SOURCE: http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040416/FEATURES/404160351/1032

04-16-04

No pain, no gain for Puddle of Mudd

BY JEREMY SOULLIERE CORRESPONDENT

ESTERO -- When Puddle of Mudd bassist Doug Ardito looks up during one of the band's concerts, he sometimes catches a brief glimpse of a bloody nose or a black eye.

Not that he's gotten used to it; it just comes with the territory.

His band's musical fervor has been known to cater to a mosh pit or two, and these frenzied gatherings sometimes generate a little pain. Pain that its participants are willing to take.

"I guess that's the danger involved," Ardito said in a phone interview. "They go down there for a reason. They want to be up close. They want to see your facial expressions."

Who knows what kind of pain Thursday's 99X-Fest is going to bring to its front row concertgoers, but besides Puddle of Mudd, they will get five bands for the price of one -- including Trapt, Finger 11, Smile Empty Soul and Twisted Method.

And as for Puddle of Mudd, Ardito said the audience will get the same old dose as at its headlining shows, just a little less.

"We do the same thing," he said. "Usually, there's a shorter set involved, (but) it's just a rock concert. Their music is their music, and our music is our music."

As far as pinpointing where Puddle of Mudd's musical style lies, Ardito is not too sure, probably because he's not a big fan of music labeling.

"Radio stations categorize everything into nice little packages … modern rock or techno rock," he said. "To me, rock is rock … where we fit into that, I have no clue."

Piece by piece, Puddle of Mudd has been in operation since 1992, but Wesley Scantlin, the group's lead singer and guitarist, is the only founding member still in the group.

"Little by little, the only person left was Wes," Ardito said. "This new lineup started once Wes got out to California."

Also coming with Scantlin to California was the band's name. According to Ardito, one of Scantlin's old rehearsal studios was near the Missouri River. When the river flooded in 1994, it invaded the studio in the form of puddles of mud tracked in by visitors. The name stuck.

By the summer of 2001, with the final addition of drummer Greg Upchurch, all the pieces of the band's current lineup were in place -- they just needed to be in the same zip code for a while.

"We're just like every other garage band," Ardito said. "We all lived the same life. We just lived it in different states."

Puddle of Mudd's debut album, "Come Clean," has sold over 5 million copies to date, and its most frequented radio track, "Blurry," won an ASCAP award (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) for being the most played song of 2002.

The band's second album, "Life on Display," released in November 2003, was inspired by different life situations the band encounters on tour, Ardito said -- the hotels, the tour bus, the studio -- most of it on the road, some of it from the occasionally lonesome back of the tour bus.

"Some of (Wes') lyrics come out of missing somebody (from) being on the road … so you can get some dark stuff."

But Ardito said that when life on the road seems to drag, they need to realize what it is they're doing for a living.

"When you start to feel sick of it … you gotta smack yourself, because there's a million kids who want to be doing what you're doing," he said.

And in a career where the stage is your office, Ardito said, time can sometimes stretch or sometimes fly -- it all depends on how he perceives his performance and the band's dynamics on any given night.

"When you make a mistake on stage, it lasts forever … when we're firing on all cylinders, it's like the best feeling in the world," he said. "The best shows last like 10 seconds."

Who knows -- maybe Thursday's show might last like 10 seconds.