Staind [ tickets ] guitarist Mike Mushok, speaking to liveDaily before a late-2003 show, admitted his band was facing some trouble.

"Oh, this should be a good one," said a laughing Mushok, calling from Monroe, LA. "It's never happened before. A P.A. blew."

Perhaps the bad luck was a sign of things to come. The band would soon postpone a series of November dates because lead singer Aaron Lewis suffered from throat polyps and severely swollen vocal cords.

But Staind [ tickets ]--Lewis, Mushok, bassist Johnny April and drummer Jon Wysocki--was back on the road by the end of the year to perform at a number of radio station holiday concerts. And the band is now readying for a January/February tour with Nickelback [ tickets ].

Mushok talked to liveDaily about working with producer Josh Abraham, and Staind's most-recent album, "14 Shades of Grey."

liveDaily: Did you record "14 Shades of Grey," any differently than your past releases?

Mike Mushok: No, not really. It's pretty much similar to the way we did "Break the Cycle." When we got off the road, we actually took a little time off this time because Aaron's wife was expecting. We gave him a few months to become a dad. After that, we just started working on the ideas that we had and putting them together. We did that for about four to five weeks. [Then] we went out to LA and started recording stuff.

Tell me about the songwriting process in Staind.

Actually, I write a lot of the music. [Lewis] writes music also, but he writes all the lyrics. What happens is we have these ideas, we get together, we all just play through them, and everybody puts their parts together. Everybody decides what's working and what's not--what we like and what we don't--and we take it from there.

Where do you do a lot of your writing--in the studio, on the road?

Yes. [Laughs] This is actually the first time we've ever really written in the studio. When we did it, it was a pre-production thing. Josh [Abraham], our producer, has a studio. We were in there producing a song, and we came up with a few [other] songs. We spent about a week at Josh's place. We came up with about three songs. ... We just kind of sat down together and hashed it out until it turned out to be something we were happy with.

What did you learn from working with Josh Abraham?

He definitely had some input into what we were doing. To me, it's just somebody else's opinion that you value. You can say, "Yeah, it's working" or "no." Or try to come up with something else there. [The producer] just kind of leads what you're working with, and maybe helps mold it a little differently than we would. That's kind of what a producer should do.

Were you surprised that "14 Shades of Grey" debuted at No. 1?

I was hoping that this would one would do well because the last one did well. You never know what to expect in that sense.

Was it nerve-wracking leading up to the release, considering how bad the economy is right now?

You're absolutely right. When we started out writing and recording, I wasn't really thinking of it. I wasn't really nervous about it. Toward the end, I don't know if it was from outside sources, but it started to get a little tougher toward the end. We just made the best record we possibly could. It's gonna do what it's gonna do. We'll work as hard as we can to do the best we can.

What's your favorite song on "14 Shades of Grey"?

To me, it's like all the songs are my favorite at one time or another. That's what got us to the point. We really try to make a record where we love all the songs on it. There's nothing that any of us would want to skip over and not listen to. That's the goal when we're trying to complete a record. It's the same thing for this one. I try to like the record as a whole. I don't know if we always accomplish it. Not everybody's gonna like everything that you do. I understand that. At least for the four of us, that's what we try to accomplish. Hopefully that translates to other people, too.