BUCKCHERRY's Josh Todd (vocals) and Keith Nelson (guitar) get Live & Loud about death, fried chicken and what people will say over their caskets in this Blender interview. See below.

“You can hear the imperfections. It wasn’t something we tried to hide,” admits BUCKCHERRY guitarist/producer Keith Nelson in an exclusive interview with BraveWords.com scribe Aaron Small. Keith is referring to his band’s recently released live album, Live & Loud 2009. “It’s a very accurate representation of what we do. I know there are live records that aren’t very live; this is definitely a live record. We’ve been so busy. We’ve been on the road for so long, I barely had time to mix it, let alone fix anything. That’s not what it was about.”

Although Buckcherry calls Los Angeles home, they recorded Live & Loud in May ‘09 during a string of Canadian dates that included: Edmonton, Calgary, Medicine Hat, Regina and Vancouver. “We’re more successful actually, just from sheer numbers per capita in Canada than we are in the States,” reveals Keith. “The response is always great. We just thought it was a really good opportunity to do it.” As far the decision to piece the album together from several performances, as opposed to releasing one show start to finish goes… “Initially, the whole idea started with, let’s just record some shows and see what we get. Sometimes you have technical difficulties. We also wanted to change the set list up every night and rotate some songs in, stuff we don’t normally get to do. I think for a DVD we would do one set from top to bottom, make it a really long night. But it just worked out that way. It is what it is. I’m very proud of that record and the performance on it.”

The packaging for Live & Loud was kept rather simple. Reason being, “To let the music speak for itself. There’s not a whole lot of bells and whistles to the way we make our rock ‘n’ roll. We just get up there and do it; the packaging kind of reflects that.”

When asked about his favourite live albums, Keith responded, “There’s a few: KISS – Alive, ironically (as Buckcherry is currently on tour supporting KISS across North America). That was huge, and the second one too. Frampton Comes Alive! When I was a kid I was just in awe of that record. CHEAP TRICK – Live At Budokan. J. GEILS BAND – Blow Your Face Out.”

Whether in clubs or arenas, headlining or opening, it’s pretty much guaranteed that Buckcherry will play their hit single, ‘Crazy Bitch’ – but what the band will do with the song is always a surprise. In a live setting, this tune definitely gets tinkered with. Just watch the Crüe Fest DVD or listen to Live & Loud. The band extends it into a jam while vocalist Josh Todd shares whatever’s on his mind – which is usually fucking! Having that freedom to work/play within his own songs is something Keith certainly enjoys. “Absolutely. There’s a couple spots every night where we could land on anything at any given moment, ‘Crazy Bitch’ is one of those. It’s really nice to be in a band with other musicians that are capable of just going for it without really any direction of where we’re heading – we’re in the key of B, we’ll have some fun and see where this goes.”

Earlier this year, Buckcherry reissued their Black Butterfly album. ‘Too Drunk To Fuck’ was dropped and replaced with a cover of DEEP PURPLE’s ‘Highway Star’. “We had the opportunity to re-release the record and we got such a great response from ‘Highway Star’, which was done after the record. It seemed like the record made more sense replacing the song so we did.” Make no mistake; the band doesn’t regret ‘Too Drunk…’ “Absolutely not. It still shows up in the set. It’s a fun song. The whole “Highway Star’ thing started with the folks at NASCAR and TNT coming to us and asking if we could do that song? We have a lot of respect for Deep Purple. I don’t know if we would have picked that song to cover, but it presented itself. Once we dug into it and made the song our own – it was important for us not to try and be Deep Purple for a day but put our own spin on it. Once we did it, we were very, very excited about the way it came out. The NASCAR fan base is one of our truest fan bases; they really stuck by us. We got a great response from them.”

Rumours of new music next year are floating around. “Yes, those are very true. I’m very excited about it. I’m not going to say too much. I am going to say we’re going to take a little bit of a left turn with the next one and try some stuff that maybe people wouldn’t expect from us. It’s not going to be a jazz record. But we’re going to stretch out a little bit and try something a little bit off of our beaten path and see what happens. We’re always going to be a rock ‘n’ roll band. We’re not reinventing the wheel. We’re not curing cancer. We’ve started to write some stuff. We actually tracked a few things at my house already. I think it’ll really pick up speed and take shape once we get home (in December). We have a couple of songs completed. It should be interesting. I want to hand our record in sometime around March.”

Keith co-produced the last two Buckcherry studio albums as well as Live & Loud. It looks like he’ll be at the helm once again for the new disc. “I’m hoping to do it with Marti Frederiksen (who worked on Black Butterfly) as my co-producer. He’s such a great person to bounce things off of. I really enjoy having somebody outside the band that I can argue with,” laughs Keith. “I think it’s important. If it was a different band, if it wasn’t my band, I wouldn’t have any problem going in there by myself. But given the fact that I am a band member, it’s nice to have that tie-breaker, that other set of ears.”

In closing, although Buckcherry still has over a month’s worth of shows left with KISS, Keith reflects on the experience thus far. “It’s a lot easier in 2009 than it was in 1999 when we toured with them the first time. That was rough. We were a new band. No one really knew who we were and they didn’t really give a fuck who we were! They just wanted KISS. Now we’ve got a body of work behind us, we can play some songs that people know, which is nice. I will say KISS has been really gracious and accommodating and very welcoming. Other bands you tour with really want to make it known that you’re the opener and this is their show. KISS has been very cool. Paul (Stanley) came over one of the first nights and said you have full PA, full lights, whatever you want you can have. He’s a lot of fun to tour with.”