TORONTO -- So what do you do after you've scored a top 10 hit with your very first single, played to 300,000 people at Woodstock II, and sold 7 million albums around the world, including a million in Canada alone?

If you're Collective Soul, you move back into your mom and dad's basement.

The trouble started during the remarkable 76-week chart run of the band's self-titled second album and, as is generally the case in rock music, it revolved around money.

Specifically, Collective Soul had a serious falling-out with their now ex-manager, Bill Richardson. The result? In the middle of 1995, a lawsuit was launched that ended up dragging on for the better part of 18 months. It was finally settled last November.

During that time, despite continuing to sell millions of albums, the band was flat broke.

"When two parties disagree," Collective Soul frontman Ed Roland is explaining recently in a Toronto hotel room, "you get a non-partial person in the middle, placed by the court, that just kind of handles the finances that come in. It would've been unfair for (Richardson) to be receiving money, and it would've been unfair for us to have been receiving money."

So you don't get any money while the dispute is going on?

"And even after," sighs Roland. "Because then you have to pay the attorneys."

Which is why, after selling 7 million albums, the members of Collective Soul found themselves back in their hometown of Stockbridge, Ga., living out of their parents' basements.

"Honest to God," says Roland. "Everybody moved back into the basements. And we rented a cabin 10 miles from eveyone's parents, because I had a little bit of money come in from performance royalties, and that's where I collected a little bit of musical equipment and we recorded the new album."

That new album (out in Canada on March 11) bears the seemingly contradictory title of Disciplined Breakdown, a rueful reference to what the band went through while the legal battle dragged on. In fact, Roland acknowledges that new songs such as "Blame," "Listen," and the current single, "Precious Declaration," all directly address the band's side of the dispute.

Says Roland of that humbling stretch back home, "There were days when I did not want to deal with it, and when I DIDN'T deal with it. I think we dealt with it fine, but it's the perception that it gives off. I mean, going out to buy dinner was a difficult task.

"But in our hometown, the perception for them was, why are you not driving nice cars? Why aren't you living in a nice home? Why don't you buy me dinner? Which very few of them did. But I mean, still the perception was like, what's going on? And you can't really say anything. I'd tell them, 'I miss mom and dad, I guess'."

So, with the messy court action settled and Richardson officially out of the picture -- the band is now managed by Arthur Spivak, who stick-handles Tori Amos's career -- you're all driving nice cars and living in nice homes?

Actually, says Roland, sheepishly, "now we have to go on tour. So there's no reason to get our own places."