Rogers Bayfest 2007

Joining Nickelback just in time to make All the Right Reasons was new drummer, Daniel Adair. Adair's hard-hitting yet multifaceted style perfectly matched the band's new material. Adair jumped right into the fold and his ‘audition' in Chad's studio even made its way into the finished album. "We are totally thrilled to have Daniel in the band," Chad says. "The creativity that went on with him in the studio was really inspiring. He's an amazing player."

Over the next seven months, the band spent countless hours making sure every song on their fourth major label release, All the Right Reasons, was exactly the way they wanted it. The result was 11 of the most insistent, dynamic and diverse tracks Nickelback has conjured to date. The first single "Photograph" shot to #1 on radio and video charts around the world and was followed quickly by "Animals", "Savin' Me", "Far Away" and "Rockstar".

"Number One" has been a common phrase in Nickelback's career. Their eagerness to experiment and evolve lit up All The Right Reasons in October of 2005, and the album debuted at the top of the Canadian SoundScan Top 200 Sales Chart and the coveted Billboard Top 200 Sales Chart - a first for the band.

Nickelback's all-inclusive approach has been a large part of the band's immense success. The Long Road sold over 5 million copies worldwide (4 x platinum in Canada), and bore several rock, and pop radio smashes including "Someday," "Figured You Out" and "Feelin' Way Too Damn Good." The album earned the band 6 Juno Award nominations (2 wins), 3 Grammy Award nominations and 1 American Music Award nomination. Their previous disc, 2001's Silver Side Up, was even more successful, selling over 11 million copies around the globe and spawning three number one hits, "Too Bad," "Never Again" and their monstrous breakout single, "How You Remind Me," which was the number one Most Played Song of 2002. Silver Side Up achieved multi-Platinum status around the world and racked up 4 Juno Awards, 4 Grammy Award nominations, 2 American Music Award Nominations and 4 Billboard Awards.

Over the years, Nickelback's music has appealed to listeners of pop, rock, alternative and metal. A number of seemingly disparate celebrity artists have also embraced the band, including ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons and ex-Pantera members Vinnie Paul and the late Dimebag Darrell Abbott. Both Gibbons and Abbot (albeit posthumously) aided in the creation of All the Right Reasons.

"Side of a Bullet" is just one of the many tracks on All The Right Reasons that's rife with compelling narrative. Ever since Kroeger started writing about his personal trials on "Never Again" and "How You Remind Me" he has strived to tell stories his fans could simultaneously relate to and be transported by. "I really like to tell a story that comes off like a movie inside the listener's head," Kroeger says. "And I try to put myself in the scene when I'm writing it. That makes it easier for me to look around and see what I can sing about. Otherwise you don't get any details and it doesn't play out very well."

Like all of Nickelback's albums, All the Right Reasons was born of sincerity, emotional revelation and a genuine love for music, but this time the music also stemmed from necessity - not the necessity of making deadlines or getting albums on the shelf. Rather the necessity of an artist to create, explore and try to understand more about the world around him. Hence the album title, which was a play off the track "Fight For All the Wrong Reasons."

"I really want to make music for the right reasons," Kroeger says. "The most important reason is to make music because you love it. And I think that's why we spend so much time on it. Throughout the creation of All the Right Reasons, the band tweaked verses, changed choruses and altered arrangements until the songs passed the band's own litmus test - no song was deemed "done" until it made the hair on the back of their necks stand up. "We're perfectionists," he says. "If you finish a song and it's not stuck in your head, then how will it stick in someone else's head when they've only heard it once or twice?"

Over the past year and a half, Nickelback have been recognized with a plethora of awards and nominations including the accolade of most played artist at radio in 2006. On November 15th, 2006, Nickelback was named the World's Best Rock Band at the World Music Awards and on November 10th the band won the Breakthrough Artist Award at the Billboard Touring Awards. Additionally, the band won three awards at the Billboard Music Awards, one American Music Award for Best Duo/Group, a People's Choice Award for Favourite Group, and 2 Juno Awards for Group of the Year and Rock Album of the Year.

The momentum continues in 2007, when Chad, Ryan, Mike and Daniel will spend the better part of the Spring and Summer headlining tours in North America.

On June 9th, 2007, Nickelback will be inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame.

