Buckcherry and Avenged Sevenfold today announced additional dates for their co-headline U.S. tour due to the overwhelming response to the dates already announced. The two chart-topping rock bands will continue their trek through arenas playing to tens of thousands of fans as the tour dates extend into December. The full itinerary for the tour which features two headliners for the price of one is listed below.

NOVEMBER
4 Casper, WY Casper Event Center Arena*
5 Billings, MT MetraPark Arena*
6 Rapid City, SD Rushmore Plaza Civic Center Arena
8 St. Paul, MN Roy Wilkins Auditorium*
9 Fargo, ND Fargodome
11 Bloomington, IL US Cellular Coliseum
14 Madison, WI Alliant Energy Center
15 Waterloo, IA McElroy Auditorium
16 La Crosse, WI LaCrosse Center
18 Grand Rapids, MI Deltaplex
19 Evansville, IN Roberts Stadium
21 Ypsilanti, MI EMU Convocation Center
22 Youngstown, OH Chevrolet Centre
23 Columbus, OH Value City Arena at Schottstein Center
25 Tupelo, MS BancorpSouth Center
26 Biloxi, MS Mississippi Coast Coliseum
29 Greensboro, NC Greensboro Coliseum
30 Augusta, GA James Brown Arena

DECEMBER
2 Tallahassee, FL Tallahassee-Leon Co. Civic Center
3 Orlando, FL UCF Arena

Buckcherry scored their first Top 10 album today on the SoundScan/Billboard 200 album chart with Black Butterfly, the much-anticipated follow-up to 2006’s RIAA-certified platinum 15.

Black Butterfly debuted at #8 on the chart, the highest debuting rock album.

“Buckcherry keeps letting it rip,” said People magazine in a 3/4 star review of the album.

“There’s no denying it, Buckcherry is what in-your-face rock ‘n’ roll is all about.”—Associated Press

Dubbed the Next Great American Rock Band, Buckcherry, who just two years ago performed to rooms of 200 people, are currently playing to crowds of tens of thousands. A full tour itinerary is below.

BUCKCHERRY – ON TOUR 2008

9/24-9/30 with Shinedown and Saving Abel

10/2-11 with Saving Abel * 10/8-9 also with 12 Stones

10/19-10/26 in Japan

11/4-11/22 with Avenged Sevenfold, Shinedown, and Saving Abel except *

11/4, 11/5, 11/8 with Avenged Sevenfold and Saving Abel only

SEPTEMBER

24 Tulsa, OK The Brady Theater

26 Huntsville, AL Big Spring Jam

27 Memphis, TN Mud Island Amphitheatre

28 Knoxville, TN Knoxville Civic Coliseum

30 Clemson, SC Little John Coliseum

OCTOBER

2 Sauget, IL Pop’s

3 Little Rock, AR Clear Channel Metroplex

4 Mobile, AL Bayfest* (also with Shinedown)

8 Charlotte, NC Grady Cole Center

9 Atlanta, GA The Tabernacle

11 Kinston, NC NC Lenoir County Fairgrounds

In Japan:

19 Saitama Loud Park Festival

21 Koutou-ku, Tokyo Studio Coast

22 Nagoya-Aichi Diamond Hall—Nagoya

23 Naka-ku, Hiroshima Club Quattro—Hiroshima
25 Osaka-Jo Osaka-Jo Hall (Crüe Fest)

26 Yamashita Shin Yokohama Yokohama Bay Hall

NOVEMBER

4 Casper, WY Casper Event Center Arena*

5 Billings, MT MetraPark Arena*

6 Rapid City, SD Rushmore Plaza Civic Center Arena

8 St. Paul, MN Roy Wilkins Auditorium*

9 Fargo, ND Fargodome

11 Bloomington, IL US Cellular Coliseum

14 Madison, WI Alliant Energy Center

15 Waterloo, IA McElroy Auditorium

16 La Crosse, WI LeCrosse Center

18 Grand Rapids, MI Deltaplex

19 Evansville, IN Roberts Stadium

21 Ypsilanti, MI EMU Convocation Center

22 Youngstown, OH Chevrolet Centre

A band can respond to success in many different ways.

