Bassist/backing vocalist Jason "Jay" James of the Welsh metallers BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE has been forced to fly home from the band's current U.S. tour in order to tend to his ailing two-year-old daughter.

Speaking exclusively to BLABBERMOUTH.NET from San Jose, California, where the group is playing tonight as part of the 40-plus-city North American Taste of Chaos trek alongside AVENGED SEVENFOLD and ATREYU, BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE guitarist/vocalist Matt Tuck explained, "Jay had a call last night about his little girl. She's very, very ill — she's in the hospital. I'm not gonna go into too much detail 'cause that's obviously his personal stuff — but she's very ill and he had to fly home straight away, which obviously is the correct thing to do, and he wants to be there by her bedside and hopefully she's gonna pull through. He didn't have any choice — he had to go home — and that was totally fine with us. So for tonight, we've got our guitar tech Kevin on bass, and we've got about five songs nailed — we're confident he can do five. We're gonna give it a shot. It's devastating for all of us, and we're all very worried, but we're gonna go on tonight, see how it goes and that's it, really — it's all we can kind of do. We owe it to the fans that come tonight, obviously."

Q: Are you gonna play an abbreviated set, or will you do the five songs with the guitar tech and then play the rest of the songs without a bass player?

Matt: "No, just the five with him. It's gonna sound too mad, especially with all the vocal parts that Jay has in most of the songs — we have to just pick five that we can kind of get through tonight. So we're gonna do that tonight, and hopefully there'll be some positive news from Jay shortly."

Q: If Jay is forced to miss further dates, are you planning on having the guitar tech learn more songs so that you can get through as much of the set as possible going forward?

Matt: "Well, it's 99 percent [certain] that Jay isn't gonna be back 'cause the tour ends in, like, six or seven days anyway. So we don't know. We're just gonna play it by ear, see how it goes tonight, hopefully it'll rock, and we'll take it from there, really. That's all we can we do at the moment — it's still kind of a bit muddy."

Q: Did you guys consider canceling any dates or was that never really a possibility? Did Jay want you guys to carry on with the rest of the tour?

Matt: "He wanted us to crack on and do what we can. His mind wasn't with the band and playing live — it was totally just to go on home and see his daughter, and hopefully she's gonna get better."

Remaining Taste of Chaos tour dates:

April 12 - San Jose, CA @ San Jose State Event Center
April 13 - Sacramento, CA @ ARCO Arena
April 15 - Seattle, WA @ WaMu Center

Following the current U.S. dates, BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE is scheduled to have a couple of weeks off before embarking on a tour of Australia and New Zealand in early May.

Jukka Penttinen from Get In The Pit TV conducted an interview with Jason "Jay" James on February 22, 2008 at Tavastia club in Helsinki, Finland. Watch the eight-minute clip below.