Brad climbed aboard, and with the legendary line-up now in place, the quintet soon set to work establishing their reputation for fiery live shows and bad behavior. Sharing an apartment in Boston at 1325 Commonwealth Ave, the band lived and breathed their music. It was a time when the only sure things in life were the threat of eviction and their shared determination to rock the world. But as their reputation grew, it seemed only a matter of time.

Their time came in 1972 in NYC, the night the band played the legendary Max's Kansas City Club. In the audience that night was the famed record exec Clive Davis himself, who was so impressed with Aerosmith that he signed them to Columbia Records on the spot. Remembers Tyler, "After the show, Clive Davis put his arm around me, gave me a little squeeze and said (as immortalized in the Aerosmith song, "No Surprize"): 'Steven, you're gonna be a big star.'" They soon released their debut self-titled album, Aerosmith, and took to the road to spread the word, and spread they did. They toured relentlessly over the next two years, taking time off only to record their follow up LP, Get Your Wings, which went gold. Aerosmith was on the way, it seemed as though nothing could stop them.

1975 saw the band back in the studio working on their watershed album Toys In the Attic. Joe Perry: "When we started to Make Toys In the Attic, our confidence was built up from constant touring." "Toys" was a breakthrough album for Aerosmith, selling in the millions. According to Tom Hamilton, "We knew this album would launch the band like a missile … it was an incredible time." The momentum continued with the 1976 release of Rocks. The band turned a significant creative and commercial corner in this era. The hits came fast and furious: "Last Child," "Sweet Emotion," "Back in the Saddle," "Walk This Way," plus the surprise re-released smash "Dream On," an overlooked gem from their first album. Their endless roadwork paid off in platinum and exploded into sold-out pandemonium culminating with massive crowds of over 80,000 at the legendary Texxas Jam '78, and to a sea of over 350,000 at the famous CAL Jam in 1978. Aerosmith's status as one of the most popular live acts of the decade was achieved by word of mouth alone, a fact that was hard to swallow for the radio programmers, and the press who had somehow missed the boat on the Aerosmith phenomenon.

It wasn't long before the intoxicating pace of rock stardom took its toll. The fire that had fueled them began to burn them from within. "We were drug addicts dabbling in music rather than musicians dabbling in drugs," recalls Joe Perry. As the decade drew to a close, half-hearted albums (1977's Draw the Line and '79's Night In the Ruts), canceled performances, and internal strife dogged the band and began to weaken them at their core. After a final dressing room blowout in July 1979, Joe Perry announced his departure from the group to form The Joe Perry Project. Brad Whitford followed suit shortly thereafter to form Whitford-St. Holmes. The remaining 3 members soldiered on to eke out 1982's Rock In a Hard Place, but the magic was gone. Says Joey Kramer: "I wish somebody would have smacked us back then. But we were one of the biggest bands in the world. There was literally no one who could tell us anything." By the early 1980s, Aerosmith was all but over.

Brad Whitford: "People kept coming up to me and saying, "'When are you guys getting back together?' I just told them, 'When Steven and Joe bury the hatchets.'" Remarkably, the ice slowly began to thaw over the next few years, and in 1984, Perry and Whitford rejoined the group, and Aerosmith hit the road for the Back in the Saddle Tour. "We paved the road so to speak," said Tyler. "So why not get in our cars and drive down it again." In 1985 they signed a new record deal with Geffen Records and released Done With Mirrors, but things really began to take off in '86 with a most unusual collaboration. At the suggestion of Def Jam's Rick Rubin, Aerosmith and the groundbreaking hip-hop band Run DMC "walked their way" into rock 'n' roll history by remaking the classic, "Walk This Way." The experiment was a success, giving rise to a massive hit single and video that redefined MTV, not to mention, putting Aerosmith back on the map for good. The song's timeless, groovacious, rhythm-driven lyric became the landmark hybrid of rap and rock that has stood the test of time as evidenced most recently by Eminem's and Dr. Dre's master mix of "Dream On" into "Sing For The Moment."

The success of the "Walk This Way" remix with Run DMC sparked the same determination in the band that won them their first fame more than a decade earlier. Refocused, locked and loaded, they released 1987's Permanent Vacation. It was just the first in a string of chart-topping releases that brought them more fame, success, and accolades than ever before. Their videos tormented the censors and raised the bar for music video excellence and controversy with the hot, edgy "Dude Looks Like a Lady," "Angel" and "Rag Doll." Never one to rest on their laurels, Aerosmith answered with 1989's mega smash Pump, which spawned hits "Love in an Elevator," "Janie's Got a Gun," "The Other Side," and "What it Takes."