It can become complacent and rest on its laurels. It can become cautious and just give fans more of the same thing they liked the last time. It can become cocky and not even care about what comes next.

Or it can be like Buckcherry and go for the throat.

Emboldened, enriched, inflamed, and re-invigorated by the success of 2006’s RIAA platinum, Grammy-nominated 15 (which included the monster hits “Crazy Bitch” and “Sorry”), the hard rockin’ California quintet returns with BLACK BUTTERFLY, a 12-song set that strides forward with the kind of confidence and spirit of adventure you expect from a band that feels it constantly has more to prove. Produced by guitarist Keith Nelson and Marti Frederiksen (Aerosmith, Def Leppard, “Almost Famous,” Fuel), BLACK BUTTERFLY finds Buckcherry using the revival spurred by 15 to push itself even further in its quest for Sex, Drugs, and Buckcherry.

“The bar’s been raised because of 15,” says frontman Josh Todd. “We spent longer on the writing process for BLACK BUTTERFLY than for any of our other records. We wanted to make sure that we had the goods, because 15 was a great record. We want to continue to elevate our game.”

Nelson concurs, adding that, “I think the challenge for us has been just to get back to the headspace we were in three years ago, when it was us against the world and we had to make the record of our lives. I think that’s exactly where we’re at. We haven’t changed much in the process – it’s the same rehearsal space, the same pre-production room. The only difference is the cars in the parking lot are a little nicer.”

There’s no question that 15 was the album of Buckcherry’s career to this point – the right record at exactly the right time.

After a quick-start in 1999 with an RIAA gold debut album and hits such as “Lit Up,” “Check Your Head,” and “For the Movies,” Buckcherry went on a much-needed hiatus in 2002 in order for Todd and Nelson to regroup and refresh their enthusiasm for the band. Todd recorded a solo album in 2004, while Nelson wrote and recorded with other artists. The two even performed and wrote briefly with Slash, Duff McKagan, and Matt Sorum in the precursor to Velvet Revolver. But the duo never lost their desire to bring back Buckcherry. They reactivated the band in 2005 with three new members – guitarist Stevie D., bassist Jimmy Ashhurst, and drummer Xavier Muriel – and signed on a committed management team at Tenth Street Entertainment.

That commitment was particularly valuable, since the music industry as a whole was lukewarm to 15 when it was first shopped around. The band financed the album itself and first signed deals in Japan and Canada (where 15 also went platinum) before a self-release at home was ultimately picked up by Eleven Seven Music/Atlantic Records. An active and forward-thinking viral campaign had “Crazy Bitch” coming out of every radio, Internet portal, and strip club you could imagine. It went on to sell more than 1.2 million digital copies – scoring an RIAA platinum single, earned an RIAA double-platinum ringtone certification, and landed a Grammy Award nomination for Best Hard Rock Performance.

15 itself sold more than the combined total of Buckcherry’s two previous albums, and “Sorry” – sweeping behind 15’s other singles (”Everything,” “Next 2 You,” and “Broken Glass”) – became Buckcherry’s first Top 10 hit, peaking at No. 9 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart as well as hitting the Top 10 of the Hot AC survey. And more than 300 live shows in support of the album kept the band abundantly visible throughout that campaign.

Nelson says that Buckcherry appreciates the milestones it was able to achieve with 15. “It’s all such a gift,” he explains, “because four years ago there wasn’t a band. A lot of people left us for dead. So you can be fearful of success, or you can move on. I think being grateful and excited about how lucky we are to have this job… that’s the head space we’re in moving forward.”

Buckcherry began writing for BLACK BUTTERFLY last November before hitting the studio in the spring. “That’s coming off 25 months of non-stop touring,” Nelson notes. “Nobody was really taking off on vacation. We got right back to work.”

