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It's been over 15 years since I toured... over 12 years since I did any recording under my own name. I never really intended to take that long of a hiatus.

My love for the band is still there. It hasn't changed, maybe that's why it's so painful these days.

In the late summer of 1986, the band I had been in for five years stopped playing. Suddenly, I was on my own. This new state of bandlessness was, at first, traumatic. When your group breaks up, a lot of broken parts hit the ground.

When I was 13 or 14, I took seven months off from touring. I did a lot of weekend gigs in Louisiana. We have fairs and festivals every weekend. But I took seven months off. That's when I really started digging deep. I wrote a couple songs that year that I still play every now and then for people.

I have a really good band, and just returned from a short tour in California. It hasn't always gone that well.

Every year is filled with good times and fights and struggles and misunderstandings. All of it adds up to being in a band over a long time.

I was burned out. I think I was just exhausted. It was a very intense five years. We didn't stop. It was constant touring, constant writing, recording.

It takes 300 years, it seems, for the great bands to get their due.

We should have gone over years before that. I always wanted to and I think most of the band did.

Most bands have a two-year success rate. By the third year, it's sort of over. Here we are in Poison still together 26 years later.