How do you prepare yourself for touring?

Shaddix: You just have to get in the groove to handle rocking, partying, and minimal sleep. Once you get on the road, you start to get your momentum. Right now, we’re not on the road so I’m going to the gym every day trying to get back in shape. Because when we go in the studio you put on a few studio pounds because you’re eating good food and sitting on your ass recording music all the time.


Do you have to psyche yourself up every night to take the stage?

Shaddix: No, because it’s what I love. I just have to stretch out, warm up my voice. I never go onstage drunk. 'Cuz [performing] is its own high. And when I’m drunk I just feel unmotivated to rock a show. And your fans don’t want to see you all sloppy acting like an idiot.

Buckner: I usually warm up for a good half hour to 45 minutes before we play and really get everything all loosened up and ready to go. I won’t play without stretching, warming up my wrists, working on my practice pads.


Did you write much of the material for lovehatetragedy on the road?

Buckner: Yeah. Tobin and I had a [Digidesign] Pro Tools road rig in the back of one of our busses on the Ozzfest tour, and every day we’d be back there. Tobin’s the kind of guy always sitting on the bus or backstage in our dressing room with a guitar in his hand, always playing. So I figured we might as well record it. I would kind of play the role of engineer, and I had an electronic drum back there. We had about an hour’s worth of ideas at the end of the tour.


Do you feel more energy to create when you're on the road?

Buckner: Kind of. At night I wouldn’t be able to sleep, so a lot of times I’d be on the bus in back making beats, or tracking stuff to myself. A lot of that stuff will probably never see the light of day, but it was a great experience. You have access to this creative tool 24 hours a day.


Talk a little about your monitor setup.

Buckner: I used in-ear monitors for a while, and they were working really well, except my sweat would get down into the wiring and they’d end up shorting out. They’d last two and a half weeks each. What I ended up doing was wear ear filters to filter out the highs and have a kicker [bass shaker] underneath my drums. So when I was playing and I couldn’t hear the kick drum I could still feel it. Usually I have a lot of guitar in my monitors. Depending on the size of the room, I change the amount of bass I have. When we’re playing a smaller room I don’t need to have it as loud, so I turn down the bass.


What did you do to win over a crowd back in the band's early days?

Shaddix: Dude, we’d play in front of like 20 people and we’d go nuts. There was one point where we played a show and there was no one there, so we went, "We’re not setting up on the stage. We’ll use the P.A. for vocals and set up on the floor and rock." And that was cool. We used to play at this place called Friday Mocha in Merced, California all the time, and we’d be on the floor with the crowd, and I’d be getting the mike smashed in my teeth by the people pitting right in front of us. One time there was no security at the show and a fight broke out, so I jumped out into the crowd to try to break it up and I got my face beat in. I still miss those days.

Buckner: It’s definitely weird to think about that time. Talk about being in a different place in your life. I was just in New York and I went to a club with a friend of mine called ABC No Rio and it’s a hole in the wall. We went to see a band play there, and it was way underground and there were 50 kids there drinking and having a good time, and I remember thinking, "Gee, I don’t know how many times we played this show. We started this band because we didn’t have anything better to do after school. So we were like, "Fuck it, let’s rock out."


Did you approach Ozzfest or other stadium shows differently than a club or arena concert?

Buckner: When we were getting ready to go on Ozzfest we thought we’d treat every show with the same intensity because we always give everything we have. But Ozzfest is in amphitheatres where the seats are in front and then the grass is in back. It’s kind of the reverse from an arena, and if you give a person a seat they’re gonna use it. So we’d hit the stage and all we’d see in front of us were people sitting down with a beer in their hand. For us, it’s hard to counter that. We’re used to playing shows where general seating is right in front and all the kids there are real excited and they’re really giving back what we’re giving out. So it was a really weird experience and it was hard to put on the best show we can.