The process, Todd says, was much the same as on 15. “I’ll just come in with a vocal melody and we’ll build a song that way… Keith’ll put his magic on it, and Jimmy or Stevie will add their input as well, and we hash it together in a room,” he explains. “We just tried not to overthink it. The challenge is to not get all caught up in ‘Are they hits? Are they good enough? Is it gonna be great?’ We just finish the songs and start tearing them apart once we have a body of work that we can look at.”

Ultimately, Todd adds, Buckcherry wanted to keep pursuing a broad variety of material that would appeal to the rock dogs who favor “Crazy Bitch” and “Lit Up” and those who were captured by the soaring melodicism of “Sorry.” “We like to be well-rounded. We don’t want to be just one speed,” Todd says. “We’re always going to have songs that are gonna be great on Hot AC and Top 40 radio. We always have ballads on our records. It’s OK as long as we stay true to our roots, which is rock ‘n’ roll.”

The result, BLACK BUTTERFLY, again captures the band’s ability to master a diverse repertoire of songs. The album erupts with fierce, fast-paced rock tracks like “Rescue Me” and “A Child Called ‘It’.” Yet “Don’t Go Away” is a melodic, mid-tempo plea “about being vulnerable, longing to be with a loved one but feeling so far away,” Todd says.

Buckcherry does throw a bit of a curveball out of the box on BLACK BUTTERFLY. The first single, “Too Drunk…,” is a slinky and sexy track that takes the band in yet another kind of direction, while still retaining a muscular, rocking core. “I just wanted something that was funky,” notes Todd, “so Keith and Stevie collaborated on it and just turned it into something with a lot of space to tell a story.”

And that story? It’s about being too inebriated to, well, let’s say perform. “It represents my childhood,” Todd reveals. “‘Too Drunk…’ tells the story of how we rolled as kids. I just thought it was funny to throw that tag, ‘too drunk to fuck,’ because sometimes that was the case.”

Buckcherry rolls into another kind of childhood on another couple of songs. Dave Pelzer’s book, A Child Called “It”, about a horrific case of child abuse in California, yielded two songs for BLACK BUTTERFLY – “Child Called It” and the redemptive “Rescue Me.” Todd says of A Child Called “It,” there were times when I had to put the book down because the abuse of this boy was so bad, but I felt like the book found me… I was compelled to write this song out of inspiration from this guy’s incredible journey.”

“Fallout” deals autobiographically with some of the struggles and turmoil that have dotted Todd’s life, while “Imminent Bailout” is “just balls to the wall rock ‘n’ roll, more on our punk rock side.” “Rose,” meanwhile, is a sweeping road song that Todd likens to Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page” and Guns ‘N Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”

Adding to the process this time around was Frederiksen, who had co-written two songs, “Sorry” and “Next 2 You,” on 15. “After that,” Nelson notes, “the seed was planted that maybe we could work together as producers on the new album. We had a great sort of vibe with him, and he seemed like the perfect choice.”

Todd says that Frederiksen – who co-wrote four of BLACK BUTTERFLY’s songs and also sang backing vocals – “is really great with melody, and he’s a great musician as well. He understands every aspect of how a rock song is put together, and he really helps us to make our ideas gel.”

Knowing that 15’s rise was very organic and built on a grass-roots fan campaign and word-of-mouth, Buckcherry hopes to continue that path with BLACK BUTTERFLY – at least as much as they can, considering it’s one of the most highly anticipated releases of the year, quite a change from when 15 came out nearly two and a half years ago. In fact, as BLACK BUTTERFLY nears release, 15’s “Sorry” and “Crazy Bitch” remain very active on radio and singles charts. There will, of course, be plenty of viral adventures to help fans tap into the band on a very direct level, but Buckcherry is particularly looking forward to returning to the road, first with Mötley Crüe’s inaugural Crüe Fest tour – which Nelson calls “more fun than human beings should be allowed to have” – and then with global headlining dates of its own.

