Put June 25th in the diary if you haven’t already pre-ordered (I’ve got a signed orange vinyl on the way myself) because Buckcherry have come flying out of isolation with a stunning new record ‘Hellbound’. It’s an album where every track demands to be heard. We caught up with Josh to talk all about the songs and how they came about, We cover a burst of creativity in Nashville, what’s it like to be back on the road again and being beaten by a ‘silver fox’ at tennis in Melbourne…
Mark: Hi Josh!
Josh: Whatsup man?
Mark: All is good down here mate, hope you are well.
Josh: I’m doing good.
Mark: It’s always good to talk to you when a new Buckcherry album is on the way. The world has to wait till the 25th June but I’ve been listening to ‘Hellbound’ over the last 24 hours and I have to say it’s a damn good listen. Obviously proceeded by the single ‘So Hott’ which is right up there with some of your anthems over the years. Let’s start off with the title ‘Hellbound’ I thought we were all getting out of the hell of the last year!
Josh: (laughs) Well we’re getting out of hell but I think we figured out while we were in hell how fucked up every situation is. But that wasn’t the motivation behind the title ‘Hellbound’ – ‘Hellbound’ the song and the title track is about something else. When I got the music to it I was thinking, you know I get the music and I simmer on it and I think “what do I want this to be about?” and I started thinking about the moment – where was the shift for me when everything changed and I knew that this was it and there was no looking back? I was cutting off the lifeboat and Rock and Roll was going to happen. That was all I could think about – the moment when I was 15 years old and I played my first show which was a house party in Orange County California. And that’s when I knew I was ‘Hellbound’ and that’s what the song’s about.
Mark: The Rock and Roll dream come true! It’s been a strange year, obviously you had to cancel all of the 2020 shows but when I saw your list of Tour dates for later in the year I must admit you guys are going for it big time! You’re out in the US from teh start of June till October and then a short trip to Canada and then back to the US again! It’s mammoth!
Josh: Yeah, well that’s just normal Buckcherry touring, but I can see how you might think it looks pretty crazy! Maybe it’s crazy because there’s so much and everyone is still sketchy about everything, but you know we’re sick of being home already!
Mark: (laughs)
Josh: We’re ready to go Rock you know! We’ve had this record done since October 2020 so we’ve ben waiting a long time for this to hit the streets because we just think it’s up there with the best BC records, it’s really and amazing record.
Mark: It certainly is, I loved the last record ‘Warpaint’ but just based on the first few spins of ‘Hellbound’ you guys have upped the ante, you just don’t miss a beat!
Josh: Thank you.
Mark: How did Covid affect the writing of the album, did it change much for you as far as the process?
Josh: I think it enhanced it just because there was a lot of stuff going on, I mean I don’t know about you guys but we had a ton of stuff going on in the United States. Not only Covid but you know there was a lot of racism and gun violence as well as our political situation. It was just a really intense crazy time so there was a lot to write about – and when you’ve got Hard Rock songs coming at you it’s pretty easy as a song-writer to access a lot of great lyrics.
Mark: It’s always great to be in the middle of such ‘interesting times.’ We’ll have a look at some of the new songs in a while but first Marty (Frederickson) is on board again I didn’t ask you last time about his input and I know you’ve had a long relationship, what’s he like to work with?
Josh: He’s great he’s been on board through a bunch of Buckcherry records. We co-wrote ‘Sorry’ together and then he went on to produce a few BC records – he was part of ‘Confessions’ and ‘All Night Long’ and ‘Black Butterfly.’ When he gets into the fold he’s a really talented guy and he just really understands the strengths and weaknesses of Buckcherry. It’s like having a sixth band member you know and we always bring our ‘A’ game when we’re with him because he’s sitting around writing songs all year long and we know that so when we get in there with him we want to rise to the occasion. And that’s what happened – we wrote for a week with Marty – me Stevie and Marty and in five days in Nashville we wrote six songs and they all made the record. That’s how amazing that was. And we were working around the clock, it was crazy.
Mark: Wow, that’s incredible to think of such intense creativity.
Josh: We didn’t miss one minute of time. Stevie and I flew into Nashville and we had our hotel rooms literally a half mile from the studio so we could walk there if we wanted to. I would write all night and I’d get up in the morning and I would sing for two and a half hours and then Stevie would come and Stevie and Marty would work on music for the next composition. And then they would send me music by like 6 P.M. and then I would take that and then I would write a whole new song from like six till whenever I fell asleep like eleven at night and I’d come in the next day and so on and so forth. And that’s when we rote ‘So Hott’ and ‘Hellbound’ and ‘Breaking Through the Barricade’ (‘Barricade’) and ‘Waste No More Time’ and ‘No More Lies’ – they all came from those sessions.
Mark: That definitely worked for you! The last time we saw you down here in Australia was October 2019, hopefully at some point they’ll let you in to see us again!
Josh: Yeah we’re waiting on you guys to let us in, you know! we’re ready to go, like you say we’ve got a lot of tour dates booked here in the States because that’s pretty much the only place we can go right now – we can’t go to Europe and I don’t know if we can get into the UK yet. They’re talking towards the end of the year or the first part of 2022 that we might be able to get to Australia which will be great. But we would go there now if you’d let us in!
