Hurtsmile Go Retro for ‘Good Bye’ Video [Exclusive Premiere]

Hurtsmile are partnering exclusively with Taste of Country to premiere their new "Good Bye" video, which is a big departure for the group.

Lead singer Gary Cherone is best known as the frontman for the rock band Extreme, and he also served a stint as the lead singer in Van Halen. He's very proud of Hurtsmile, which he calls "my mistress," and especially of the group's sophomore album, Retrogrenade. "We think it’s better than the first, the band has evolved and to me, it’s not a project, it’s really a band," he tells Taste of Country.

"Good Bye" is an unusual track for the band, but it evolved organically from their influences.

"'Good Bye,' actually the inspiration was my brother Mark [Cherone, Hurtsmile guitarist], who started writing that song," Cherone tells us. "He was in my guest room plucking out these chords. I walked in and said, 'What the hell was that?' It was beautiful — it was a great chorus, very melodic. It was more of a pop thing, but it felt to me like an Eagles [type of song], you know, how he was strumming the guitar."

"I grew up on the Eagles — I’m a huge fan — the harmonies are ridiculous and the songs are crazy. So without a doubt, that’s channeling our inner Eagle," he adds with a laugh. "We’re also fans of some contemporary country artists, like the country fusion band, Zac Brown Band — they have tremendous songs, tremendous harmonies, so maybe that got in a little bit of our veins when we were writing that song."

The video for the song depicts the band simply performing the song acoustically in black and white. It was shot at the same session where they filmed their video for "Hello, I Must Be Going," which is premiering with our partner site, Ultimate Classic Rock.

"We changed the set and we sat down and just before we were going to breakdown for the day, I don’t know why, [but] I had this classic ‘70s infomercial thought in my head and I go, 'You know what? Let’s just set up the band, I’ll sit down and play acoustic guitar,'" Cherone recalls. "We won’t have any microphones, we’ll just lip sync to the song and it will almost be retro. Of course that goes with the theme of Retrogrenade."

Hurtsmile toured in Japan and the U.S. when they released their debut album in 2011, and Cherone is hoping to set aside some time to pursue more live dates. "You know, for Hurtsmile, we have to juggle the Extreme schedule, so it makes it a little bit more difficult, but we do want to get back to Japan," he says. "We’d love to play Boston, New York, L.A. and Chicago, but we’ve just got to pick our spots. The guys understand [that], because of my schedule."

Until then, Hurtsmile fans have both new clips to keep them happy.

"The videos are [coming out] to keep the band’s profile up as much as we can when we’re not playing," Cherone explains. "If I find a spot where I’m home, we’ll do another video, because we’re very proud of the record."

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