“American Idol” season 10 will premiere on FOX on Jan 19, but it seems like there is some on-going awkwardness behind the show.

According to ABC, new judge Steven Tyler said Tuesday that his new job as an “American Idol” judge doesn’t mean the end of Aerosmith. At a news conference with the “Idol” judges, Tyler sighed when he was asked whether the band members were comfortable with his new job since Joe Perry complained publicly about Tyler’s “American Idol” deal.

Tyler commented, “You know, I got some stuff. Everybody’s got their opinions. I just wanted to test my limitations. It’s just what I love to do. They may have some things to say about it, but it’s not going to fly … It will all come out in the wash.”

For more than 30 years, Joey Kramer, drummer of Aerosmith, has successfully combined emotion with technical virtuosity to convey the musical ideas of his band mates. His meticulous timing and solid grooves have contributed to the sound of Aerosmith albums such as Toys In The Attic, Rocks, Permanent Vacation, Pump, and Just Push Play.

Aerosmith has accomplished tremendous world-wide success with over 100 million albums sold and sold out shows all over the world. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001; they’ve received two People’s Choice Awards, six Billboard Music Awards, eight American Music Awards, 23 Boston Music Awards, 12 MTV Video Awards, four Grammys, and an Academy Award nomination for Best Song, "I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing." They were also selected as one of the Best Rock Bands by Rolling Stone and Hit Parader magazines and were chosen as the first rock band to be honored as MTV Icons.

Blast got a chance to talk to Joey Kramer who disclosed his personal breakthrough to success by releasing his own autobiography last year.

BLAST: You released your autobiography "Hit Hard: A Story of Hitting Rock Bottom at the Top" last year. In the book, you mentioned many issues, such as your drug abuse problem, relationship issue with your father, and the battle with Steven Tyler. When confronting all these issues, what did you try to let the audience know?

JOEY KRAMER: Well, you don’t have to be a rock star to crash…and you know, those things can happen to anybody. And they happened to me and I had to deal with them.

BLAST: Aerosmith released the autobiography "Walk This Way" in 1997. What made you want to write your own autobiography as "Joey Kramer" not "Joey Kramer of Aerosmith"?

JK: Well because I wanted people to know about all the stuff I had gone through and combination with what life is like being in the band, being in Aerosmith. So the combination of the two I thought was interesting to read. And that’s why I wrote it.

BLAST: You’ve talked about that your father’s strict attitude towards you really gave you an opportunity to play the drums because you can actually hit the drums. Could you tell me how influential he was?

JK: Yeah, because of the way he treated me, the drums became the outlet for me. And that was the fuel, that I was abused, to play the drums because you know, the way he treated me was a bad way and I needed some place to go with it. So when I discovered the drums, that was my cynical outlet for the abuse that I took from my father.

BLAST: So would you say it ended up being positive?

JK: Ummmmm, well, yeah, I would say so, yeah. Definitely. I think so, yeah. The way ended up being positive even though it was, you know, the father’s attitude was mean. You think it’s as an outlet, you know, for my aggression and my anger but it definitely…end[ed] up being a positive thing.

BLAST: When your father passed away, Aerosmith was making the album "Nine Lives" and you took a break because of too much depression and anxiety. But you overcame the situation and came back. What would you want to say to those people who have been suffering from the similar problems?

JK: Well, yes, do stick with it and you have to have a desire to wanna get better, you know. A lot of people are lazy about that and complain about what is wrong, but a lot them are not willing to really do anything about it.

BLAST: Parents tend to say something like "do this" or "do that" to their kids when they are young. And they really struggle and suffer but they do not always find the solution like your drums and they might shut them down.

JK: Oh yeah. Well, if you have a dream, I would say, "Go for it." And then you can make dreams come true. But you have to really have a desire and believe in yourself. And you know, that’s basically what I had when I was a young kid. I was awakened enough to believe what it is when I was doing. You know, I would rather attribute it to being a young kid because I didn’t know about the stuff that I know as an adult.

BLAST: You revealed your personal fragile side in the book. People might tend to see you as "Joey Kramer, a drummer of a monster rock band Aeromsith." But how would you define your identity as "Joey Kramer"?

JK: Umm, you know, I think of myself as just a man, an ordinary man, just, you know, try to make my way in the world. And, I don’t consider myself to be anything special.

BLAST: Your iPhone app just came out!

JK: Oh yes!

