Published: April 30, 2009 10:25 am      

MUSIC: Staind to rock Falls

Staind has had four top-five records and even more rock chart-topping singles, but it’s the band’s decade-old first hit for which fans clamor.

And no one in the band minds a bit.

Guitarist Mike Mushok said during a recent phone interview that if having to repeatedly play a favorite song before sold-out crowds worldwide is a band’s worst problem, then things are going well.

While the band continuously tinkers with its setlist, including on its current tour that visits Niagara Falls on Friday, its breakthrough song “Mudshovel” never strays off of it — anymore.

“We played an acoustic show for some fans, and the response when we didn’t play it was overwhelming.

They wanted to hear it,” Mushok said. “AC/DC is still playing ‘Hell’s Bells’ and ‘Back in Black,’ and they have to be sick of doing that, but there’s certain songs that you kind of feel like you have to play.

“You still hear someone from the third row back screaming for us to play ‘Mudshovel.’ ”

Not that the band lacks for other hits from which to draw. The veteran Massachusetts-based quartet exceeded 2 million copies sold of “Dysfunction,” the band’s major label 1999 debut record. That record sent three singles into the top 25 of the rock charts — including “Mudshovel” — with “It’s Been Awhile” from 2001’s album “Break the Cycle” topping the rock chart and reaching No. 5 on the Billboard Top 200.

“Break the Cycle” was the first of four straight Staind studio records to crack the top five of the sales chart, with the most recent effort — “The Illusion of Progress” — hitting No. 3 and exceeding 330,000 copies sold. In all, the band has sold more than 12 million albums worldwide.

Having seen the recording industry at its peak and now at its low point, Mushok said the band has to stay focused on the music as opposed to shifting units.

“I can’t imagine the CD being around much longer. Everybody used to go to the mall, and there’d always be a place to go buy a CD.

I defy you to go to the mall and find a place to buy a CD,” he said. “You just kind of go in and you do your best, try to do something you haven’t done before and make it something new.”

The band didn’t always strive for something new. When the members of Staind started rehearsing in October 1994, they had to learn a lot of covers “so we weren’t playing at 9 p.m. to just the bartender” at local gigs, Mushok said.

After hitting the mainstream five years later on the strength of original songs, though, the band’s management refused to have Staind tour much overseas.

That led to overexposure and, Mushok said, stunted the band’s growth.

“When the time was right for us, when we should have been playing elsewhere in the world, we spent a lot of time in the States,” he said. “We’ve never played in Japan, which after putting out records for over 10 years is unusual.”

New management has corrected that, though, as Staind returned in February from its second European tour within the past year.

Staind will return to Europe in the summer to play the festival circuit, lead singer Aaron Lewis said in a February interview, and then hit the Pacific rim in the fall.

And whatever part of the globe Staind tours, fans turn out. That, Mushok said, is an answered prayer.

“This is what I always wanted to do.

The fact that I am able to do it is great,” he said. “We hope to continue to grow as a band. It could always get bigger."