"Just about everybody that's ever done anything in the last eight years has played before us. It took us a long time to even comprehend that. We wonder, ‘What's going on around here?' ... Maybe somebody will let us borrow some money," he added with a laugh.

Sevendust's own success is nothing to sneeze at. Since its founding, the band has sold nearly 4 million albums in the United States. Rose and his bandmates--Lajon Witherspoon (vocals), John Connolly (guitar), Sonny Mayo (guitar) and Vince Hornsby (bass)--celebrated the release of their fourth studio album, "Next," last October.

The album is the band's first for WineDark Records, with whom it signed after severing ties with TVT Records in 2004. The group recorded the new disc before it inked a deal.

The deal with WineDark Records includes Sevendust's vanity label, 7Bros. Records. Rose talked with liveDaily before his band's current headlining tour began.

liveDaily: How is the tour going so far?

Morgan Rose: It's really going good. I would think it would take us awhile to get our legs under us, but we're feeling better now than we have in years. I was telling somebody yesterday I'm usually, like, hurting every day. Every day I pretty much feel like crap. For the first time in a really long time, it doesn't really matter if I get a lot of sleep or an average amount of sleep. I just don't feel that bad anymore.

The last time I spoke with you, before last year's Mudvayne tour, you mentioned it was going to be interesting to see who got the most fans in the door first.

Oh yeah, some of the places were really small. [Mudvayne is] bigger than us, without a doubt. So it wasn't a matter of who was going to be bigger, it was a matter of some of the smaller places that we knew that we could play on our own, we wondered if the people that were big Sevendust fans would be able to get in, or whether the Mudvayne fans would end up taking the tickets. It worked out perfect. To be honest, I think we have the same following. It just seemed great every night, and those guys are so unbelievable. I mean, they're the greatest guys to tour with.

Being on a headline tour must be pretty exciting, however.

It's been, you know, pretty amazing. It's been pretty strange. There's a good handful of promoters who are kicking themselves [about not booking Sevendust]. I think that people underestimated the kids that come to see us. We have just some amazing kids. They're awesome. We didn't know how good the tour was going to be this time around. We didn't know how kids would react with us going out and doing a headlining run.

I will say that there were a lot of promoters that didn't think it was going to do as good as it was doing. Therefore, they built in a lot of back-end deals with us. At the end of the day for management and booking agents--and for bands too--if you don't know what you're going to do at a show, and they give you a guarantee and you don't put butts in the seats, the bands will lose a lot of money and the promoter will keep everything. That is what a lot of these shows were booked at, low guarantees. It's kind of set up to, "Hey, if we can put people in the seats then we're going to make a lot of money." I can tell you that we're making a s---pile of money.

It's worked out really nice. We sold more tickets on this tour already than we have in our career. A lot of people thought we were on the down slope and we were going away. We're selling more tickets than we ever have. That made us feel really good.

Especially because you're on an indie label, and you're sort of going at it on your own.

I'm right on the edge of unloading on everybody that we're dealing with now, too. It's just one of those things. I think the radio people we have working with us have done a good job in what they've been asked to do. Our publicist [Amanda Cagan] has been fantastic. … To have her is such a breath of fresh air. There's a lot of stuff going on that we're having a lot of trouble with, that I won't get into and I won't make a big deal out of. But I can tell you: in the very near future, if stuff doesn't get fixed, there's going to be a lot to talk about.

Is this a matter of losing your own record label?

We're just waiting to make sure. I'm being pretty vague about it, I'm not calling anybody out. As far as our label, anybody can start their own label. It's all about just having distribution, which we do, which I won't tell you if I'm happy or not happy with that, but I'm sure you can figure that out.

We're in a pretty interesting position right now. We're selling more tickets than we ever have. We're selling more merch than we ever have. We're making more money than we ever have. And some of the things that are going on around us are not the best that they've ever been, and we came from a place where we didn't think it could get any worse. We do have a great publicist. We do have the radio people that are busting their tails to keep us on the radio. And we have great management that has been micromanaging and doing everything they can to act as part of a record label. We've been able to get a lot of things done, but without the help of some big players that we need our side. We'll see what happens. We're excited about where we're going. We have a new single dropping in a couple weeks.

What is the new single?

"Failure." I think the radio part of everything was really good. We had a song that hit No. 11, and was on the charts for half a year, almost. We definitely got a lot of love out of that song, and that's a testament out of a lot of people. We'll see how the promotion side and the marketing side and the price and positioning and getting the record in the store side does; that's a big part of it. I'd like to ask you how many commercials [for Sevendust] have you seen on the television?

How many commercials have I seen for Sevendust on TV?

None. But you're on the radio all the time.

... As far as TV, as far as magazines, I don't think anybody's seen any of that either. As far as going into a record store, and seeing how many CDs there are for the bargain price that everybody else that's trying to sell CDs--which is between $9.99 and $11.99--on the end caps or in the new releases ... not easy to find us. I know you can go in there and find a bunch of Sevendust TVT "Best of (Chapter One 1997-2004)" in there. I went into Target the other day and they had a sleeve that said "Sevendust 'Best of (Chapter One),'" they had four of them and they didn't have any other CDs in there. I was like, "You mean to tell me that TVT actually had four records with a sleeve and our record that we busted our ass on doesn't have one copy in here?" We run across that all the time. New bands go through that all the time, but we have seven albums out now. I don't think we should be dealing with that kind of crap. But it's happening, but I'm basically calling them out to you. But I'm getting very close to really calling them out and making a big stink if it doesn't get fixed real soon.

Tell me about the recording of "Next."

We produced it ourselves. We were kind of in the mindset that we wanted creative control back. When [record labels are] funding it, you tend to almost compromise just because you think if you do it their way they'll give you an extra push and you can show your integrity out there. It never worked for us. Every record that we did, we were going back and doing what other people wanted us to do. We had babies we had to support. It's not just us. I don't want my kid at the house not being able to look at her future and look comfortable. It's not that we didn't like the situation, but those records wouldn't have sounded that way if we had it our way.

So you recorded "Next" before you had a deal?

Basically we signed with an independent, WineDark, who's distributed through Universal. In return they gave us our own imprint, and basically said,"You can sign bands to your label and we will negotiate how much we can give them in record expenses and marketing expenses and all that." That looked really good. Wec already recorded the record, they basically bought the record from us and said, "We'll give you this much money for this record and we'll give you this much money for the next record," and the deal was done. It seemed like the obvious place to go.

Who produced "Next"?

Me and John were pretty much producing the record with Shawn Grove. It's satisfying when you do things yourself.

Have you started working on a new album?

No, we've written a few things, but we're taking our time. We have to tour this thing for another year.