( L-R ) NEIL SANDERSON ,
BRAD WALST , MATT WALST & BARRY STOCK OF THREE DAYS GRACE
By Michael Raine
Fifteen years ago ,
Three Days Grace stepped into a music market that was happy to embrace a band of emotional hard rockers . Yes , Napster had kicked CD sales in the gut , but TV , radio , awards shows , and festivals were still ripe with rock music . The genre , as it had been for decades , was firmly planted in the mainstream . But fast forward to 2018 and suddenly rock isn ’ t driving the culture anymore . The Grammys , for instance , didn ’ t televise any rock categories and , most tellingly , R & B and rap have combined to surpass the rock genres as the most listened to styles of music in the U . S . and Canada , according to Nielsen Music . Suddenly , Three Days Grace and their contemporaries are outsiders in the music landscape .
“ I just heard someone say , ‘ Oh , that [ radio ] station doesn ’ t play any music with guitars anymore ,’ and I was just kind of overhearing it and I was like , ‘ What did you just say ?’ It ’ s a weird time when you ’ re like , ‘ We ’ re just not into the guitar right now . That ’ s an instrument we don ’ t really support right now . Maybe we ’ ll reconsider it in the future ,’” says drummer Neil Sanderson as his bandmates , singer Matt Walst and bassist Brad Walst , burst out laughing .
“ You know , here we have the GTA and then there is Ajax or whatever , but in the U . S ., there are towns with 150,000 people every hour you drive , so for anyone who is a naysayer about the state of rock , I always suggest they go to one of these rock festivals that we play . A lot of them , they ’ re not in New York City or L . A .; they ’ re in the fly-over places . You get there and there are 40,000 people and they ’ re all drinking warm beer in the sun , but you see that and it ’ s just awesome . We ’ re believers that it ’ s alive and well .”
To further the point , Three Days Grace has seen new international markets open up for them in recent years . In particular , the Eastern European countries known for their rabid hard rock communities have become main touring destinations for the band . They spent their last two summers playing nearly every rock festival throughout the Czech Republic , Bulgaria , Poland , Belarus , Estonia , Ukraine , and Russia . But all that travelling took its toll on the band and set the stage for what would become their latest and sixth studio release , Outsider .
“ Our last major world tour , if you will , in Russia and Eastern Europe , we were pretty burnt out . We ’ re fortunate enough to have opened up some markets overseas that we never thought possible and we ’ ve been going there a lot . But you know , we were kind of weary from travel and I think just the notion of wanting to be isolated kind of started with that – of being burnt out and kind of wanting to escape everything and everybody . We knew we weren ’ t going to be able to be creative unless we did exactly that . It ’ s impossible to unplug today , but we wanted to distance ourselves geographically ,” says Sanderson . So once they got back from touring in the summer of 2016 , they decamped to a rural area two hours northeast of Toronto where both Sanderson and Brad , the elder Walst brother in the band , own property .
“ We started with just hanging out and making sure the vibe was there . We were just doing Canadian guy stuff : going for rips on four-wheelers , getting fires going outside , and drinking beers . We got that going and then the creative process sort of propagated from there . A lot of the songs , the lyrics and topics end up being the things that we were up there talking about and laughing about , crying about , whatever .”
For a group of black-clad Canadian bros , the band readily wears their feelings on their sleeves . Emotional vulnerability has always been present in their music , and they ’ ve never shied from delving into the pits of despair and anger , but it ’ s still admirable in actual conversation , chatting over drinks in the upstairs bar at The Rivoli in downtown Toronto . Even in the era of more open conversations about mental health , you still don ’ t expect a group of young and successful guys to be so open about crying around a camp fire .
34 • CANADIAN MUSICIAN