B-52's guitarist Keith Strickland says there's one key to his band's success: "We write songs that we like, that turn us on," Strickland said during an interview with LiveDaily. "We have a lot of fun with it when we're doing it. That transpires when we perform. We just bring that energy into our performance. It transfers. People take it in and they respond back. It's nice but it's strange."

Strickland and the rest of The B-52's [ tickets ]--Fred Schneider, Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson--are on tour in support of their latest album, 2008's "Funplex," which is their first new studio set in 16 years. Calling from his Key West, FL, home, Strickland spoke to LiveDaily about the tour, the writing of the album and recording in the group's hometown of Athens, GA, for the first time.

You're still on tour in support of "Funplex." What can we expect from your live shows?

We have a great band. It's the four original members--myself, Kate, Fred and Cindy. We have three other musicians we've been performing with for the last three years: Sterling Campbell on drums, Tracy Wormworth on bass and Paul Gordon on keyboards and guitar. Both Sterling and Tracy we've played with off and on over the years, quite a bit. But the combination of myself on guitar and Paul and Sterling and Tracy is just a great-sounding band, if I do say so myself.

What is the chemistry like?

There's a chemistry there, which that's what you look for when you're playing with musicians: some sort of chemistry. You kind of have some sort of intuition about what the other person's going to do. It's this really interesting synergy that occurs. I just think we sound better than ever, really.

How much of "Funplex" are you performing?

We're performing seven of the new songs from "Funplex." Those are a lot of fun. Of course, we're doing all the hits, the favorites. Our show is unpredictable in the sense of how we engage with each other on stage. That is pretty much left to the moment. We have a set list. We know what songs we're going to perform. How we will interact with each other is pretty spontaneous. It's a lot of fun. You never know what's going to happen. It keeps us on our toes. There's a little bit of electricity there, a little extra energy on stage when we perform because of that. There's a lot of shows now when things are just so programmed. I just personally enjoy the spontaneity in the show. We do improvise musically a bit, too, within the song. It's very fluid. A lot of spontaneity and a lot of energy.

Have you started thinking about a follow-up to "Funplex"?

Not really. There are ideas still kind of floating around. Some ideas that are developing. We've been so busy touring, we haven't had the time to sit down and start writing. We're busy until December. Then maybe we'll get together and start writing. We haven't even tackled that yet.

Tell me about the writing process for "Funplex."

We wrote it over a very long period of time. I live in Key West, FL. I actually set up a ProTools studio in my home and I wrote the music there. I was able to use pretty much all those tracks in our final production. Those tracks became our basic tracks. I had it all on a hard drive. I would fly to Atlanta and meet Fred, Kate and Cindy and we would go into a studio there. They would write their melodies and their lyrics. We arranged the songs together. We did that in between shows. We did it over three years.

How was it different than other albums?

It was different because we wrote it in different studios. I worked on a lot of music at home. We did the vocals in Atlanta, most of those vocals we kept as well. Then we went to a studio in upstate New York; that's when we started working with our producer Steve Osborne. He was still working with KT Tunstall. He had to leave and we continued to write. He returned and we finished the album in Athens, GA, which is where we started. It was the first time we ever recorded in Athens. It was an interesting experience. It was kind of like coming full circle. The studio was actually just a few blocks from where we performed for the very first time. It was very nice. It was an interesting experience. We felt very much at home, and still have friends in Athens. Athens now is such a music city. There are bands playing every night. I would go out each evening and go and hear bands and--I'm not exaggerating--20-to-30 bands each night. It's really inspiring. I would go out and hear these really young bands. Some of them were really experimental, which is what you're supposed to do when you're starting out. It was very refreshing. It was very inspiring to hear that. I was able to reconnect with our original inspiration again. We just did it to entertain ourselves. We didn't really set out to have a career in music. It's something we were doing to entertain ourselves. I saw bands that were doing the same thing. It was a lot of fun to see.

If you just set out to have fun, are you surprised at how The B-52's took off?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. When that first happened, we very soon started playing in New York. There weren't places for us to play in Athens at the time. Friends of ours had a band in Atlanta and they started playing New York--CBGB's, Max's Kansas City. They said, "You guys should go to New York and play." We did and immediately took off. We were like, "What?" We didn't expect anything. We just thought it would be an interesting experience. "Let's go plays Max's Kansas City in New York where The Velvet Underground started." We thought it would be a feather in our cap. We could go home and say, "We played Max's Kansas City," and that would be it. We kept getting invited back. It was a groundswell movement. Before we knew it, we had record labels hoarding us, flying to Athens, putting contracts in our faces. We were like, "This is crazy." Our career's been that way the whole way. Then we had the first album that did really well, which was another leap for us. Then, of course, with "Cosmic Thing," we had our biggest success. All those things were great. I say "success," speaking about commercial success here; it's just been amazing and so gratifying that what we do brings people so much joy. People really do like what we do. That's really something. That, to me, is the best part of it.