Proving that it's not all about Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' roll, Aerosmith made a statement of unyielding support for America's First Amendment right for freedom of speech in 1992 when they stood up to defend and restore funding for a sexually explicit art exhibit at the List Visual Arts Center at MIT, whose original support was rescinded by the federal government. That same year, the band participated in campaigns for MTV's Rock the Vote, including the organization's groundbreaking massive national TV campaign encouraging America's youth to vote in the 1992 Presidential election.

The band's first musical offering of the nineties was the 13 million-selling Get a Grip, again loaded with radio slam dunks: "Livin' on the Edge," "Cryin'," "Eat the Rich," "Crazy," "Amazing." Nine Lives followed in 1997, debuting at #1 on the Billboard charts, and boasted the hit singles "Pink" and "Falling in Love is Hard on the Knees." Aerosmith's so-called "second run" proved to be even more spectacular than their first go around in the 70s. Their concert dates sold out, not only North America, but in Japan, Australia, South America and Israel, They closed out the decade with a first in their career: a #1 hit single, "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing," from the "Armageddon" soundtrack, and rung in the new one with the release of Just Push Play, featuring the hit "Jaded."

By the time the band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, they had already received 2 People's Choice Awards, 6 Billboard Music Awards, 8 American Music Awards, 23 Boston Music Awards, 12 MTV Video Awards, 4 Grammys, an Academy Award nomination for Best Song, "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing," as well as being selected as one of the Best Rock Bands by Rolling Stone and Hit Parader magazines. They were then chosen as the first rock band to be honored as MTV Icons.

Since 1972 they have toured so much that they've criss-crossed the globe nearly 36 times, almost nonstop, performed at 2 Super Bowls (reaching a combined viewing audience of nearly 2 billion), and turned on millions of fans along the journey. In the meantime they also pioneered the role of rock on the Internet with Aerosmith World 3D chat environment, and in interactive videogames such as Quest for Fame and Revolution X.

So how did a bunch of misfit rockers go from the Barn in Sunapee, New Hampshire, to the stage of the Super Bowl, not once but twice? Perhaps Steven Tyler sums it up best: "We weren't too ambitious when we started out. We just wanted to be the biggest thing that ever walked the planet, the greatest rock band that ever was. We just wanted everything. We just wanted it all."

White Trash With Money, then, serves as a much-needed reminder of Toby Keith's most outstanding attributes. His approach to creating the album, from the impossibly direct songwriting effort to enlisting a new co-producer, reveals an artist with the self assurance to take real risks. The ever-widening range of sounds and styles he employs show a diversity of influence and little regard for creative boundaries. And the end result is a collection of songs that reveal a deft touch for balancing serious material with a good bit of fun, too.

"Get Drunk And Be Somebody," the album's first smash single, is a good example of Keith's dry humor and observational eye. "A Little Too Late" is bit of straightforward songwriting that enjoys as lavish a production as anything he's ever released. And "Crash Here Tonight," which he calls the most tender love song of his career, shows just how far across the music spectrum he's able to comfortably range.

"This album launches my Show Dog venture," Keith says, referencing the transition from Universal to his own independent label. "It's an honest effort and I'm real proud of it. As long as I can continue making music the way I do, I couldn't be happier. I've accomplished everything else."

That he has. The young man from Oklahoma made a grand entrance in country music with 1993's "Shoulda Been A Cowboy," a No. 1 smash that cut the ice for his double platinum debut album. Over the next five years he released a string of hits including "A Little Less Talk and a Lot More Action," "You Ain't Much Fun" and "Who's That Man." His career, however, not only failed to progress but backslid as he wrestled with his label.

Eventually dropped by Mercury Records in 1999, Keith signed on with independent upstart DreamWorks and turned his fortunes around almost immediately. A succession of career changing songs starting with "How Do You Like Me Now?!" and including "You Shouldn't Kiss Me Like This," "I'm Just Talkin' About Tonight" and "I Wanna Talk About Me" followed. Finally back to the double platinum sales threshold at which his career began, Keith was poised for a tremendous step forward.

His next single, a reaction to September 11 titled "Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue (The Angry American)," was no more or less a singular moment of honest emotion than any of his other songs. The response, however, was quite different. "Courtesy" became an anthem in the war on terror and placed Keith's name at the center of a media debate that had nothing to do with music. Not given to politically correct apologies, he became a target of criticism but wasn't inclined to defend himself from absurd johnny-one-note portrayals. Toby was moving on, and millions of country fans were right with him.

