3 Doors Down: Rock music from the land of country music
3 Doors Down, performing at Rose Music Center in Huber Heights on Wednesday, Aug. 8, formed in Escatawpa, Miss., in 1996. However, for the past decade, band members Brad Arnold (vocals), Chris Henderson (rhythm guitar), Chet Roberts (lead guitar), Justin Biltonen (bass) and Greg Upchurch (drums) have lived outside of Nashville.
According to Henderson, who joined the rock band in 1998, the decision to live there has nothing to do with the city being ground zero for the country music industry.
Location, location: “For us, being in Nashville is not so much the music business. The music scene is about songwriting and the factory cranking out songs. That’s not something we’re part of but, geographically, this is a good place to be in a rock band that writes its own music and tours for a living. It’s great because it’s within driving distance of major cities like Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas and New Orleans. You can do that all from this town and that’s why so many musicians live here.”
Private studio: “We record at my studio. We don’t rent it out to the public so it’s just our personal space. We have our own gear and we can record any time we want to. We can stay in there all night if we want to. We don’t staff it with anyone but the studio is open for anyone in the band to come in and do whatever they want to do. It’s really cool.”
New tunes: “We’ve been working on new music and once this tour is over we’re going to go in the studio. There will be some new music trickling out in the next few months but there’s no deadline for it. We don’t want to push anything out too quickly.”
Shifting landscape: “There’s no set strategy anymore for releasing new music as a rock band. Everything has changed. There isn’t the infrastructure that existed 10 years ago for people that want to consume rock ’n’ roll music. There are limited resources for it. You can go out and have a number one rock song and it doesn’t really mean much as far as record sales and things. When we try to promote now, it makes us sit back on our haunches and think about it. We don’t want to be concerned about the next move. We’re just going to see what happens. We’ll look at other bands and see how they’re doing it. We’ll learn from other people’s mistakes and their scores, too.”