GETTING INKED UP...WITH JOSH TODD

JOSH TODD was the lanky, tattooed singer of BUCKCHERRY for two releases on the now-defunct Dreamworks Records. Before the band could record a third, 3/5ths of the members quit, leaving Todd and guitarist Keith Nelson holding the bag, and ultimately dissolving the band in July 2002. Todd didn't wait long before putting together a new band, SHOTS FIRED, the members of which were a lot younger than him), and even jamming with former GUNS N' ROSES members for a while (the end result was ultimately VELVET REVOLVER). You might have seen him in some recent movies like 'The Salton Sea' , 'The Banger Sisters' and 'The New Guy' (and if you haven't, don't feel bad. It's not like any of those broke attendance records). Ultimately, Josh headed out on his own to record his own material. 'You Made Me' was released via the singer's website earlier this year, and is being sold in stores as well. There's a lot more legwork involved, and the cash isn't as great, but the guy is calling his own shots from start to finish, which is more important than the money for some.

I actually tried to do this interview as straight as I could, and ease up on the dumb questions. I shouldn't have. With a few exceptions (like when Todd calls COURTNEY LOVE an idiot for getting arrested), this could have been goofier. My bad. Thanks be to our own FoundryMusicDana for transcribing this beast:

Steve C: You're on tour now, where are you now? I checked your itinerary; You're in Upstate N.Y?

Josh Todd: Ahhh yeah. Right now we're traveling to ah.....Cobleskill, New York... I've never been there.

SC: Wow! Sounds intruiging. (sarcasm mode off)

JT: Yeah, it should be interesting. (not understaning that I was being a wiseass, and didn't really care about Cobleskill, New York)

SC: Is it snowing like crazy up there?

JT: Um..no. Actually, the weather's been pretty nice the last few days. There's snow on the ground but, it's not affecting our traveling. (Sweet Jesus, I'm two questions in and asking about the WEATHER? I'm fucked. Bail out! Bail out!)

SC: Oh cool. Well, hopefully you won't get hit with too much. What's the turnout on the tour been like?

JT: It's been great and we've been picking up other shows. We've been doing one off and three offs with ILL NIÑO and SEVENDUST as well as our own headlining shows. It's been really good.

SC: Any plans to tour with or open for any larger bands?

JT: Oh yeah. We're working on all that stuff right now. We're going to be out at the end of April again. Our last show here is going be on April 2nd in Atlantic City and we're going to take a little break and then we're going to go back out and we're working on a of bunch of things. But nothing's set in stone yet, so I don't want to comment on it really.

SC: Okay, cool. Now you're touring in support of You Made Me, which you put out yourself, right?

JT: Yeah.

SC: Since you're not with a major label anymore, how does the experience of putting out your own release differ? Obviously, you have fewer resources.

JT: Right, but you have a lot of creative freedom which is wonderful. It's not very much different. The only difference is the amount of money that you could spend, you know?

SC: How does that hinder or facilitate it getting played on the radio or video outlets?

JT: It frees you, but it also puts in you in a hole because you have to sell so many records to recoup to make any money. Most bands on major labels have to sell a million copies before they recoup all their money, you know? And they don't get a say so in how their money is spent. You know the record labels spend their money that they have to recoup, but you don't get a say so on how it's being spent, where it's being spent, what you want to spend it on, you know? And that is what were are doing in this organization which is a lot better for me and it's a different way to go and it's a much more harder way to go, but in the long run, the back end is much bigger. (Yeah, you can make 70 cents on the dollar instead of 30 cents...which is what many label deals allow)

SC: How many of the songs from You Made Me are leftovers from the BUCKCHERRY days? I had read that you and KEITH (NELSON, GUITAR) had written a lot of songs for a third Buckcherry disc, but it never got recorded?

JT: Yeah. None.

SC: Really?

JT: Yeah.

SC: It's all new stuff?

JT: You know, I am a workaholic. I write really fast and when I got into this situation I hadn't been a band situation for a while so we all got together and it was so inspiring and so much fun. We each got in five days a week and wrote 30 songs in three months.

SC: Wow, that's great man. Very cool. Is the video hitting any of the video channels?

JT: We're hitting everyone but Fuse and MTV because we have to have a bigger radio story before they will spin our video. But, we're number two on all the regional channels!

SC: ...and that's just you guys farming it out yourself and making all the phone calls yourself?

JT: Yes.

SC: Jeez. Now given that situation and given what's been going on with the record industry for the past five years let's say, with all of the consolidation and all the piracy, do you feel sorry for these labels at all or do you think it serves them right?