Mark: The crazy thing is that if you were a sports person we’d let you in! There’s this crazy double standard going on here at the moment.
Josh: I know (laughs) I play tennis, I love tennis and I just saw that you guys had a tennis tournament over there at the start of the year. And you had a lot of tennis players over there. But I understand, I understand, we’re all vaccinated, all of us so…
Mark: We can only hope that soon music fans will be treated equally to sports fans.
Josh: (laughs)
Mark: How long have you known Billy Rowe (Buckcherry’s new second guitarist)?
Josh: Billy Rowe was in a band called Jetboy as you know for a along time, he still is, they still do shows. He’s a lovely guy, actually Stevie knew him pretty well and would always talk him up! So we kind of had our eye on him for a while, and when Kevin Rankin said he didn’t want to carry on, he wanted to sty at home with his family, we totally understood that, but we knew exactly who we were gonna call – like I said he’d been on our radar. I just wanted to meet him as a person so we had a breakfast together me and Stevie and Billy at a restaurant in the Valley and we just really liked him. He’s just a really nice guy, we got along well, and he’s from our generation and that’s really all it took because we knew he could play guitar!
Mark: He sure can and he does seem like a lovely guy, we spoke last year, great sense of humour too! And the bit I love – getting onto the album I love the way it starts – “5,4,3,2,1” it’s just like saying teh party’s back – let’s go!
Josh: Yeah, it’s a no-brainer – great way to start a record.
Mark: It would be a great way to start a live show too! And thoughts what you’ll open up with?
Josh: (laughs) Yeah, you know the guys have thrown that at me and I go “Well we can do that after June 25th because nobody will know the song yet!” I don’t want to open up with a song that nobody knows, but yeah, we’ll do that for sure, either that or ‘So Hott.’
Mark: Sounds good. One of the last shows we covered internationally before the craziness began was when you played Tulsa back in February last year and I know that shortly after that you played it live before the pandemic shut things down.
Josh: Yeah we played it live but we were still really rusty because we hadn’t been together as a band except on stage and a little bit at sound check. But by the time we get a month in, it gonna be really, really silly! (laughs)
Mark: (laughs) You know it will!
Josh: (laughs)
Mark: “So Hott’ I think is one of the best songs you’ve put out, but there’s so many great Buckcherry songs I’d find it hard to pick a setlist listening to the new stuff.
Josh: I know.
Mark: Before we dig deeper one of the albums that often gets overlooked by some it’s actually the 20th anniversary of this year – ‘Time Bomb’ a great record, what’s your favourite memory of that record?
Josh: That’s the hidden gem! You know if you’re a real Buckcherry fan you know about ‘Time Bomb’ but a lot of people don’t even know that record exists. But it’s such a great record we made it right after the first record and I just remember having this fire underneath me saying “we gotta answer that first record and work harder than we’ve worked” so we came up with songs like ‘Ridin”, ‘Bitches and Money’, so many good songs on that record ‘Whisky in the Morning’ of course – all songs we play today, you know.
Mark: It’s certainly one of my favourites and scary to think it’s two decades old this year!
Josh: Yeah.
Mark: One of my favourites on the new album, and I just wanted to highlight a few here that really stuck out to me, is there’s a really cool Aerosmith sound to ‘Gun’ did that one come from the sessions with Marty or was it one you had before?
Josh: No, Stevie and I wrote that song prior to meeting with Marty and I know the music sounds like Aerosmith, and the cadence kinda does, you know, it has that ‘Train Kept a Rollin” type vibe, but Aerosmith wasn’t what I had in mind – I was thinking of B-Real (of Cypress Hill) when I was writing the chorus melody, you know. I was chopping up the melody like B-Real does on ‘Rock Superstar’ you know. I really like that song and so was just taking a different approach not thinking that it did sound a lot like Steven Tyler I guess! So that was what I was thinking. But Stevie really didn’t like the song when we recorded it, I go “Just wait, I’m telling you this song is really cool.” So we played it for Larry our manager and Marty to see what they thought because you never know, and that song just kept coming up and coming up and now it’s like one of my favourite songs on the record.
Mark: Another great thing about the album is that you tick all the boxes that the fans will want to hear in a major way. You’ve always written great ballads but ‘The Way’ is right up there with the best by my reckoning!
Josh: Yeah ‘The Way’ is an epic. That was another one that Stevie and I wrote – we wrote about 22 songs before we got in a room with Marty and ‘The Way’ was one of them. That was another song where I came in and I just had this vocal melody and I sang it to Stevie – which is something we do when there’s no music and I knew I had this song. And at that point in time Stevie had just lost his father, his father passed away last year, and he was just a lovely guy, so there was that going on, and I was going through my own stuff at home and so it was right to write this epic kinda ballad. A ‘Hey Jude’ type song, so we sat down and we found the key on the piano and I said I want there to be piano on this song, so I just kinda gave him a blueprint of where I saw it going and he had his own thing going on in his head so I came back and he had put a bridge on it, he had this outro bit and he had this great piano piece, I was like ‘Wow, this is amazing’ so I really felt that I had to bring it up another level just like he did, you know, and finish it! But strangely that song wrote itself really quick and we just went in and laid it down. It was a no-brainer we all knew it would be on the record – that was one that everyone kept going back to.
