'Honk' if you love early Aerosmith

NEW YORK (Aerosmith Fans Website) - Aerosmith's new album 'Honkin' On Bobo' relies strongly on performing live in a bid to capture their natural style on stage. Aerosmith decided to take a completely different tack on "Honkin' on Bobo," which will hit the record stores Tuesday.
"The whole time we were recording it, we told everyone we were making a blues album," Hamilton said. "There's only one original on the whole thing. The rest are classic blues songs. We chose the songs and went through the process of analyzing them so we could play exactly like the originals. We added riffs and energy to some of them and made them more like hard rock songs, so it basically sounds like an Aerosmith album."

The veteran rockers were keen to record much of the album live to recapture their onstage spontaneity. The band did not end using any of the live takes but they took what they had learned and applied it to the album cuts. "Doing that brought back to focus what the strength of this band is, which is playing live. No matter how we get to it, we have to have some part of the record where the band is playing the songs live," guitarist Joe Perry was quoted as saying in rate the music.

Moreover, the album's commercial success is not of paramount importance to Perry, because he views the disc as a super success already.
Perry explained, "It made us realise why we put up with each other's s***, and why we have for so long. We play the album so good together. When we're all down there playing and I hear (drummer) Joey (Kramer) and I listen to what (rhythm guitarist) Brad (Whitford) is doing, man, that's what it's all about.
And it's like that dream you had when you were 16 years old, where you're down in your basement and you're rocking out. Only this time it happens to be my basement, not the basement of my parents," Perry added.

When it came time to choose a band to join Aerosmith on the current tour, picking Cheap Trick was a no-brainer, Hamilton said. "Have you ever seen them play?" he asked. "Oh my god... Cheap Trick is one of those bands you walk away from saying, 'I forgot how many good songs they have.' They're real pros."