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Josh Todd Interview

By Chad Bowar

Former Buckcherry frontman Josh Todd is back with a new band and a new album. The formation of the Josh Todd Band is an interesting story which is chronicled below. In addition to Todd, his new band members are guitarists Jesse Logan and Mike Hewitt, bassist Mark John and drummer Kent Ross. You Made Me was produced by Chris Johnson (Evanescence, Masters of Reality). I spoke with Josh Todd right after he returned from playing the Rock Odyssey festival in Japan.

Chad Bowar: How was your trip to Japan?

Josh Todd: It was a blast. We had so much fun. The stages were huge. They had the big video screens on each side of the stage and you could run for about fifty yards on each side. There were like 50,000 people at each show. Aerosmith was unbelievable and so was The Who. It was The Who's first Japanese performance and they were great.

Your album has been out for a few months now. How has the response been?

It's been great. We've been working really hard. We've done over 130 shows so far. We've been touring a lot, converting a lot of old Buckcherry fans and getting a lot of new fans. We've been playing with a lot of different types of bands and having a great time.

How did you find your new band?

I cold-called an ad in a local music magazine here in Los Angeles. I was at a newsstand looking through music magazines and I remembered there was ads in there. I thumbed through the ads and one just jumped out at me. It was a whole band looking for a singer. My goal was to find young players, and the influences they listed were the Deftones and At The Drive In. I thought that was interesting and how cool it would be to mix the two generations and see what happens.

I called and left a message on their voice mail saying I was Josh, a singer. They called me back and set up a rehearsal. I listened through the door when I went down. I was really reluctant to show up anyway, because it was kind of a joke at first. I talked to a really close friend of mine who also produced our record, Chris Johnson. He said, "it's a great idea, you've gotta show up!" So I showed up and listened through the door to make sure they could play. They were good players. I was really surprised and I liked what I was hearing. One of the guys recognized me right away, and the other three were kind of fumbling with their instruments. I just grabbed a mic because I didn't want it to be about anything but the music. They played some of their original music and I just started ad-libbing and it was just electric. It was great chemistry right off the bat and there were smiles from ear to ear in the room. It was cool to be in a band again because I hadn't been in a real band for about seven months prior to that. It was really refreshing and inspiring to be in a situation where everybody was having a great time playing music.

When you went into the studio with the new band, how did the recording process work?

They had a few originals and I wrote lyrics and melodies for them. As soon as we exhausted all their music we just started writing together. It's been a collaborative effort and it's been a lot of fun. We wrote about 30 songs for this record. I really write fast and crank out a lot of songs. I kicked these guys into shape right away to get working really hard five days a week and hammering the stuff out. As a result, You Made Me came out of it all and it's a great record. I'm really proud of it.

Moving from a major label to a smaller label, are you satisfied with the level of promotion for the album?

It's a little different for me, but I needed a different experience anyway because I had gone the major label route and came home very disappointed after the Timebomb tour. I needed a change. I'm much more involved in the business and I've learned a lot more about the business as a result, whether I've wanted to or not. It's different, but there are pros and cons to each avenue. You definitely have a lot more leverage with a major because there are a lot more bands and there's more money. But you also can get lost in the mix and you can also be dropped a lot quicker if it doesn't work for you there.

And also you don't get to see where your money is being spent and you have to recoup it all. You come back and think you're going to have all this money and then you figure out that x amount was spent here and x amount was spent there, and unless you audit your record company you really don't see all the money that was lost. There are a lot of things management doesn't tell you like when they fly to come see you, you forget you have to pay for it.

We've managed to do pretty much everything I've done except we still haven't managed to get our video rotated on Fuse or MTV2 or anything. Our song didn't react enough to get on there. We're still working on it. Radio is a big game. Everything's a money game, which I'm finding out. I didn't know too much about that when I was on Dreamworks. I didn't know radio was a money game. I thought it was more of a relationship game. I'm finding out that it's relationships and money, a very substantial amount of money.

You wrote some songs with the guys in Velvet Revolver, right?

It was Keith Nelson from Buckcherry and me, along with Slash, Duff (McKagan) and Matt (Sorum). We did a show for a Randy Castillo benefit and there was all this buzz around the show. At the time three of the guys had quit Buckcherry, so it was Keith and I writing songs for the third Buckcherry record. We were bandless at the time and wondered if these guys wanted to start a band, and they were thinking the same thing. That's how it all started. Then it became the GNR project and then Velvet Revolver after that. We spent about a month together in the studio writing songs. We wrote about 9 songs and none of them got recorded for real. We just did live recordings in the rehearsal room. I don't think anything is going to come of that ever.

Why did you decide to form another band instead of doing a solo album?

I like to collaborate. I like to be in a band situation. I always have been since I was 16. It's just what I know. I think eventually I will do a record that's all my own. I think I'm ready for that now. I don't really care where the songs come from as long as they're great.

Is there anywhere you'd like to tour that you haven't been to yet?

I want to go to South America really bad. It's the only place I haven't been. I've been to Europe and New Zealand and Australia and Japan. South America has great rock fans but it's really hard to get down there. But once you get down there and establish a fan base it's really off the hook. I've always wanted to play Rock in Rio. That's been a dream of mine.