Josh Eppard and his Coheed and Cambria bandmates have taken that first baby step toward success.

Coheed’s tour to support its new album is just under way. It is the third night and Eppard, the band’s drummer, seems to be in good spirits as he talks on the phone, stopping every so often to order another double shot from the bar.

The good mood is no surprise. Coheed’s sophomore album, “In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3,” brought the band a gold plaque for half a million records sold, on top of its recently penned major-label deal with Columbia Records.

Eppard says the tour is going well so far, except for a tough crowd during the second show, which he says has led the band to add more of its previous work to the setlist.

“We’re playing almost a whole new record, and the first night it went off just slamming,” he says. “I couldn’t believe kids singing – 2,000 kids singing all the words to the new record. But last night in Pittsburgh, I don’t know. The crowd was just kind of wanting to hear something that they were familiar with.”

Coheed and Cambria is on tour to support the new disc “Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness,” which Eppard says he’s extremely proud of.

“Not to sound like a cocky asshole, but I feel like it was the record we really wanted to make,” he says.

“I think Claudio [Sanchez, the band’s vocalist] came to the table with just some really amazing melodies and I think that the band stepped up and just played superior to ourselves, superior to anything we had done before. As far as me and Mike [Todd, bassist], we certainly sounded like the rhythm section that we’ve kind of always wanted to be.”

Eppard says they couldn’t have made such a great record without Sanchez, who is the mastermind behind Coheed’s music, although the songwriting process involves the band as a whole.

“Everybody needs to be great in a band, but you’ve gotta have a great songwriter,” Eppard says. “What’s a bunch of great players without great songs? The band certainly writes. We’ll have something and he’s always been so open to ideas.”

Eppard says Sanchez’s No. 1 focus is making the music as tight as possible.

“A lot of the progressive stuff, Claudio’s not even singing at practice because we’ll just work on the music, because that’s really important,” he says.

“I remember early on, he wouldn’t even sing at practice. He just cared about the music,” he says.

One of the new ventures the band is trying involves adding one of Sanchez’s acoustic songs into the set. Eppard says he’s unsure how the crowd will react to this, however.

“He does the first verse and chorus just himself, and then the band comes in, but it’s hard for us,” he says.

“Imagine a band that plays songs like ‘The Crowing’ and some of the more progressive long stuff we do. I was a little skept out. Was it gonna be good? But, like I said, tonight’s the third show, so we’ll see.”

Eppard says, in general, he feels more comfortable with the music this time around because the band actually had time to rehearse and learn the music, which he credits to how well the band has been treated by Columbia Records.

“We rented a rehearsal space and for a month and kind of just tooled around,” he says. “Before, with ‘In Keeping Secrets …’ the last record, we learned the songs in the studio.

“We learned them Tuesday morning, recorded them Tuesday afternoon. This time we got to really know the songs, know what was going on. You can’t put a price on that.”

Eppard says Columbia gave the band full creative control and adequate funding to record, in addition to plenty of time for making the record.

“It’s nice to have more than a couple thousand dollars to make a record,” he says.

“Other than that, they pretty much stayed out of it.

“They never came to the studio or anything. Really, as a credit to Columbia, they didn’t shelve anything. We would show them things and they were excited.”