BLAST: Are you an iPhone user yourself?

JK: As a matter of fact, I am really not! I am just a drum user.

BLAST: How is it different to do a show with another band as you did with James Montgomery Blues Band two weeks ago?

JK: Well, it’s definitely lots of fun just because of the fact it’s different. You know, I just need to do something that’s fun when we all too often don’t do anything.

BLAST: It was great, by the way. I had so much fun.

JK: Oh exactly. You were there?

BLAST: Yes I was in the front row.

JK: Oh great!

BLAST: When Tom Hamilton was singing, I was like "Wow." Yes, it was. He just came by without a bass guitar and I wondered what he was gonna do, and he started singing so I was like, "Oh my gosh."

JK: Yeah, right! (laughs) That was pretty funny.

JK: Yeah. (Laughs)

BLAST: Aerosmith just announced a tour in South America, Europe, and the UK this summer. Aren’t you excited to be back on the road?

JK: Oh yes, really. I am looking forward to be out there and playing again.

BLAST: What’s the theme of "Cocked, Locked, Ready to Rock" tour? Who named it?

JK: Ah, Joe. Oh just we are ready to go, ready to get out there and kick some ass.

The hardcore punk/Celtic folk band Dropkick Murphys formed in Southie in 1995. With their famous songs such as "I’m Shipping Up To Boston," "Tessie," and "The State of Massachusetts," the band has been spreading their blended sound of traditional Irish folk rock and punk rock, which is known as Celtic punk, by doing non-stop touring all over the world. The band is also well-known for their patronage of the Boston Red Sox and Bruins. Their St. Patrick’s Day weekend shows in Boston sell out almost every year. Of course, they are having seven shows in Boston this coming March. Blast had a chance to ask Matt Kelly, drummer of the band.

BLAST: You have a huge following in Boston. What’s your favorite place to go when you are there?

MATT KELLY: Well, I like to be in my house (Laughs). But probably I like TC’s Lounge, which is a bar on Haviland Street. I mean, it depends. But you know, I like to go to In Your Ear Records in Harvard Square to dive in and check out some records. It depends on what you are looking for. Are you talking about hanging out?

BLAST: Yes, just your favorite place in general. If you like to be in your house, that’s totally fine!

MK: Yeah, but you know, it’s always nice…[my] wife and I have a nice walk…and grab some subs and sodas at a hot dog stand. And it’s also nice to be around historical stuff because you never do that when you are a grown-up; you never check out historical stuff.

BLAST: Historical stuff?

MK: Yeah, you know. It’s like going to Boston Common and walking around the area or even walking around Charlestown and the USS Constitution. Just stuff like that. It’s pretty cool. Other than that, I go to see hockey, old hardcore shows, various bars, houses and venues like that.

BLAST: So you are pretty much everywhere.

MK: Oh yeah, all over the place.

BLAST: Why did you choose to focus on Landsdowne Street in Boston for your live record?

MK: The actual album was recorded over seven nights at the House of Blues which is on Landsdowne Street. That was the stuff we recorded. You’re in the same place seven nights in a row, so instead of having to break down and reset up in different towns…or venues, the ideal thing is to record in the same place, contrary to fact that we have to move recording equipment with the band, which would be very extremely inconvenient. So yeah, you play in one place for seven days and hopefully you can get some good versions of the songs, which I think we did on the new record.

BLAST: Yes, I think so.

MK: (Laughs) I hope a lot of people agree with us, you know.

BLAST: Do you love to play to Boston crowds? And why?

MK: Oh, of course. It’s where we are from. We have been doing this since 1996 in places like The Rathskeller and other venues. We also played in some weird places like…[the] Theater District…But the funny thing is that when we play St. Patrick’s Day gigs, a lot of people come from out of town or other countries. We met people from Sweden, Finland, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, all over the U.S. and Canada. They are coming to our gigs on St. Patrick’s Day. People get to see us far way from home. And we have friends and family who are on the guest list. So we probably have 200 family members and friends backstage at the show, too. We are on tour everywhere, so it’s nice to be…at home once a year for family and friends — everybody. It’s just amazing to have such a loyal following and people who even want to come and fly over here. I have friends coming from England, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Belgium. There are actual friends that I know, and then there are people that we don’t know who are coming from somewhere else. It’s amazing. It’s an honor for us to have that kind of loyalty and fan base.

BLAST: What’s your favorite song to perform?

