BUCKCHERRY Vocalist Hints At 15th-Anniversary Reissue Of '15'

During a recent appearance on the "Appetite For Distortion" podcast, BUCKCHERRY vocalist Josh Todd discussed the unexpected success of the band's multi-platinum third album, 2005's "15".

"[We were] hanging on by the seat of our pants," Todd said. "We were all working day jobs before that. We were all broke. We were just doing what we were passionate about — like, 'Let's make the best record we can make.' We had no idea it was going to do what it did. We didn't see 'Crazy Bitch' coming — none of it. As a matter of fact, that whole roll-out was so crazy, because no one would sign that record in the United States. We had the whole record done and no one would sign it. We did that whole record in 15 days. That's why we called it '15', because we got a small bit of money from Japan. Japan gave us a record deal; we did the record; and we still couldn't get it signed, so our manager at the time, Allen Kovac, started Eleven Seven Records. He goes, 'I'll put it out,' and he started an independent label. We distributed it through Atlantic, and they had some clause in there where they could sign it if they wanted to — [an] upstreaming clause. As soon as we were about to drop it, we were almost going with the song 'Next To You' as the first single. This is when MySpace is happening, and 'Crazy Bitch' was getting all these views or listens... people were playing that song. It was over a million, and we were, like, 'Oh my God — what is going on with this song?' All of a sudden, radio DJs started editing a clean version of the song and put it on the radio. We didn't even ask. We were like, 'Oh my God — this song's taking off on its own,' and we jumped on 'Crazy Bitch'. We stopped everything that had to do with 'Next To You', and it just changed the scope of our career... It almost didn't even make the record. It had been sitting around for a while. We just thought it would be a good crowd tune — like, our core fans would really like it and it'd be fun to play live. We didn't think much of it because of the lyrical content."

Next year will mark the 15th anniversary of the release of "15", and Todd says the group is currently firming up how best to commemorate it. "Right before this [interview]," he said, "I just finished singing an acoustic version of 'Sorry'. We just re-recorded 'Sorry'. I'm exhausted. I was standing on my feet for about two hours, just belting it. That song is very tricky, and it's my whole range and the timing. It's a tricky song, and Stevie [D., guitars] threw me a curveball. I didn't know he was done with it. I thought I was doing something else today, and then he's like, 'Hey, man. I've got 'Sorry' done. Do you want to do that?' I go, 'Let's do it.' We're going to release that song and another song we're working on. We're going to put that out next year. We've got some other things in the works, but I can't talk about it yet — some other cool things for the new year."

Todd says he's also looking forward to beginning work on the follow-up to the group's latest album, "Warpaint". "Eventually, we'll get back to the drawing board as far writing a new record," he said. "I think the new record, I want to do it with the whole band together, because we haven't done that in a long time. Now that we've got these guys that are so deep in their talent and we all get along so well. We've already done 140 shows together, and we all just are having a great time being in each other's company. That's amazing. There's so much untapped stuff there, and I really want to see what it would be like to get it all in one room and see what we could all come up with together. That would be a lot of fun."

BUCKCHERRY is continuing to tour in support of "Warpaint", which was released in March via Century Media/RED Music. The 12-song record was produced by Mike Plotnikoff, whose previous collaboration with the band was the aforementioned "15".