JT: I definitely think everything comes in cycles and you reap what you sow. And I think they are getting the brunt of it now, you know, and it was [going to come] sooner or later. I don't know. Whenever I see chaos like this in a business, especially a business that I am really familiar with, there's always opportunity, you know? And that's what I think people are missing. You know they're spending so much time trying to scare people into not downloading stuff which they're never going to accomplish. They just need to spend more on reinventing the wheel.

SC: I talk to a lot of guys. Some guys that have been in the business for ten years, some guys that have been in for 30 years, and they all say the same thing, relatively. They say they robbed the artist for so long that is serves them right for being so greedy.

JT: Totally! (add another resentful musician to that pile)

SC: And this chaos is just an end result of charging $20 for something that costs 75 cents to make.

JT: I know. And at the end of the day it really effects the artist because it makes being a musician really not an attractive thing to do anymore because there is a huge sacrifice on your personal life. Traveling all the time. Being away from home. That's why you get compensated so much money, you know, when you do make it and this is really turning people away because it is so difficult to make money now.

SC: How difficult was it to find a group of guys that you got along with that you wanted to play with considering how many people are being dissuaded from entering this business?

JT: That's difficult. It's difficult to keep a band together as you know over time. Most bands last two records and they're out and I was a victim of that as well. So, not even two records. There's only a small percentage, like one or two percent of the bands that release records that even get in the upper echelon of the music business.

SC: Right, because it costs so much to promote them.

JT: Especially rock bands.

SC: Do you still talk to the guys from Buckcherry?

JT: My relationship with Keith is in tact. Keith and I started the band and we wrote the majority of the material and he's the only one I talk to. The other three guys quit. I don't have a whole lot of respect for them and kind of lost it over that Time Bomb tour. So, they're not really in my life at all.

SC: I notice that you are selling the new disc online with an affiliate program, it that helping out at all? That's not really something you see with rock bands too much. (Shit, that's been working in the adult business for years...and those guys are making money. It's about time the musicians, who often cater to the same demographic, do the same thing)

JT: Oh yeah, we're selling it online, at stores, at shows. That's the whole thing that we're doing, you know, we're making sure it's available everywhere. It's a different approach and it's working and I think major labels need to start doing that.

SC: You're right. Off to a different medium, you've been in a few movies. You've been in The Salton Sea, The Banger Sisters, The New Guy, Lightning Bug.

JT: Yeah,Lightning Bug will be debuting at the Philadelphia Film Festival April 9th, by the way.

SC: What do you play in the movie by the way?

JT: I play this redneck named Rusty and I am really into my fucking car. It takes place in Alabama. It's loosely based on this guy's life, the director, who wanted to be a special effects guy in Hollywood and he wound up doing that and he become very successful at it. It's just about his dysfunctional upbringing and how everybody really did not encourage him to pursue his dream and he did regardless. It's a really cool story.

SC: How did the movie thing happen? Was that something you had wanted to do or did you just fall into it?

JT: I fell into The Salton Sea and that was [when I] was out on the road in Australia touring and they just asked me to be in the movie and I just happened to be in town. I toured for 15 months and I happened to be in town when they were doing the movie and I was like 'Oh, Okay.' They asked me if I wanted to be a part of it and I said 'Well, in what way?' And they were like, 'Do you want to be in the movie?' And you know, I am like 'Yeah.' So, I play [a guy named] Big Bill in that movie. It was a perfect character for me to start because there wasn't hardly any dialogue and I just had to look cool. That was about it. I worked for a drug dealer named Pooh Bear, VINCENT D'ONOFRIO's character, and that was my introduction. It was such a cool, new creative process for me, that I was just into it. I just do it when I have time to do it. When I'm at home. I went out on auditions. You know it's not a whole lot of time out of my life. It's like two weeks here, a week there or whatever. So, it's fun for me.

SC: The Salton Sea was pretty grim. It's a grisly look at the whole drug scene and addicts. As someone who has had some experience in that, how accurate do you think that depiction was?

JT: I think a lot of it was pretty accurate. I don't know about the whole...you know he did so much crank, that his nose was gone. He had a crater in his face. But, you know, I thought it was cool and loved all the scenes where they get all tweaked and try to come up with schemes as far as like heisting Bob Hope's (inaudible). Those are really great scenes because when you're tweaking for, when you're up for a lot of days, you think of some weird shit.

SC: Yeah, like reenacting the JFK assassination with pigeons?

JT: That was a fucking great scene. You know there's a scene where I was doing lines with Vincent D'Onofrio, we were cleaning our guns and snorting fucking (inaudible) and listening to AC/DC and it was a fucking great scene and it got taken out of the movie. But, I wish it would have been in there.