MK: Well, I like to play all of them. But my favorite would be "Wheel of Misfortune" from "The Gang’s All Here" record. It’s kind of a slow sweeping tune. We play it during a gig and it’s a resting. It’s a rest for the crowd. It’s not all fast, energetic or brutal. It’s a slow burner…As far as songwriting, I wrote that song. Besides that, there is actually an opening track of the new album….a song called "Famous For Nothing". We open up with that a lot. It’s just like, *Peew!* It’s very fast and a song about hanging out in a park and getting into trouble. It’s a cool, kind of urban teenage troublemaker track.

BLAST: "A cool urban teenage troublemaker track"?

MK: Yeah, that’s right (laughs). It’s about a grown-up being a little cute. So that’s another good one. I love to play all of the songs. They are the songs that you created and people really wanna hear. It’s really cool. We play all the songs and see the reactions we get back from people.

BLAST: How was it playing with Aerosmith last year?

MK: Yeah, it was very cool. I’ll tell you what, the band, even their crew and their management treated us so well. You’d never think that the band with that popularity or who have played for so long would be so nice to us, a smaller band. They were great to us. Yeah, they don’t need us. They could have been complete jerks to us and it wouldn’t have caused any hammer or backlash but they were so nice to us. They gave us a whole backstage area and a big guest list. My father came and my uncle did too. My uncle saw them in a small bar in the early 70s. It was just amazing for that to have come full circle. They were like, "Yay!" because his nephew’s band was opening up for Aerosmith and this was the great joint at the Tweeter Center or whatever it was called these days. So it was really cool, and again, they treated us like gold. And they put a lot to the show too. I thought it was funny that some of the Aerosmith fans’ faces (laughs), I looked at their faces when we were playing and the Aerosmith fans were like, "What the hell is this?"

BLAST: No way! Really?

MK: Yeah, they were looking at us like, "What is this band? What?" Maybe for people who had never heard of us, "What is this garbage?" you know? So it was pretty funny to see but, I don’t know, excellent. It was a great experience.

BLAST: I believe that ZZ TOP was supposed to be the opening act, but for the Boston show, you guys were the opening act.

MK: I was reading the Internet forums and a lot of people talked about that ZZ TOP wasn’t able to play at the gig. Well, I would like to see them too (laughs) but hey, what can you do? You know. But Aerosmith specifically asked us to do it and we were more than happy to.

BLAST: What inspired your idea to write music for Woody Guthrie’s poem "I’m Shipping Up To Boston"?

MK: We were actually approached by his daughter, Nora Guthrie, because she had his unpublished lyrics. It was so funny because people have been trying to get those lyrics so hard for years and years and years! Bruce Springsteen did but I’m sure hundreds of other people have been trying to get those unpublished lyrics. They wanna get permission to use them, but Nora’s son is a fan of us, so she contacted us. We were like, ‘Are you kidding? Wow, okay!’ So for the song “I’m Shipping Up To Boston" and another song "Gonna Be A Blackout Tonight," those are Woody’s unpublished lyrics. And for "Gonna Be A Blackout Tonight," a title song of the album "Blackout," we thought that was a really cool theme that during the World War II, there was a blackout in London and they really had to shut the windows and turn the lights off so the Germans couldn’t see the cities below where they were trying to bomb.

For "I’m Shipping Up To Boston," there are only four lines in the song so it was like, a lyrical fragment, but at the same time, we were like, ‘Hey, he wrote about Boston. That’s pretty cool.’ So we were just like, ‘Go ahead!’ and asked her, ‘Can we use these lyrics?’ and she was like, ‘Sure!’ Music was already written I think maybe a year before that? It was like, you know, you always have a little diddies you are working on, like little bits and pieces of the song, but then we were like, ‘Hey, those lyrics go to the song pretty well!’ And we did the early version of it, which appears on the compilation. I actually forget the name of the compilation. And we were recording songs for "The Warrior’s Code" album, and later on the song was picked up by Martin Scorsese and the people doing "The Departed". Those two songs are Woody Guthrie’s lyrics and others are ours. We are the punk band inspired by folk music. Of course, Woody Guthrie is a famous folk singer. It was just like, ‘Wow, they’re asking us out. Of course we are glad to look through those kinds of lyrics. How amazing, you know? Again, it was such a huge honor.’

BLAST: How do you connect with your audience in other countries?

