They have the hottest song on rock radio, a mostly sold-out tour, a platinum album and are playing concerts with Aerosmith next month – it seems as if Oklahoma City’s Hinder is on top of the world. The Diamondback spoke with bassist Mike Rodden about Hinder’s quick rise to fame, the band’s breakout single, “Lips of an Angel,” and their tour. Just don’t compare them to Nickelback.

The Diamondback: It seems like your band blew up pretty fast – can you give a brief history of Hinder?

Mike Rodden: The core of the band has been together for five years. [Drummer] Cody [Hanson] and [guitarist Joe] “Blower” [Garvey] met in college, their first or second year. They became friends and they had thrown a big dorm party and hired some cover bands to play the party and [lead singer] Austin [Winkler] was the singer for one of those bands, and they thought his voice was really unique and different from whatever else was going on right then – so they ran into him a few other times at different parties. Some way or another they found out that each of them were into music and they play different instruments, so they got together. It was Austin, Blower and Cody and they had a different bass player at the time, and they were playing gigs for a while and decided to go up to Canada and record an independent album with a known producer. So they went up there and did that, and the producer went up there and started shopping it around, and when they came back to Oklahoma City after the demo was made, they picked up [guitarist] Mark [King] and myself and we played a few showcase shows. Universal ended up sharing the same vision as us, we went with them and we’ve been playing shows ever since.

DBK: How does it feel to have sold out most of your tour so far?

Rodden: It’s awesome – every other tour that we’ve been on to date hasn’t really sold out except for the bigger ones like the Nickelback tour and stuff like that. Every tour that we’ve been on that we’ve headlined hasn’t ever really sold out the whole tour, and I think the fact that “Lips of an Angel” has crossed over to multi-formats on radio has really helped out a lot. It’s pretty badass that every show is full before we even get there, so it’s a good thing.

DBK: What can fans expect out of you this tour?

Rodden: This tour we play the entire CD [Extreme Behavior], and then we play a song that didn’t make the album – that for one reason or another, the record company and ourselves thought that it didn’t really mesh with the rest of the songs. So we’re playing that one now, and we might have another new one that we’ve been writing by the time we get there, and we also play a cover or two. So there’s about 12 to 13 songs.

DBK: Are you guys excited to be playing with Aerosmith next month?

Rodden: Yeah, they are one of our biggest influences musically, and you know, we all grew up listening to them, and our parents listened to them, so they all introduced us to them. The fact that we get to share the stage with them is pretty ridiculous. It’s a pretty monumental step for us, I think.

DBK: I read somewhere that “Lips of an Angel” was not supposed to be on the album, it was supposed to be a B-side. Why wasn’t it going to be on the album?

Rodden: That’s because of the label. During pre-production we wrote a bunch of songs, we recorded them in a studio back at home and then we’d send them to [the label] as we got … rough versions recorded. Whenever our A&R guy got that song, he was like, “Well, you know, it’s a pretty good song, but it sounds like a B-side to me. I don’t know if it belongs on the album.” We were like, “Kiss our ass, it’s going on the album, that’s all there is to it.” Now that it’s doing well, he is a big supporter of it.

DBK: Have you heard that country singer Jack Ingram has released a cover of that song to country radio?

Rodden: Yeah, we have. We’ve been having friends around the country call us or text us and say, “I just heard a country version of ‘Lips.'” Yeah, we’ve heard it – someone sent us a copy of it or something. I guess you don’t need permission to do it these days, and I guess you don’t because we didn’t OK it. I thought myself that it would have to be like, someone would send you a version and be like, “Hey, is this OK, can you give me the go-ahead to release it?” But that’s not the way things work, so it was released and it’s getting some airplay on radio. I’m not 100 percent happy with it; I myself don’t like it – I thought it could be a lot better. It sounds like he’s reading it off a piece of paper, there’s no emotion in it at all. I guess people dig it because it’s getting played on radio, for how long I don’t know, but yeah, we’ve heard about it. We’re not strong supporters.

DBK: Someone said your band was generic rock, like Nickelback, and said you guys agreed with that. Why doesn’t that bother you?

Rodden: You read that we agreed with it?

DBK: Yeah.

Rodden: No. They must have misquoted us, because we actually hate the fact that people compare us to Nickelback. I mean, Nickelback is a great band, you know, they write great songs, [but] I think we sound absolutely nothing like Nickelback.

I think people just want us to compare us to them because we’re a straightforward rock band and we’re doing well. We aren’t like some of those artsy shit bands like Franz Ferdinand and stuff like that. [Editor’s note: We at Diversions love Franz Ferdinand. Hinder doesn’t love them so much.] It seems like they get a lot more respect than the straightforward rock bands.

I don’t know – I don’t see the comparison. I don’t think we sound anything like Nickelback at all. I think we resemble late ’80s bands like Guns N’ Roses and Mötley Crüe, and that’s the way I see it. Of course, there’s always going to be people that say, “You’re a Nickelback-clone band,” and all that shit, but if they actually came to a show or listened to our album they would probably have a different outlook.

Hinder played at the 9:30 Club in Washington on Thursday, Nov. 30. The concert was sold out.

Contact reporter Jason Koebler at diversions@dbk.umd.edu.