3 Doors Down revisits magic from first album
Brad Arnold lives a sort of double life.
When he’s not on the road, playing a rock star as the lead singer of Grammy-nominated band 3 Doors Down, he’s a farmer.
“My wife and I raise horses,” he says during a recent phone interview. “When I’m not working on music, I’m tending to the farm. It’s a life that I’ve settled into pretty well. I do a lot of my writing on the farm now. I find a lot of inspiration while working in the yard. Sometimes they aren’t complete ideas, but I’ll keep them around.”
Arnold and 3 Doors Down have been on the road all summer with Collective Soul and Soul Asylum.
The tour makes a stop at the Inn of the Mountain Gods in Mescalero tonight.
The band formed in 1996 in Mississippi, when Arnold was 15 years old.
Its first single, “Kryptonite,” rose to the top three on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart.
“The Better Life” was released in 2000 and has sold more than 6 million copies.
With hit singles such as “Here Without You,” “Be Like That,” “Loser,” “It’s Not My Time” and “Let Me Be Myself,” the band has maintained its success.
Its most recent album is 2016’s “Us and the Night.”
Arnold says the band wanted to revisit the magic from the first album.
“We all missed the excitement of making our first album,” he says. “As you continue creating records, it can become sort of mechanical, and you start taking everything too seriously.”
Arnold is also gearing up to celebrate a milestone on his Sept. 27 birthday, as he turns 40 years old.
He says the journey with the band has been something he never imagined.
“I’m going to stay at 39.99,” he jokes. “We started the band when I was 15 and played around the region locally. Turning 21, I started touring heavily. It is really by the grace of God that I’m still here.”