Tony: It’s going great.

VOX: We’ll jump right in; where did the Godsmack name come from, and how did you guys come together?

T: We all got together, um, probably…Sully actually started the band. He started it, like, four and a half or five years ago, with Robbie, the bass player. They had another guitar player at the time -a guy, Lee Richards, and they hashed out, they actually wrote, Sully actually wrote a lot of the songs back then, the one’s that you hear today on the record, probably at least six or seven songs. The guitar player, Lee, left the band, so they were in search of a guitar player, I was a local guy, they came around, I tried out. They gave me a six-song demo, I learned the tunes, I got the gig. Tommy left, and Sully being a drummer, jumped on the drums, and started playing drums, which he’s done his whole life so it was a natural thing for him. We wrote songs like that with Sully just playing drums, we’d write music like that, and Sully would write lyrics at night. Eventually we ended up getting another drummer, this guy Joe Darko, for a couple years, and he was the kid we played with in all the gigs around Boston. He was with us for a few years, but he had a drug problem that got kinda bad at the end, and we ended up kinda tossing him out of the band. We gave him a few chances and he just couldn’t seem to get his shit together.

We ultimately ended up calling Tommy back, who he was living in California at the time. He came out and started playing with us again. He was a shoe-in because he already knew half the songs and knew what we were all about. He came in and right then we got signed, pretty much.

VOX: Who were your influences? You can hear a lot of…

T: Everything. I mean, I like everything. 70’s bands like Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix to newer stuff like Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Korn…just, um, anything. I mean, I’m a guitar player, so I dig anything with cool guitar in it, you know what I mean?

VOX: So I hear the next record is almost finished.

T: It’s worked on. We have a few songs done. We were playing one at sound check. We’re working on it at sound checks. It’s the only time we have to jam. It’s kinda tough.

VOX: When will the album be out?

T: Probably the beginning of the summer [2000]. We hope, if it all goes according to plan.

VOX: How do you compare the LA scene to the rest of the world? LA gigs are so different…

T: They’re more like a showcase a lot, from what we’ve seen. We played at the Whisky once and it was all industry people. It was kinda weird. Usually they jump around, and everyone was just watching. Which is all right, because it seemed like they enjoyed the show. We were used to clubs that stir up a big pit and stir up excitement and stuff, ya know, and keep us going.

VOX: Let’s talk about "Whatever." What is that song about?

T: That’s Sully’s answer to his girlfriend when we were going through the whole struggle between rehearsing five nights a week, playing on the weekends and trying to keep a relationship going at the same time, ya know what I mean. Cuz we were really starting to take off, and it’s hard to go through a relationship with girl and have a band take all your time, plus we worked regular jobs, so there was probably 10 minutes of the day for them.

VOX: And you know what you want to do in that ten minutes.