FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 2000. All Rights Reserved

Music by Mike Bell 3 Doors Down DV8 Saturday, July 29 Olympic Plaza I’d say life is pretty sweet if your biggest problem is that your bus driver is having a tough time finding the venue you’re supposed to be playing at that night. A venue that will, later, when you eventually find it, be filled with 1,000-plus people who can probably sing every word from your Top 10 North American hit, which also happens to be the first single from your debut album. Pretty sweet, indeed. "Even that’s not so bad," says 3 Doors Down guitarist Chris Henderson, as he and his bandmates kill time on the wayward bus by watching TV. "We’ve all got big smiles on our faces." Smiles? Actually, shit-eating grins is probably more accurate – the type of facial expressions you’d expect from four Mississippi boys who, with the help of the hugely popular track "Kryptonite" from their album The Better Life, are one of the hottest modern rock acts around right now. That’s surprising considering the band’s sound isn’t really one you could call "today." Musically, 3 Doors Down are devoid of any presently bankable white boy agro metal rap leanings or peppy punkity pop tendencies and are instead more like a subdued reading of the Bush or Stone Temple Pilots canon. "It’s all a pleasant surprise," says Henderson of their quick ascension up the rock ranks. "We were worried about that when we first came out, that it wasn’t what America wanted. But the album’s doing great everywhere it’s been released." And again, everything comes back to "Kryptonite." In fact, it was the buzz surrounding the track and its extensive radio-play on a Biloxi, Mississippi station that led to a record-label feeding frenzy over the band. Now after setting a record in the U.S. by being at the top of the three different rock radio charts in the same week – rock, active rock and alternative rock – the song has broken a record in Canada by being Number One on the Canadian rock radio chart for 12 consecutive weeks. Subsequently, The Better Life has now sold over 50,000 copies in Canada and shows no signs – especially with the current cross-country tour – of letting up. All of this fast and furious success brings up the inevitable question of whether or not, in a year or two, the band’s name will be the noggin’-scratching answer to a rock ’n’ roll trivia question. Or, in other words, can we expect 3 Doors Down to be a one-hit wonder? "Absolutely not," Henderson says. "We’ll just drop another single on them. In fact, our second single, ‘Loser,’ I think is better than the first one. "And we’re not going away after this record’s over, either."

| Back To This Issue Table of Contents | Back To Main Index |