NEW YORK (AP) - As
3 Doors Down near the end of a touring cycle that began in February 2000 with the release of The Better Life, singer Brad Arnold is looking forward to the day he wakes up at home in Mobile, Alabama, and doesn't have an itinerary planned out for him. "It would be nice to just wake up and be like, 'What am I gonna do today?' rather than 'What do I have to do today?'" said the road-weary drummer and songwriter, who spent 16 of the past 19 months on tour.
Still, the day will soon come when 3 Doors Down must return to the studio for a follow-up to The Better Life, which yielded four hit singles and sold more than 4.5 million copies. Arnold already has five songs sketched out, and one of them, "When I'm Gone," will likely be a future single, he predicted.
"As soon as we get home and catch our breath, we'll start writing more songs," Arnold said. "Our writing has matured so much since we've been out because we've played more since we've been [on the road] than we ever did before. And I really don't write a lot of songs on tour. That's the reason we haven't gotten a whole album full of songs, because I don't find too many things to identify with on tour, besides the fans. And there will definitely be a song on there for the fans."
When it comes time to hit the studio, Arnold said he hopes to enlist the services of producer Bob Rock (Metallica, Bon Jovi). Arnold, bassist Todd Harrell, and guitarists Matt Roberts and Chris Henderson probably won't return to Ardent Studios in Memphis - instead they'd like to record in the more comfortable, economical and increasingly popular alternative to a traditional studio.
"We're going to hopefully find a house in [Mobile] with a good acoustic system," Arnold said. "We could just go to the studio and record during the day, and then I could go home and sleep in my bed at night.
"And you come out so much cheaper. By the time you've rented all the stuff to bring in there, you're looking to spend at least 50 grand. Compared to our last record, which cost 240 grand in the studio, that ain't bad. And when you're spending $2,700 a day for a studio, you start to limit yourself because of the cost. You don't want to waste time."
Arnold said he hopes to have the next LP released by May, though nothing is on Universal Records' release schedule yet, according to a label spokesperson. Its absence from the calendar is probably a good thing, since the pressure of time constraints isn't conducive to 3 Doors Downs' writing process. After all, you can't make inspiration punch a clock.
"We don't push ourselves to write a song," Arnold said. "A lot of bands - and I'm not criticizing them - will go into the studio and have a lyric-writing session. Our lyric-writing sessions are usually riding home in the truck. That's when I write songs. I wrote 'Be Like That' on the way home from Todd's house one night, just singing to myself in the car. My lyrics come to me at the strangest times. ... I wrote [the breakthrough single] 'Kryptonite' in school because I hated math class."
