James caught up with Chris Henderson from 3 Doors Down to talk about the bands best high and low points, the route they went down creating their latest album and plans for the festival period.

Can you first please give us a brief history of your band; how you got together, came up with the name?
Me and Todd were in another band years ago, that band broke up so Todd started practising with Matt and Brad, and they were just kids around 14-15 years old. I went on to another band and played with them for a couple of years, but those 3 right there was the beginning and then I came in a few years later. As for the name it came off the side of a building its nothing deep and meaningful it’s just sweet and catch.

What would you say your best moment has been together as a band?
There have been some really cool ones, I think the best ones were in the beginning quitting our day jobs and going out of the road. The moment you realise there is truth in having dreams; there’s a moment where you say yes, this is what I’ve always wanted and I’m doing it. That’s probably the best moment for me individually and I think we all experienced it at the same time when we got nominated for a Grammy and we were sat next to Gene Simmons and all these people, it was like fuck we’ve made it, we have arrived.

Ok then how about the worst?
There was a time where brad was having some serious throat problems; I don’t know something to do with nodes growing in his throat, we were right in the middle of a tour and we had to cancel 13 shows and we never cancel shows. We never fucking quit, we’ll cut a song or 2 if he’s having a rough night but never a show, and this was a whole tour it was hard to come back from. In America if you cancel a tour people get pissed off and leave you behind so we had to go back and win back all those fans. We didn’t know what was going to happen to brad either it was our singer you know but thankfully he’s fine now.

Your touring schedule is pretty relentless, how does this affect your personal lives?
It affects our marriage to the point where everyone in this band has been divorced at least once, with the exception of Gregg who’s still married. It’s hard on all relationships, I have kids and kids don’t fucking understand and they aren’t supposed to they’re meant to be happy all the time but when you aren’t around they get really sad. That’s the main thing, relationships, I’ve learned to not have personal relationships it isn’t worth the heart ache. When I retire I’ll find myself an old lady haha.

On tour there must be long periods of time you’ve got nothing to do, how do you keep from getting bored?
Instagram, I have like 5000 pictures on this phone since I came to Europe, posting and filtering them it keeps me busy. I’ve always considered myself as an amateur photographer so with this I don’t need all the camera gear I’m capturing the world with just my iPhone it’s fucking amazing. When I’m not on tour I have a recording studio so I get tones of bands in there.

Over in the UK the shows here are drastically smaller than the ones you play over in the US, is it easier to play smaller shows?
We’re bigger in America than we are in the UK, but Germany? It’s crazy over there. Finland and Denmark places like that we’re a big band, over here there’s not much radio so we rely on word of mouth and stuff, so what if we don’t make a tonne of money when we come over here its fucking fun and that’s what it’s all about. We can just go out there and play, we’ve done a lot of work over here and this is our reward.

Your band has a charity, “The Better Life Foundation” how did this all come about?
We did a charity show for someone else, they asked us and we were like fuck yeah we’ll do it. It was us and Shinedown, we did a show in Alabama which sold out 17000 tickets but it ended up costing us money, we were like hold on it shouldn’t cost us money for the charity to make money, the charity didn’t even get the money it was supposed to as well, somebody I ain’t saying no names got all of this money so we started our own foundation and we get to control where the money goes.

How have you found the press and fan reaction to your latest album “Time Of My Life”?
I don’t pay attention; we make records, put them out and then just ignore it, it’ll either make you happy or really sad so I’d rather just be content knowing nothing.

How was the whole writing and recording process with this album?
When we hit the studio this record wasn’t complete, we only have a few full songs completed the singles weren’t even written yet. “Believer” Wasn’t even on the album; we had the music and lyrics separately but not together, it was getting lost in the mix so we had lots of anxiety. Writing records is hard, if it was easy everyone would have a hit record out, but it isn’t it’s really hard so you’ve just got to try not to focus on it or it gets worse.

Will we see you back for festivals this year?
We’re trying to get back to Germany for Rock Am Ring and Rock Im Park we’ve never played festivals in the UK, we heard that if they don’t like you they’ll throw shit at you haha it’s pretty worrying.

What are your plans for the rest of 2012?
Finishing this tour, going back to America on Friday with 3 weeks off, then south America, we come back from that and we’re booking a summer tour with ZZ Top. It’ll be us ZZ Top, Gretchen Wilson and it was going to be Black Stone Cherry but they’re doing so well in the UK so they’ve booked loads more shows out here.

If you could pick a dream line up to be a part of, who would be included?
Metallica, Megadeth, not that we would fit but it’d be so cool. We’ve played a couple shows with Megadeth actually, Testament I’d like to have on there and probably Slayer. Everyone in this band is a metal fan but we’re from the south so there’s a lot of country influence and gospel, lot of southern rock too but not the east coast stuff like the Almond Brothers and stuff like that more like Skynerd and 38 Special, the trashier stuff.

One last random question that we ask every band, if you could be an animal out of a zebra or Giraffe which one would you be and why?
Giraffe, I’d like to see what’s coming, I like the way they hit each other with their necks. Zebra’s get killed a lot too, you seen that program on the discovery channel of zebras trying to cross the river and the crocodiles are eating them? Fuck that! Who the hell wants that?!

Thanks for your time, is there a message for your fans reading the interview?
Thanks to you guys, we couldn’t do it without you.

Interview by James Webb