MK: Luckily, when we are in the German-speaking countries, our singer Al’s first language is German, so that’s easy. I can just get him to talk and say something in German to the audience. And they always seem to like it. And in most of the countries in the south or maybe Japan, people at least know a little bit of English and sometimes we know a little bit of their languages so it helps to have the greetings in their languages and say hello to the audience. Well, there is sometimes a language barrier, but a lot of places in Europe where we have been playing, English is taught to the students from their early ages so people technically speak enough English. So in the places like that, that’s not a problem.

BLAST: What do you hope to do within the next ten years?

MK: I would like us to play in South America. We have never played in South America or Central America. Really would like to get to Brazil, Argentina, Chile or stuff like that. I would love to get there. And we have been trying to do it several times, but it’s always falling through. That’s a big one for me. And I think some of the guys want to play in Rome. We have never played in Rome. We have played in Italy a few times but never in Rome. We wanna play in places like that or maybe in Florence. And maybe someday we will open up our own studio so we can record other bands and ourselves. Basically we want to get a place where we can practice, record, record other bands, and even have practice spaces for the bands. And maybe we even have a T-shirt press there so we can do our own T-shirts. I personally wanna see more of the world and maybe take some college courses because I never went to anything after high school and I have to educate myself a little bit more.

BLAST: Really?

MK: I’m the one, in the band, not very well-educated, so it would be nice to maybe bump that up a little bit and get some knowledge and wisdom.

BLAST: College seems hard but it should be fun.

MK: Oh, I know. Actually my wife is a lawyer and I know all about it from a second-hand perspective. I’ve seen the struggles and I can understand, but I would like to try it myself.

Dropkick Murphys will be playing at the House of Blues in Boston for March 12-17.

Panic struck millions this week when internet rumors started circulating that legendary Aerosmith front-man Steven Tyler was leaving the band. The band’s lead guitarist Joe Perry failed to disclaim the rumors, saying he had heard the same as everyone else. Some major news publications even started asking who should replace Tyler to keep the band going.

But Aerosmith fans don’t need to fret. NME Magazine reported the story this morning that Tyler isn’t going anywhere. He appeared at Perry’s solo gig at New York’s Filmore venue and informed the audience that he was in fact NOT leaving the band. Tyler and Perry then broke into one of the band’s biggest hits “Walk This Way”.

Just proves you can’t always believe what you read.

How do you make one of the world’s most popular video game franchises even bigger? Throw in a little Love in an Elevator mixed with a touch of Dude Looks Like a Lady.

Activison announced today that it is teaming with legendary rock band Aerosmith in the latest installment of the long running, and massively popular Guitar Hero series.

Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, scheduled for release in June, had been a mere rumor since the series hit next-gen consoles late last year with Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock. The game will put players in the band’s shoes throughout their legendary career — from basement band to the Grammy awards.

“Having a game built around Aerosmith has been a huge honor and really a great experience for us,” said Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry. “We’ve put a lot of ideas into the game so that fans can have fun interacting with our music, getting inside our body of work and learning about the band’s history.”

Being developed by the same team behind the critically and commercially acclaimed Legends of Rock installment; Guitar Hero: Aerosmith is steeped heavily in the band’s storied career.

According to a statement from Activision, the game will feature actual venues the band performed at on their way to the top, and while no official track list has been released — the game will tout the band’s deep catalogue of rock anthems and ballads. Along with those tracks, Activision made note that a wide array of music by artists that either inspired the band or have performed with Aerosmith. Run DMC anyone?

“Any band that can go from ‘Don’t Want to Miss a thing "to the ass-kicking ‘Sweet Emotion’ to the cheekiness of ‘Love in an Elevator,’ to the classic ballad ‘Dream On’ shows why Activision chose us to headline this game based on the diversity of the Aerosmith catalog," said Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler. "Not only is songwriting a bitch, but then it goes and has puppies.”

In celebration of the announcement, gamers connected to Xbox Live or the Playstation network can download “Dream On,” one of Aerosmith’s earliest hits for use on Guitatr Hero 3: Legends of rock. The song will be free to all users from February 16 through 18.

Astute gamers will remember that this isn’t Aerosmith’s first foray into the world of video games. In 1994, Midway featured the band in the light gun shooter — Revolution X. Let’s hope the band being more in their element has a better result than them being captured by a weird government agency hell bent on destroying media.

Screenshot of Guitar Hero: Aerosmith