SC: In your honest opinion, even given your limited experience with it so far, what's an easier business to make money in, movies or music?

JT: You know it's tough. [If ] you're a big star in movies, you get paid a lot of money. Or you're a really big character actor you can make good money in the movies, but you've got to be working constantly and you're always kind of at the mercy of getting a job. It's kind of a commission deal. Well, you only get a job if they like you and you have to audition and go through a lot of rejection and if you're cool with that, cool. Some people are just really passionate about acting and they can live that way. I could not just solely rely on that. That would just drive me nuts. But, you know, both areas are difficult, but if you really strike it big, you make it. It's a big gamble. But the people who make it big, they get paid a lot of money. That's what you always hope for, you know?

SC: Of course. I've gotta ask because it just hit the news and as someone who is onstage for a living, I'm sure you heard about it... The Courtney Love shit that's been going on the past couple of days?

JT: No, no. What happened?

SC: Well, first of all she's in court in L.A. trying to get custody of her daughter back and she was just in New York and she allegedly hit someone with a mike stand while onstage and just got arrested after playing a night club downtown. She got locked up.

JT: What an idiot.

SC: Do you see stuff like that and think, 'Wow, she's great at manipulating the press.' Or do you think, 'What a dope.' (That's good, buddy... just excuse the fact that he just called her an 'idiot' and keep stumbling along with your awful line of boring questions. What a stupid bastard I am)

JT: I just look at it as a really poor attempt to get back in the public eye, you know? I mean it's just such a dumb move because then she leaves herself wide open to be sued. I think she's really just struggling to get back in the public eye, you know? Whatever, if that's what you gotta do.

SC: Hypothetical situation: Let's say you get a call from Slash one morning and he tells you things are not working out with Weiland in VELVET REVOLVER. He asks you to drop what you're doing and go sing for Velvet Revolver. A guaranteed paycheck, but you are not playing your own material, do you take the job or stay with your solo career?

JT: Well, I look for opportunities, you know? It really comes down to dollars baby.

SC: Really? So, if the money was there, it would be worth it?

JT: Well, you know, I love my band and I love what I am doing but...I have to survive and stuff. So, it would really just come down to money. (Ha! I'm sure the kids in his band are awfully glad to hear that... Don't quit your papre routes, eh)

SC: Honest answer. I like that cause you had jammed with them before the whole Velvet Revolver thing happened...

JT: Right.

SC: There was always that possibility that you guys would have wound up in a band situation before...

JT: Right. Right. It is what it is though. Everything happens for a reason, especially in my life. There's a reason why that didn't happen and sometimes you can't always tell right away and I won't know until probably I look back in retrospect over a couple of years from now.

SC: Now that you're on the road and you're sort of starting up again, are the trappings in the music business and playing out all the time the same? Is there still just as much sex and drugs out there or has it toned down as of 2004?

JT: Oh, no. There's always sex and drugs.

SC: Really?

JT: Yeah. There's a lot of that.

SC: Is it harder to avoid or is just conditioning yourself to....

JT: No. No. I got a really great foundation. You know I worked through that a really long time ago. So, I'm cool with it. I just enjoy watching people over indulge. It's fun.

SC: And just making sure you don't over indulge...

JT: Well, you know, I just can't or I'll die. That's really where it came to me as far as my crossroads.

SC: You had that moment of clarity?

JT: The moment of clarity in my body kind of gave out on me, you know?

SC: That's good. At least you managed to save yourself.

JT: A lot of things happened, you know. I had a daughter.

SC: Well, that would certainly motivate you to clean up your act.

JT: Sure.

SC: Now, let's just say your plugging away at this for a couple of years and you're doing all right, but it doesn't lead to any huge success, is that going to be it for you or is this what you do until the day that you die?

JT: Oh, no. no. I would never say this is what I do until the day that I die. I mean, um, I'm constantly changing everyday I wake up. I'm changing, I'm growing, I keep evolving. You know, I don't know what's gonna happen. Honestly, I can't see myself being on stage at the age of 40 ever again, you know? But, you know, whatever opportunities present themselves, whatever makes sense, whatever I'm passionate about, I'll do. And if that means, you know, hey I somehow get tossed into a situation where it's going to be lucrative, fun and amazing, then possibly I might do that.

SC: Hey, thanks Josh. Is there anything you want to plug?

JT: I just want everyone to know that You Made Me is out in stores. Get the record and definitely come check out the live show, it's really great.

You heard the man... Go get the CD, and check him out live with his merry bunch of junior high-schoolers (ok, maybe they're not THAT young...)

CHECK OUT JOSH TODD's OFFICIAL WEBSITE

(Thanks again to FoundryMusicDana for transcribing this beast interview)