Evanescence's Amy Lee Opens Door To The Truth About Their New Single

Evanescence will kick-off their North American tour in support of their The Open Door album at Toronto's Kool Haus on Oct. 5, two days after the disc arrives in stores.

The band will play Montreal's Metropolis the next night and will play 15 more large club and theatre shows in the U.S. through the end of October. Evanescence will then cross the Atlantic to play several European shows before returning home before the year ends to play arena gigs. The concerts will primarily showcase the gothic rock group's new material, but fans will hear some older songs as well.

"It's been two years since we stopped touring," frontwoman Amy Lee told MTV News. "I'm a little nervous, but I'm mostly just excited."

Evanescence and director Marc Webb (AFI, My Chemical Romance) recently shot a video for The Open Door's first single, "Call Me When You're Sober." Though Lee was initially secretive about the inspiration behind the song, she's now acknowledged that it was influenced by the substance abuse problems of her former boyfriend, Seether singer Shaun Morgan.

"I think it's impossible to hide how obvious it is," said Lee. "The day that our single hit the airwaves, my ex-boyfriend said he was going into rehab and cancelled their tour.

"I haven't ever said right out who it was about, but it's about the big relationship I was in, and the whole break-up, which was really long. The breaking up and the hard stuff in our relationship happened sort of after I was out of the spotlight for a while and writing. It wasn't in any way public. I was trying to kind of be discreet about it, and then he totally came out and said he was going to rehab. It was shocking to me. It kind of made for a more interesting story."

Lee said that she's happy that Morgan has taken steps to clean himself up and admitted that she exposed a lot of her feelings and emotions when writing songs for the new record, especially the single.

"It was very brave for me, the lyric writing, because I was just sick of hiding behind metaphors in all that I had been writing."

Aside from ending her long-term relationship with Morgan, Lee has made other changes in her life, including moving from the west coast to New York and severing ties with a lot of people, including her former manager.

Evanescence bassist William Boyd left the group earlier this year because "he just can't go through with another huge tour right now and wants to stay a little closer to his family instead," Lee said.

Boyd has been replaced by former Revolution Smile guitarist Tim McCord, who switched instruments to fill the vacant position.