“That’s the heart of who we are, playing live,” Todd says. “We’ve always prided ourselves on our live show, and that’s why we have this really great foundation when we go out there. I feel like we really bring the thunder. When we come to your town we really are focused on giving you you’re money’s worth. We’re adamant about bringing that to the table every night, and nothing’s ever gonna change that.”

Buckcherry unleashes Black Butterfly today. The album – which follows 2006’s RIAA platinum-certified blockbuster, 15; and if you liked 15, you’ll love Black Butterfly. “Too Drunk…,” the slinky first single from Black Butterfly is currently blowing up at multi-format radio outlets nationwide. The track is a top 10 smash at Active Rock, while also coming in this week at #11 with-a-bullet at Mainstream Rock. What’s more, “Too Drunk…” is currently bulleting its way up the top 30 at Alternative outlets across the country. Black Butterfly– co-produced by Buckcherry’s own Keith Nelson and longtime Aerosmith collaborator Marti Frederiksen (the co-writer of Buckcherry’s top 10 smash, “Sorry”) – is being offered in a selection of formats: a standard CD package; a “Limited Fan Club Edition” version, which comes with bonus tracks and a one-year membership to the Buckcherry Fan Club; and a “Limited Fan Club Edition” bundle which adds a “BLACK BUTTERFLY” T-shirt to the previous package. For more information, visit www.Buckcherry.com

BUCKCHERRY – ON TOUR 2008

9/16-9/30 with Shinedown and Saving Abel

10/4-9 with Saving Abel * 10/8-9 also with 12 Stones

SEPTEMBER

16 Moline, IL IWireless Center

18 Sioux Falls, SD Canaries Stadium

19 Bonner Springs, KS Sandstone Amphitheatre

20 Oklahoma City, OK Zoo Amphitheatre*

22 Lincoln, NE Pershing Auditorium

23 Valley Center, KS Kansas Coliseum

24 Tulsa, OK River Parks Amphitheatre

26 Huntsville, AL Big Spring Jam

27 Memphis, TN Mud Island Amphitheatre

28 Knoxville, TN Knoxville Civic Coliseum

30 Clemson, SC Little John Coliseum

OCTOBER

4 Mobile, AL Bayfest

8 Charlotte, NC Grady Cole Center

9 Atlanta, GA The Tabernacle

11 Kinston, NC NC Lenoir County Fairgrounds

Corporate line:
Buckcherry is back with a purpose, unleashing their newest effort, “Black Butterfly.” Following the platinum success of “15,” these LA rockers haven’t lost any of their edge.

The good:
“Tired of You” – Josh Todd has one of the best voices in rock. It’s that voice that can simply suck you into a song.

“Child called ‘It’” – A poignant song about child abuse.

“Cream” – Why this is the closing track is beyond me because it’s one of the best songs on the album.

“Rescue Me” – It’s great to have a band do one thing well–rock.

“Don’t Go Away” – This won’t go down as one of the great Buckcherry songs–it’s too generic to be great–but its still a good song. It’s trumped by “All of Me.”

The rest:
“Too Drunk…” – This seems like a concocted and forced follow-up to “Crazy Bitch.” Buckcherry is trying way to hard to be over-the-top. It’s the single and the weakest song on the album.

“Dreams” – This isn’t half as good as the song “For The Movies.”

Finally:
Buckcherry have moments of brilliance and moments where they sounds nearly ordinary–Josh Todd is the only reason they can never sound completely ordinary. Josh Todd is the glue that holds the band together. Nothing on “Black Butterfly” ever sounds on par with their initial hits “Lit Up” and “For the Movies.” Luckily nearly every track is good. “Black Butterfly” may not go down in your top ten of all time–but its still fun to take on the road and singing your lungs out to.

Watch the video for “Too Drunk…”