By Mitch Lafon

Last time, I sat down with BUCKCHERRY frontman Josh Todd, their new album 15 had yet to be released and the band didn’t know what their future held. Well, fast forward to November 2006 and the band’s album has gone gold, their single ‘Crazy Bitch’ has out sold their calling card song ‘Lit Up’ and they’ve managed to not only resurrect their career, but have seemingly grown stronger. So, when the band rolled into Montreal on November 6th for their standing room only show at club Les Saints, it seemed fitting to catch up with Todd to discuss the band’s new found success and future.

Mitch Lafon: Part of the album’s success was the Internet and sites like YouTube.com that have posted the video for ‘Crazy Bitch’ everywhere.

Josh Todd: “Right and radio was a big factor.”

ML: Are you amazed at the reaction? You had essentially disappeared.

JT: “It always comes down to songs you know and we know that. If you write timeless music and people can relate to it – then you’re going to have some kind of career in the business and we got lucky you know – the timing was right and we had the right song at the right time and everybody loved it and it blew up at radio and it happened again for us because ‘Crazy Bitch’ has now surpassed 'Lit Up' as our biggest single. I’m very happy and we worked very hard to get back into this position ‘cause when we first started nobody wanted anything to do with it.”

ML: Plus, you’ve got a whole new band. You’re just two of the originals. It must have been scary going into it – wondering if there’s a market or are there any fans left for Buckcherry?

JT: “I never second guessed that. I just thought as long as we make a great record and we’re a great live band (which we always have been) and we have a better band this time. Keith and I write the majority of the material, so I wasn’t worried about the song writing side of it. We put it all together as a band and this is the band we always wanted you know. We’re all really good friends. We’re all around the same age. We’ve all gone through the same hard knocks in this business, so we really get along well.”

ML: Still – Gold – that must have been surprising?

JT: “Yeah! But we look at every week’s sales and we knew it was getting there. We were just really happy. This is our second gold record, and it really means a lot more this time because we had a lot to overcome. The bottom line is that we never wanted Buckcherry to break-up. It just happened the way it did and it needed to happen and in retrospect it was the best thing to happen to this band because the timing is so much better, the band is so much better, just everything and we’ve written the record of our career so far. It’s our best record yet.”

ML: So, what does this mean for the future? When you recorded this record – it was do or die. What does this mean for ‘the next record’?

JT: “Well, we still haven’t shown the world the depth of this record, and that’s what we’re going to do before we go and make another record. We have a lot of singles and our label believes in us and our manager believes in the songs. What we got to do now is get over the ‘Crazy Bitch’ hump and that’s what we’re working on right now with our new single ‘Next 2 You’ and it’s doing well. It’s building on radio and then we’ll release ‘Everything’ and then ‘Sorry’.”

ML: So, what’s the cycle on this one?

JT: “We’ll be touring into the fall of next year.”

ML: Will you be hooking up with a major act/tour?

JT: “There’s always talk of that, but nothing has been solidified. Of course, we’d like to get out on a big tour, but it all depends if it makes sense monetarily and a lot of factors come into play.”

ML: It’s got to be exciting to know that you can go that long (to fall 2007) on the strength of this album.

JT: “It’ll be a year and a half. If you look at successful records nowadays, bands will tour two years on it, so there’s no reason for us to go and make another record when we still have a lot of singles on this record.”

ML: Have you thought at all what the next record might sound like?

JT: “Nah. Early in our career I’d focus on what was ahead of me, so that I wasn’t enjoying what was right in front of me. Right now I want to take it one day at a time, have some fun out here, enjoy this process and when I get home I’ll get into the writing process. I’m always accumulating ideas, but I’m not getting crazy focused on that right now because it’s not in the near future.”

ML: Anything else in the near future? A live DVD or video compilation?

JT: “Well, we’ve got the video for the new single that got picked up by MTV.com and VH1. So, we’re working that single and we’ll make a video for ‘Everything’ in December and we’ll do a video for ‘Sorry’ and then we’ll put out a DVD of candid backstage, live footage and all our videos sometime next year.”

ML: Are you recording any of the shows for a live album?

JT: “No, we haven’t been recording shows, but at some point we want to do that. It seems a little premature to do that right now.”

ML: What about your solo thing – is that done?

JT: “Yeah. It was never meant to be a solo thing. It was a band, but I was talked into making it a solo thing. I had a very bad experience at the end of that and I won’t do that again.”

ML: Can I ask you about working with the Velvet Revolver guys? How was that?

JT: “Well, it wasn’t the Velvet Revolver guys. It was the GN'R guys – Duff, Slash and Matt. It came about because Slash called Keith and said ‘do you guys want to do this Randy Castillo tribute show at the Key Club?” We were like ‘yeah, that would be fun.’ So, we did some GN'R songs, we did ‘Lit Up’, we did a Sex Pistols’ song and it was a lot of fun and the place was packed. It created a huge buzz in L.A. at the time and three of the members of Buckcherry had quit, so it was just Keith and I writing songs for the third Buckcherry record (this was before we split up actually) and we were thinking ‘this is great. Maybe we should do a band’ and they were thinking the same thing. We were a band for a month maybe five weeks. It was a lot of fun, but abruptly Slash pulled the plug on the whole thing.”

ML: Do you know why?

JT: “I don’t think he really wanted me to be the singer of it actually.”

ML: For any particular reason? He didn’t like your voice or didn’t like your vibe?

JT: “I don’t know.”

ML: Any music recorded?

JT: “We recorded rough demos, but nothing will ever be released of that. We had a lot of fun though and there was a lot of good stuff, but it takes awhile for a band to really start finding their chemistry. I thought it was great, but it didn’t work out for whatever reasons and that’s when I’d had enough of disappointment. I’m a really competitive guy and this wasn’t acceptable to me to have so much loss at that point in time. Keith and I weren’t having problems, but I said to Keith ‘I just got to get happy again in the music situation and I’m not happy, so I’m just going to go my separate way,’ and he was like ‘ok’. He was bummed and I was bummed, but...”

ML: But you must be happy now?

JT: “Yeah, it worked out.”

ML: Tell me about the new guys. What makes it better?

JT: “They’re just really seasoned players and have been in other bands. They’re passionate about Buckcherry which is really the most important thing. We tried to get new members before we actually broke up (Keith and I). We just couldn’t find the guys. They just thought we had all this money and we didn’t. They just wanted a paycheque and they weren’t in it to be a part of Buckcherry, so it just wasn’t happening you know. It wasn’t working no matter what we tried. So, when we got this together – we had these three guys in mind. Two of them are really old friends of ours and they were all available and really wanted to do it and that was it. We didn’t audition anybody.”

ML: How is it working with Keith again?

JT: “It’s great. We never really had a bad relationship, but there were some things we wanted to make sure we did differently this time around. When we started writing again, it was just really refreshing and fun. the time away had made me respect him and love him more you know. So, when we got back together it was so much fun writing songs that we were really inspired and came up with really great material. We don’t chase radio when we’re writing songs. We don’t go ‘let’s write a song like this so we can get on radio’. We write songs that make us feel good and are fun and we’re focusing on big hook-y melodies because that’s the stuff we like. We want stuff that people are going to remember. We want to be a fucking enormous rock ‘n roll band. We want to be huge!”

For more visit: www.buckcherry.com