By Martin Popoff
Asked to pull out a couple of tracks he's particularly passionate about, Josh offers that "'Whiskey In The Morning' is a song I really like. I just wanted to talk more about the darker side of drug and alcohol addiction. 'Porno Star' I wrote in the third person. I was watching a documentary on it. Because I think every male has been in the position where... I'm sure you've watched porn before, right? I'm sure you've gotten in front of a mirror with a girl at some point in time and went, you know, maybe I can do this, (he says, helpfully executing the universal choreography for rear entry). I look pretty f**king good! That was really fun, writing that from the third person, which is something I've never really done. I've created characters and stories and songs but I've never done that."
Do you find after the success of the debut that the climate is getting better for hard rock bands trying to swim up the mainstream?
"It's definitely been an uphill sort of thing," offers Keith. "Early on when we got together in L.A., the thing that seemed to be the most popular were either swing bands, like Cherry Popping Daddies or female singer/songwriters. So being tattooed guys in a loud rock band without a DJ or any of that kind of bullshit, wasn't exactly the most popular thing around. It still isn't now. There's a funny story about how we played this really famous punk club in downtown L.A. called Al's Bar. It was our very first show, 1995 or 1996, and there were a couple of alternative kids kind of standing there off to the side and they were laughing at us while we were playing. And there were about eight or ten people, a few friends of ours there. No one was there, and I mean, that kind of speaks about what it was like putting this band together and making it happen. So consequently we kind of ended up not playing L.A.; we played everywhere BUT L.A.. We self-managed ourselves, and Josh and our bass player would call up blues clubs and say, 'we're kind of bluesy, yeah!' And we'd get booked. Because you just couldn't get a rock band in there. We would just take whoever would take us."
Buckcherry - Jackhammering Corporate Rock From Under The Bank Vault Page 5