Unable to concentrate and fed up with nagging phone calls, the band decided a change of scenery was in order and moved to a $1,000 a month five-bedroom house in the college town of Durham, North Carolina. “Those days were great.  It was inspiring to all of us, becoming brothers - eating, shitting, and playing together.  I think that was the coolest time, being in that house and jamming from midnight until 4 or 5 in the morning.  We’d just smoke dope and play, not even trying to write a song or anything” said Christopher.  The “Sleepyhouse” routinely hosted all-night jam sessions.  The group members put tin foil over all of their windows, blocking out the sun during the day and city lights at night.  "Everybody slept all day long," Shannon stated, "then we'd get up and play from about three to six in the morning.  We barely left the house.  And when we did go out to visit our families for Christmas, we looked pathetic - just pale and white with dark circles under our eyes.  I kept wondering what our relatives must've been thinking.  We established a lot of unity in the band, which obviously made our music more real, and from what I can see, 'real' is very in now. Besides being able to concentrate full time on music, if any problems arose while we were under the same roof, we were able to resolve them immediately.  And we had to, because if we didn't, it was like five minutes later we'd be running into each other in the kitchen."

Occasionally their hazy merriment crossed the line, as when their sound man, Lyle, passed out drunk on the couch with a cigarette.  “A flame was burning about two inches from his head,” Christopher says. “We were shaking him and pulling on him, screaming, but he wouldn’t wake up.” Tragedy was averted thanks to several heaping wok-fulls of tap water.

While living in Durham, the band became the bar band in a local dive called “The Brewery.”  It was here that the band tried out songs that they had written during the week.  They tested which songs got the best reaction from the crowds.

In February 1992, the band flew to Seattle and entered London Bridge Studios with producer Rick Parashar to begin recording their debut record.  Midway through the sessions, they were offered a slot on MTV’s 120 Minutes Tour, opening for Live, PiL and Big Audio Dynamite II.  During that tour, word-of-mouth on Blind Melon escalated.  Christopher said, “That tour helped us make a better record. We recorded half the record before 120 Minutes, the other half after, and the other half sounds so much better.  We learned how to play together, basically.” By June, when they finished recording Blind Melon, it appeared there would be no stopping them.

Capitol Records tried to cash in on Shannon’s new found celebrity from the Don’t Cry video. They put pressure on the band to try and rush the recording of their debut album but the band refused to hurry. Blind Melon was released on September 22, 1992. The album cover is an old picture the band came across of Glen’s little sister, Georgia, in a bee costume.  Since it took some time for the album's release, the buzz about Shannon had died down much to the chagrin of Capitol.  The band made videos for Dear Ol’ Dad and Tones of Home and hit the road in support of the record.  The record began selling a couple of thousand copies a week after it was released.

After about nine months, the album had shifted about 90,000 copies which was respectable but not what Capitol had hoped for.  Things changed, however, with the release of No Rain and specifically the video they made to accompany it.  The video featured 10 year old Heather DeLoach as the bee girl from the album cover.  She danced around in fields and flowers with the band.  The public immediately took to the bee girl and propelled the single up the charts to number 21.  The single also had a knock-on effect on the album.  The popularity of No Rain caused the album to race up the Billboard top 200, eventually peaking at number 3 almost a year after it was released.  The bee girl went on the Jay Leno show, tap danced on stage at the end of the 1994 MTV Movie Awards and had plans to be in a movie with Nick Nolte.