This sudden surge in popularity encouraged the band to remain on the road for another year to promote the record.  The band embarked on a world tour opening for Lenny Kravitz.  During this tour, the band played Europe for the first time with prestigious gigs at Wembley stadium and the Glastonbury Festival in England.  No Rain was a top twenty smash hit in the UK and remained in the charts for six weeks.  While in Amsterdam, the band recorded the ripped away version of No Rain which eventually made its way onto the Nico record.

On February 7th at the American Music Awards, Shannon was arrested for kicking and punching guards and officers during an altercation that began when Shannon allegedly became loud and disruptive during the taping of the show.  According to authorities, Shannon struck one guard in the face while being escorted from the arena and tried to kick out the rear window of a police car after he was arrested. When he tried to kick out the partition between seats in the car, he narrowly missed the head of the driver, said Deputy City Attorney Alice Hand. At a police station, Shannon allegedly ripped a telephone off a wall and spat twice on a detective who was interviewing him, Hand said.  He was charged with battery, two counts of battery on a police officer, one count of assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest, disturbing the peace and destroying telephone equipment.  He was released on $6,000 bail.  The band had been up for the Best New Band award but had lost out the Stone Temple Pilots.

In March, the band was nominated for two Grammy awards for Best New Artist and Best Rock Performance of 1994.  However, they were unsuccessful in both categories.

Change and Tones of Home were released as singles but failed to match the success of No Rain.  In the UK, Change still made the top 40 but disappeared quickly from the charts.

After doing 300 some live shows, the band took a few months off to relax then went into the studio to record their second album.  It was during this downtime that Shannon, Christopher and Rogers took a vacation in Mammoth Mountain, California.  The trio went snowboarding and skiing and also recorded several tracks which have become legendary amongst Blind Melon fans, The Mammoth Sessions.  Some of these tracks would eventually make it onto the posthumous Nico record but the vast majority of the songs - mostly radically different versions of the songs which would appear on Soup have never officially seen the light of day and are the most sought after Blind Melon songs.

On August 13, the band played at the Woodstock II festival. They played the south stage and went on right after Joe Cocker.  They played some new songs which would appear on the Soup record and a brief snippet of Three is a Magic Number.  The performance met mixed reviews.  Some people claimed it was excellent while others said it was dire.  People were unanimous in the fact that Shannon was extremely intoxicated on some substance.  He performed wearing a white dress that belonged to his girlfriend, Lisa, and wore smudged eye makeup and hair barrettes.  During Time, he threw the bands conga drums into the crowd.

From November 1994 to January 1995, the band recorded their follow up album titled Soup in Kingsway Studios in New Orleans. Rogers said, “We were anxious to record another record way back into the last tour.”  This time producer Andy Wallace was on board as the band's producer.  The band had found an old mansion which they liked so much that they set up all of the recording equipment there and just lived in the house as they recorded.

Like the debut, Soup is loose and free-flowing, but it experiments more, adding jazzy bits, eerie cello, kazoo and the Little Rascals Brass Band to flavor the album. "These bands are a New Orleans tradition," said Rogers.  "They show up at funerals playing a dirgy slow march and upon burying the person, they march away with this celebratory music, celebrating this person's transcendence into a better afterlife.  We sort of had this concept where the album would be like a funeral.  We'll have this slow, dirgy opening and then at the end of the album, it would be like a celebration, so the horns would exit the record."

Recording did not go without a hitch.  Shannon got into trouble in bars and had to be bailed out of jail for fighting with an off duty S.W.A.T team leader in a roulette club.  One New Orleans bartender remembers serving him, "Basically, I cut him off. He was drunk and couldn't understand why. I said 'cause you've had too much to drink.' He said, 'This is New Orleans. Can't I get a drink?' He was with another member of the band and they started arguing. Then he reached across the bar and tried to hit me."

Shannon’s drug consumption was also rampant in New Orleans.  He has been quoted as saying that he couldn’t actually remember a single day of the 3-4 months of recording. He also told Kerrang! Magazine that he got out of New Orleans just in time.  This appears to have been a thinly veiled reference to the danger of his drug intake.  One of the engineer's who worked on Soup said "A couple of nights he (Shannon) went out and wasn't heard from until 11 the next morning. There was a lot of concern as to whether he'd show up.  Suspicious packages arrived in the mail and sometimes, they'd blow off recording because it was more important to have a counseling session. He was a very troubled guy, and we talked about it a lot."

The other members of the band seemed to have a great time in New Orleans. Glen liked it so much that he decided to move there and the band praised the city in many interviews.  “I feel like this is one of the great cities.  There’s a high regard for art and architecture, music and all that stuff.” Rogers said.