Mark: A great song, and so many others, but ‘Wasting No More Time’ also caught my ear. A great song.
Josh: Yeah, it’s got a kinda Tom Petty type feel which we really liked. They hit me with that it was kind of a curve-ball – we were doing the song-writing sessions with Marty and there’s another writer on that song who I can’t remember right now, so please forgive me for that, but he just came up with the melody of the chorus. (Todd sings) “I know things are changing’ and that was the melody but I wrote those words to the melody he had. And that’s where it kinda started for me – I just had that little bit and then I wrote the first pre-chorus and finished the lyrics and then we had this little mid-section that was only bass and I could barely hear it. I remember putting my phone up to my ears so I could hear it. And I thought OK, I’m gonna write this little different melody – this little outro melody. And I came in and sang it for Marty and he said “Ahh! That’s amazing, you gotta sing that in your higher octave when the music kicks in” and so I and it and “Bam!” the song just happened! Because if we had just of like finished the song with just a third chorus it just wasn’t happening, but the outro melody just really made it all come together, you know. So that’s how that song came about.
Mark: It certainly did I love that part of the song. I could easily talk about every track on there it’s a great album – I love the aggressive ‘Here I Come’ that’s a great song.
Josh: Oh cool.
Mark: And then you have the funkier, quirkier ‘No More Lies’ which is another of my favourites,
Josh: Amazing song, I love that song.
Mark: It’s probably vying for my favourite at the moment!
Josh: Me too.
Mark: With such an epic tour lined up I have to ask – what’s the thing you’ve missed most about being on the road?
Josh: Just connecting with the audience being on stage. We are a live band you know, we base our reputation on our live show and people who know this band know that we’ve toured a lot! We’re one of the hardest working bands out there on the road, and that’s because we’re passionate about it and what we do and we really like being on stage bringing the songs to life because that’s really the icing on the cake. Writing a record is, you know, a labour of love and it takes a lot to get through that to get to the finish line, and the big payoff is seeing somebody singing those songs that you created from nothing at the top of their lungs and having the time of their life! You know that they’ve looked forward to this show the whole lead up and now it’s all happening!
Mark: I think you’ve summarised what we’ve all missed about live music beautifully there Josh. It’s going to be great seeing you back on the road. We’ll certainly be covering at least a couple of the shows over on the U.S. run, and we’d love to see you back Downunder! I think the biggest issue you’re going to have is working out how many of these great new songs you can get into the setlist!
Josh: It’s something we’ve talked about. Once we finished it we were all talking and saying “We’ve got to do every one of these songs live!” and I go ‘We can’t, we have nine records” and people want to hear ‘the usual suspects’ as I call them – they want to hear ‘Lit Up’, ‘Sorry’, ‘Crazy Bitch’, ‘Ridin” – those type of songs. So we have to rotate! It’s all about rotating, you know
Mark: Thank you so much for your time today Josh, it’s been great to hat and I just can’t wait till people hear the record – it’s gonna be huge!
Josh: Yeah my pleasure Mark great to talk to you.
Mark: And if they don’t open the borders just bring your tennis racket and I’m sure we can get you in!
Josh: Let’s go! I’m ready! (laughs) You want to bring it on my day off? I’ve gotta have a day off because I don’t want to do it on a show day as I have to conserve my energy but yeah, I’ll play anyone who wants to play men’s singles or doubles! We’ll play, I’ll be there, it’ll be fun!
Mark: I’ll get in training!
Josh: I’m so ambitious in tennis, the last time I was in Australia, check this out – we land and we have a whole day and night to kill in Australia before the first show. I brought my racket and i just google searched some place as close as I could find to the hotel and I go down there and it’s like grass court and there’s like this ‘silver fox’ man practicing to a ball machine, I call him a ‘silver fox’ he’s an older gentleman, but he’s got really great tennis skills. He’s the only guy out there so I just walked up to him and said “Hey man, do you want to play a match?” and he goes “Yeah” so I think “Alright!” and so I introduced myself we get started and while we’re playing the match he says “Are you in Buckcherry?”
Mark: (laughs)
Josh: So I go “Yeah, I’m the singer” and he loved Buckcherry, so we played the match and it was just this lovely two hours and we’re both sweating… and he kicked my ass! He was so good you could tell he had played a lot longer than me. He’d played a lot over the years and he was still really fit, but it was just a good time! So I’ll do that – I’ll just show up at tennis courts and challenge anyone who’s there! (laughs)
Mark: (laughs) That sound great, I’ll dust off the racket and get practicing!
Josh: (Laughs)
Mark: Thank you Josh and thanks for a great new album, hope to catch you again soon.
Josh: Alright Mark be good! Bye!
Pre-sale link: BUY HELLBOUND NOW
