300 For “15” – Buckcherry Set For Milestone Gig In Support Of Blockbuster Album;
New Single, “Sorry,” Ascending The Airplay Charts As Companion Video Is Added To Vh1
Eleven Seven/Atlantic recording group Buckcherry will celebrate a major milestone next week – the 300th live show in support of their triumphant third album, “15.” Set for December 15th at Las Vegas’ House of Blues, the gig represents still another career highlight for the Los Angeles-based hard rock outfit, which has toured nearly non-stop since the album’s April 2006 release, performing virtually anywhere there was electricity!
“15” has proven a huge achievement for Buckcherry, who went from a sales base of less than 150,000 on their previous album to nearing RIAA platinum certification for sales above 1 million units on its current release. The album has remained on the Billboard 200 for a remarkable 85 weeks, and has also proven that Buckcherry are multi-format hit-makers, having reached the upper echelons of the rock, alternative and now the Hot/AC & pop charts. “Sorry,” the fifth and most recent single from the album, is currently ascending the top 20 at Hot AC outlets nationwide, while also climbing up the top 40 at CHR/Top 40. Further, the track’s companion video has just been added into rotation at VH1.
“Crazy Bitch” – the Grammy Award-nominated first single from “15” – caused a radio riot upon its initial release last year, reaching #2 at Mainstream Rock and #3 at Active Rock. A string of further rock and alternative radio hits followed, including “Next 2 You,” “Broken Glass,” and “Everything.” The singles have all blown up online, with cumulative digital sales now approaching 1 million.
“In addition, “Crazy Bitch” recently celebrated a full year in the Nielsen Ringscan Top 30 – the only track to do so in the chart’s history. “Crazy Bitch” has been certified as a Gold Master Ringtone by the RIAA, with sales now exceeding 1.2 million.
Buckcherry recently unveiled the MVI edition of “15.” An MVI is a PC/MAC-compatible DVD which contains the full album, along with portable music files, video content and interactive features. The “15” MVI features full album audio, downloadable files for every song, previously unreleased live tracks (including “Everything,” “Next 2 You,” and “Crazy Bitch”), videos, an exclusive photo gallery, complete lyrics, U-Myx (which allows fans to create their own custom remixes of “Crazy Bitch” and “Everything”), plus a variety of digital 
extras (such as ringtones, screen savers, buddy icons, and wallpapers). In addition, fans who register their “15” MVI can unlock future content as it becomes available.
Buckcherry is: Josh Todd – vocals * Keith Nelson – guitar * Jimmy Ashhurst – bass * Stevie D. – guitar * Xavier Muriel – drums.
Josh Todd in celebration of their 300th show in Las Vegas.
Hi Todd, First of all, I wanted to thank you so much for the amazing show at the HOB in Las Vegas, celebrating your 300th show. So, whose job was it to count the gigs to 300?
JT: Laughs*our agent, you know every morning we’d wake up and look at our day sheet and there would be a number at the top of what number show we’d be doing. We tried to pay attention, 200 was a Mark and then 300 of course.
So how do you think your songwriting has progressed since show number 1. How do you feel you’ve progressed since getting the band back together?
JT: Personally, I never stopped working on my craft, song writing, lyric writing so, it just got better, Keith got better and the rest of the guys in the band are seasoned musicians. I just think that we matured a lot as songwriters. We also understand the game a lot better. We wanted to write our most successful record that was our goal, to write the best record of our career when we started. That’s how we felt on our first one, then our second one and then “15”. Now we’re in the studio writing for our next record. There’s a lot more pressure on us now then when we started “15”, nobody really cared, you know? We were putting the pressure on ourselves. Now we have all these milestones that we’ve gathered along the way and with this record, we want to top that. So it really comes down to writing great songs.
That’s what I was going to ask you, will 2008 bring a new album from “Buckcherry”? Will all of you continue to work together again?
JT: Oh yeah, we’re going to put together a new album for 2008. We’d like to have it out for summer. That’s what we’re working on. We have about 10 songs written, but we wrote 30 songs for “15”, so we have a ways to go. There’s some really great stuff in the works, basically we just want to write a record that’s better than “15” and we’ll see if we can do that.
