When Michigan rock band Taproot [ tickets ] parted ways with the original producer of its latest release, "Blue-Sky Research," the group was understandably frustrated. But an unexpected blessing soon fell in the members' laps: help from former Smashing Pumpkin Billy Corgan.

"His name came up after we ran into some troubles with our first producer," said lead singer Stephen Richards, without naming the producer. "We had a list of backup guys that we all wanted to work with. The people that popped up unanimously were people like a Dave Grohl and a Billy Corgan. We knew that Billy had worked with Breaking Benjamin and Blindside. We threw it out there to his people, and management ran it by him."

Richards--who is joined in the band by guitarist Mike DeWolf, drummer Jarrod Montague and bassist Philip Lipscomb--said that Corgan listened to Taproot [ tickets ]'s first two albums, seeing both potential and room for improvement.

"He saw some things like bad habits that he could maybe help us kind of break, such as following a formula and going heavy to quiet. He wanted to show us how to keep someone like him and the average listener entertained the whole way through the song, instead of being able to predict what's coming up next. It was cool."

Though longtime Taproot collaborator Toby Wright ended up producing "Blue-Sky Research," Corgan did co-write three songs on the album.

Taproot will join Staind [ tickets ] on the Fall Brawl tour, which also features P.O.D. [ tickets ] and Flyleaf [ tickets ]--later this month.

liveDaily: You worked on your album for 28 months. Is that correct?

Stephen Richards: I think we actually started, technically, in September 2003, and didn't finish working on it until May 2005, so whatever that is.

Is that the longest you've taken to record an album?

Yeah, overall. I guess so. We took a lot of time with "Welcome," too-- about five months of writing, four months of recording and stuff. This was a good solid year of nonstop writing and preparing to go into the studio. I think we went in to start recording just shy of a year after we started writing the album.

Wasn't dragging out the process a little stressful?

Very. It definitely had its moments of ups and downs. It kind of gets disheartening when you're ready to go after three months. This album is our third album. We wanted to make sure that we put out something that lets people at least know that we plan on sticking around for awhile and doing something that we've never done before. To make sure that that happened, we had to really take our time and focus, and look at what we had and say, "We're not there yet. We have to keep writing." That's when we decided to start doing things like work with Billy Corgan. There's a couple other songs that didn't make the album that we just collaborated with other guys [on] to find new inspiration, to see which doors we haven't walked through yet.

It must have been inspiring to work with Billy Corgan

It was amazing. Especially at the time--that was about five months into the writing process. We were pretty much getting rid of our producer, knowing that we were kind of starting from scratch, even though we had some good material. It was good experience for us to get out of L.A., and the same room we had been working in six days a week, 12 hours a day. We got to go to Chicago, a little bit closer to home, and worked with one of the most creative and masterful songwriters of our time.

What is one of the most important things you learned from Billy Corgan?

Um, he pointed out things like you don't have to follow a formula. Probably the most influential thing he said to us was in the phone call when we were discussing maybe going to work with him, when he said he was interested. He was pointing out that we should reap the benefits of a successful career in a sincere and honest way. You have to be willing take risks and make sure that you're doing what you want to do, and you're not doing it to make other people happy. That's one of the things that really stood out to us. That's what we're all about. We're down to take risks. I don't think any of our three albums sound exactly the same. "Welcome" was a big step up from "Gift," at least for us, we got to experiment and do things we've never done before. I think we did that again. For us, the important thing is not be a one-dimensional band, but to grow as musicians and artists and really explore new things. We were really intrigued by that.

You said you collaborated with other people and those songs didn't make the album. Who else did you collaborate with?

We did collaborate with Jonah [Matranga] from Gratitude, he did quite a bit of the melody ideas on our single. That was cool. We had Stephen [Carpenter] from the Deftones--one of our favorite bands--come in. and we wrote a nice little Deftones-sounding rock song. When he plays guitar, it sounds so much like him there really wasn't too much we could do with it. It would sound like us covering a Deftones song. It was a good fun day to work with one of our favorite guitarists. I went and worked with Nick Hexum from 311 on a different version of a song that made the album before I rewrote some of it, called "Birthday." He was really good for what it was. There were a couple things that I still needed to change so I ended up changing it. But it was a cool experience for me, because we're all 311 fans for sure. They're really cool toward us in the press. He goes out of his way to mention us whenever he can.

Do you generally write under deadline or as the mood strikes you?

Kind of just sporadic. My guitarist Mike and my drummer Jarrod--he's really into playing with Pro Tools on his computer, he can play keyboard, does drum loop stuff--we were screwing around yesterday at the hotel. Right now, the only time I ever get to see the equipment that I like to play is when we get on stage. We don't get to soundcheck or goof around. I'm not too into songwriting. I'm a lazy bum. It kind of just comes when, you know, it's getting time and you get antsy, and want to write, that's when it comes. We're still in the early process of promoting this [album]. So I'm not really in a hurry.

What was it like to work with Toby Wright?

It was cool. He did our second album, "Welcome," as well, and that's why, after we got rid of our first producer and worked with Billy, we wanted to go back to someone that we knew we could just hammer away and work with right away. We wouldn't have the mutual feeling-each-other-out period, trying to figure out how things worked. We knew how it worked with Toby. That was easy. He's cool to work with. After working with him on the first album, he's basically just like a fifth member. He knows how to push the buttons when they need to be pushed, and he knows how to record a good-sounding record, which is pretty important too. [Laughs]

I've heard really good things about him

He's generally not the most high-profile, out-there producer in the world. Kind of like we're not the biggest band in the world, we're just a pretty successful, blue-collar, hard-working band who works really hard to get where we are. We keep making steps up in the career. I think he's the equivalent of [that as a] a producer. But I think he's got the skills to be the best in the business--but he's just kind of looked over a little bit.