BUCKCHERRY Guitarist: 'We Haven't Made The Same Record Twice'

Ken Brzezinski of SuperUltraDeluxe.com recently conducted an interview with BUCKCHERRY guitarist Keith Nelson. An excerpt from the chat follows below.

SuperUltraDeluxe.com: So let's talk about the new album, "All Night Long". I got a chance to listen to it a few times and I think it's not deviating much from the formula that got you guys where you are today…

Keith: Well, there's not really a "formula." I can tell you it's definitely a "rock 'n' roll" record by a "rock 'n' roll" band. When I sit back and listen to this record, I was involved as a producer, so I didn't have the luxury of sitting back and listening while we recorded it. But it's the one record we've done that reminds me most of our first record as far as energy and the rawness of it. All of the songs are awesome, and we are all really proud of it. Thankfully, we haven't made the same record twice. I think we are secure enough in what we do as a band to be pretty consistent.

SuperUltraDeluxe.com: Tell me about the recoding process of "All Night Long". Did you do what you did for your first four records or did you change things up a bit?

Keith: Well, the process usually starts out with us writing upwards of about 30 songs. Then we'll pick something like 17 songs and go ahead and record them. And then we'll pick 11 or 12 that we think, kind of embody "a record." That's the usual process. On this record, we took a little bit of a different approach. We wrote a handful of songs, and recorded them. Then went back and wrote some more songs, and then recorded them. We did that about three or four times, until we felt like we had a record. So, really, we only wrote about 14 or 15 songs; but we worked overtime on those songs. Whereas in the past, we would have written those songs and if something really wouldn't have been up to snuff, we just dropped it. In this case, we took a song that if it wasn't what we wanted it to be, we took the best parts out of it, the parts that we were really excited about, and stuck with those ideas and saw them through. Everyone was really great about getting their egos out of the way, and really just tried to come up with the best stuff. So, this record was a little bit different than the other ones. The biggest reason we did it this way, was because we really did it all in my studio. We really weren't crunching for time. Because, when you make a record, it can be a really expensive venture. You're spending $1,000, $1,500, or $2,000 a day in a big studio, renting it by the day, and every day that goes by, there's a lot of money burnt. So we did the record in my studio and we kind of had the luxury of taking our time and trying a different approach, and it really worked out great!

SuperUltraDeluxe.com: I'm sure you get asked this a lot, but for our readers who don't know; explain what happened during the video shoot for "Crazy Bitch".

Keith: Well, basically we had an open casting call for females that wanted to be in the video. One of the subjects in question showed up with false identification saying that she was of age. She performed in the video and had a great time doing it. She then later decided to come clean and say that she wasn't, in fact, of age and had falsified her documents. You do have a target on your back. But, you know, it's part of the job, and I'll stand behind our behavior of what we did or didn't do. We were complete gentlemen and there was no bad behavior on our end. Unfortunately, when you get some kind of success, there are people out there who want to capitalize on it for their own benefit; and I think that's a perfect example.

Read the entire interview from SuperUltraDeluxe.com.