"Who's Your Daddy?" and the Willie Nelson duet "Beer For My Horses" pushed his Unleashed album past four million in sales, while "I Love This Bar," "American Soldier," "Whiskey Girl" and a couple of "bus songs" did the same for his Shock'N Y'all release. Fully established as one of the top touring acts in the nation and with a couple of Entertainer of the Year awards under his belt, Keith had carried DreamWorks to the top echelons of country labels.

But in 2004, DreamWorks was acquired by the parent company of Keith's first label. His next studio release, Honkytonk University, came out on Universal and became his most critically-acclaimed release to date. At the same time, it spawned three hit singles -- the title track, "Big Blue Note" and the multi-week No. 1 "As Good As I Once Was."

Finding again that the label conglomerate structure didn't suit him, Keith negotiated his release from Universal and established Show Dog Nashville, for which his newest album is the first release. Keith's departure from Universal also brings an end to his long run with producer James Stroud. His co-producer for this project is Lari White, an acclaimed singer and songwriter who had a gold country album on RCA/Nashville in the mid-nineties. Though this is White's highest-profile turn as a producer, her relationship with Keith stretches back many years.

"Sometimes the worst thing you can do with a friend is get in business with them," Keith says. "You could get two or three songs in, figure out it's not working and that makes for hard feelings when you have to call it off. So I said let's just do two or three demos. We'll listen to some new sounds and guitar players and if we like them we'll move on."

Toby wasn't just happy with the demos for "Can't Buy You Money," "Get Drunk And Be Somebody" and "A Little Too Late," he told White to master them for the album. "I left the studio with the first single and put it right in my promotion staff's hands," he says. "Then we went back in the studio and kept right on going to finish the album.

"Lari's as talented a producer as she is a singer," he continues. "She has an incredible bag of tricks. It wasn't any more freedom -- James always let me do whatever I wanted, but it was a lot of new ideas and a nice change."

What hasn't changed is Keith's approach to putting an album together. "We're not setting out to achieve results," he explains. "We go in honestly. Doing the demos with Lari was strictly to make sure our production partnership was going to work, but I've never done demos. I go in the studio, sit down with an acoustic guitar and say to the musicians, 'Look here.' We dick with it a little bit, they write up a chart and we hit record. I've cut a few songs more than once, but most of the time it just takes one."

That one-to-one ratio holds true in his songwriting as well. Toby wrote 12 songs for White Trash With Money and he recorded 12. The contributions of frequent co-writer Scotty Emerick (who's expected to have an album out on Show Dog this year) is again featured prominently, as is noted Music Row songsmith Dean Dillon. "I had a two day layover in Albuquerque and instead of flying home we got a hotel suite, ate a lot of green chili and wrote five songs for the album," Keith says.

Many of the co-writes with Emerick come from having the writer on the road with him. Not only does he perform as one of the tour opening acts, he also joins Keith on stage to perform the "bus songs" the two write together. "Scotty rides my bus on the tour, so if I get a good idea we can just sit down and write it," Keith says. "If he wasn't around I might play around with it for a couple weeks and eventually write it myself. But when you've got someone around who might spring open that one door that just makes a song fly, all you need is that moment of inspiration and you're off."

That constant immersion in music and the creative process shows in the breadth of sounds on the album. Horns on the single "Get Drunk And Be Somebody." A lush string arrangement that harkens back to the classic Nashville Sound on "A Little Too Late." Subtle passion on the ballad "Crash Here Tonight." The first pounding forcefulness of "I Ain't Already There." A swampy, Dobro-stirred flavor with "Brand New Bow." Three new "bus songs," which have quickly become a favorite with his fans. Each song, each sound defines this moment of his music.

"When 9-11 happened I had a bunch of songs out that had signs of the times running through them," Keith says. "If you listen to that pile of songs now you can kind of tell what was going on in my world at the time. This new album is pretty much a laid back, fun, redneck, rockin' roadhouse group. You can tell last year was a good one for me by listening to these songs."

Read his clips from the past 12 months and you'll see that Toby Keith has been heralded as Billboard's top selling Country artist, positioned in a major national television campaign for Ford, opened his own chain of I Love This Bar & Grill restaurants, filmed his first major motion picture for Paramount and launched a ground-up country label, among so many other milestones and accolades. But for him, and for the millions who will buy his new album, the real story is in the music.