Music Monday: Buckcherry Live

Buckcherry’s lead singer, Josh Todd.

Back on Friday November 14th, Buckcherry played a date here in Salt Lake City. I was watching many of their dates skip Utah over the last couple of years and wasn’t sure they would visit here to promote their Fuck EP. But they did and I went.

Promotion

I love bands that play bars or smaller clubs and this was my first visit to The Royal, owned in part by the local band Royal Bliss. The bar/club is in a shopping area in the middle of Salt Lake valley. Drink service was great for being a packed bar.

The poster showing the band and openers

There were 3 opening bands: Shaman Harvest, Perish Lane and Par For The Curse. Mostly good bands, but of course, I was there to see Buckcherry so I was as patient as I could be waiting for them to take the stage.

Drum head

And the setup of the drum kit means the band will be on stage very shortly. I pretty much stayed in my position, which was about 7 people from the front of the stage.

Band

The band took the stage just before 11pm and opened up with “Lit Up”. Then went into “All Night Long”. Most of the focused songs of the evening came from the “Fuck EP” like “Somebody Fucked With Me”, “The Motherfucker” and “I Don’t Give A Fuck” [can you sense a theme here?]. All profanity-laced hard hitting songs with that familiar Buckcherry sound. Very well translated live, with the audience already knowing the songs and lyrics.

Tattooed Rock Star – that’s Josh Todd front and center

The band was very good, blistering through more hits like “Everything” and then playing two tracks from 2001’s “Time Bomb” – “Ridin'” and “Porno Star”. I was pretty happy with these two songs being played. “Time Bomb” is out of print and not a lot of songs get played from this album live. The ballad “Sorry” was well received. And then the giant hit “Crazy Bitch” went into a longer medley, which the crowd loved and sang along to in unison. Guitarist Keith Nelson stayed in the same spot on the stage, for the most part. Except towards the end of the show when he took a fan’s phone and captured video footage of the band on the stage, giving the phone back before his guitar part was needed again.

End View

The view from the back of the bar

I went to the back of the bar for the last couple of songs, one of which was another track from the “Fuck EP” called “Say Fuck It” which is pretty much a cover of Icona Pop’s “I Love It”, with lyrics changed to match the band’s thundering sound. The band runs through the song so well and adds a nice hard edge to a huge pop hit.

So happy I went to see Buckcherry and that they didn’t skip Utah like so many bands do these last few years. I hope they realize that there are some fans here that welcome them at any venue.