How did you hook up with Marti Frederiksen, he’s worked with such bands like Scorpions and Aerosmith. Buckcherry is a newer genre of rock, and those bands are older school rock. Who’s decision was it to work with him and how did you see his songwriting fitting in with your style?
JT: Well, we’re big Aerosmith fans and we like what he co-wrote with them, songs like “Jaded” and stuff like that. He’s been around for a while, since back in the day, he was with his own band. I don’t know if you saw that movie “Almost Famous” with Kate Hudson, there was a band in there called “Stillwater”, he wrote all the songs for that for the soundtrack and he sang them all, he’s got a really good voice as well. He’s just a great guy. We tried writing with other songwriters, just to see how it would go, we’re really confident in our own songwriting abilities and we didn’t really jive with anybody but him. We went in with him and it was an instant chemistry. We just had these two songs in mind that were complete but we wanted to make a little better, but we were so deep in the writing process, we just felt we needed an outside opinion. He just came in and tweaked a couple little melodies, and added a bridge on “Sorry” and I just finished up the lyrics and that was it.
You guys also just released the MVI edition of “15”, things are really going the way of the internet, video games, like Guitar Hero, pod casts, etc. Have you considered doing any other interactive projects?
JT: Absolutely! But right now, we just put out the MVI, in time for the holidays, to match that, what we’re doing is, we’re working on re-vamping our whole situation, our website, everything. A lot of things are in the works, some I can’t really talk about right now because it’s not finalized yet. We definitely will be moving towards different things in that area.
Distribution seems to be key now for bands, like we were just taking about in this age of internet, how do you see the future of say record labels being a part of the promotion of the bands they’re working with?
JT: Well, I don’t. I think, and you’re already seeing it, a lot of the major record labels are going bankrupt, because they’re still trying to use their old model and it’s not working. They’re trying to convert to a new model. I think the way music is going to go is that there is going to be way more artist development they is going to be, I think the major labels are going to go away. They’re going to be obsolete in the future and it’s going to be all about bands being way more hands on, they’re not going to be selling as many records, of course, that’s already happening. The live show is going to be, playing live and merchandise is going to be a big part of your career, that’s the way it was in the 70’s. Bands are going to have to be great at their craft again and that’s NOT what’s going on in Rock n Roll at the moment. There are only a handful of bands that are great, that are having longevity and then there are all these bands that you’re never going to hear from again, that are just putting out just very average music. I can’t even tell you how many bands I hear and I’m like “How the heck did these guys get a record deal”? They all sound the same, there’s nothing unique about them
in any way, there’s no X Factor, it’s just bleh. I think all that is going to go away, record labels can’t afford that anymore, they can’t afford to just put out an average record for $300,000 and then spend all the money on tour support because they have no fan base and try to build them up and then drop the band after one record and have a tax write-off. It’s not going to be that way anymore. They just don’t have the money to do it.
Well what’s great is that bands are becoming more accessible as well, for example with myspace and becoming more “hands on” as opposed to allowing the record label handle everything.
JT: Well, you know, it’s better in the long run for bands to do that anyway, because the more hands on they are and the more records they sell on their own, the bigger they build their brand before the big machines get involved, they’re going to make more money in the long run. They’re going to know exactly their value and what’s going on in their career and that’s really important. That’s something that we wish we would have developed more. We self managed ourselves all the way up to our first record deal, but, that was 10 years ago, we were still a part of that old machine, so, we thought once we got onto a major label, it’s going to be great, then we figured out that they can spend your money however they want to and you have to recoup it until you bring anything home and that’s just not the way the new model is. Now we’re part of the new model and it’s fantastic. We’re having a lot of success and we’re just really happy riding the wave.
So tell me, what’s your favorite song to play live?
JT: My songs are more of the aggressive songs, songs like “Onset” and “Broken Glass”. On the slower side, I really like the song “You”, that we wrote on our second record, “Sorry” of course, but, you know, I’m passionate about all the music.
Is there anything else that you would like to add for our readers?
JT: All I really want to add is that we’re working really hard to give them they’re monies worth, that’s always on our mind, we want to make sure that the record is good from beginning to end, that’s all I can really say, I know you guys won’t be disappointed when you hear the new record.
For additional information, please visit www.buckcherry.com and myspace.com/buckcherry
For upcoming events at the HOB- Las Vegas, visit www.hob.com/lasvegas or by calling 702.632.7600
