwriter. Incubus soon charged into the national spotlight on the momentum of its sophomore album, Make Yourself, a showcase of rhythmic and melodic innovation. The record sold over 2 million copies and, more importantly, distanced the band from the sinking ship that was rap-metal.

Buried in the middle of the album was an oddball acoustic track called "Drive," an upbeat, vocal-centered tune with the feel-good lyrics, "Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there/ With open arms and open eyes."

"When we wrote 'Drive,' we were like, 'This is a weird song. This is so different from us, nobody's going to even like this song,'" says Kilmore. Imagine the band's surprise when the track blasted into the Top 10.

Between the ubiquity of "Drive," a relentless touring schedule, and frontman Brandon Boyd's metamorphosis into a reluctant teen heartthrob, Incubus was catapulted into rock and roll superstardom. Kilmore, for the most part, seems unfazed by the band's newfound celebrity. "It's pretty cool. It's really not that hard. There are so many positives to it that all the negative sides, you're just like, 'Whatever. I'll take 'em all. Bring 'em on,' you know?" Kilmore exclaims. "We get to travel the world and play music every night, and every day meet new people. It's so cool. And we don't have a nine-to-five job sitting behind a desk in a collared shirt."

Touché.

The band wrapped up an arena tour in October 2002 in support of its most recent release, Morning View (2001), which spawned the modern rock hits "Nice to Know You" and "Wish You Were Here." After a well-deserved hiatus, Incubus returns to the studio this month to begin work on the next album. As far as musical direction goes, your guess is as good as Kilmore's.

"You know what? We don't really try to say, 'This is the way we're going to go.' We more say to ourselves, 'OK, this is the way we're not going to go,'" he explains. "We're not going to try to really repeat things we did before. And you know, other than that, we just sort of leave it open. I have a feeling that the songs are going to be a little bit more complex, I think, as far as structure. ... I think our songwriting is becoming more and more advanced as we grow."

What Kilmore does know is that Incubus can finally go to work without the stigma of being a rap-metal band. "I think that is leaving us. We're going beyond that now," he says with a sigh of relief. "Because of our album, S.C.I.E.N.C.E., people labeled us as a rap-metal band. And that was written in '96 and '97. We've had a couple EPs and some DVDs and two full-length albums that show you that we're nothing like that. So I think we're really coming into our own thing. But people need to classify it, so they're going to classify it as something. You need to find it in a record store under something. You know, if I had to say what we were, we're just a straight-up rock band."

He may have traded the hills of Dillsburg for the sunny skies of Southern California, but Kilmore says he still thinks fondly of his hometown. Watch for him to make a homecoming trip in 2003 to an arena near you. Visit www.enjoyincubus.com for additional info on the upcoming album and future tour dates.