(L-R) MATT WALST, BRAD
WALST, NEIL SANDERSON &
BARRY STOCK
with Aerosmith, Van Halen, My Chemical
Romance, and countless other hard rock
acts. Three Days Grace had previously
worked with Plotnikoff on their second and
third albums, One-X and Life Starts Now,
respectively.
“He’s an amazing engineer and once we
got the tones all together and everything
came together, I knew that it was going to
be something special,” says Brad.
“He’d wake up, play golf every day, and
then make the best sounding sounds that
we’ve ever heard,” Sanderson enthuses. “I re-
member at a couple moments, he’s so tuned
into the speakers and everything, and then
that moment where he kind of turns around
and looks at us and says, ‘I think we have the
sound of the record.’ ‘Right Left Wrong’ was
the song, too. Once we got that, we basically
took that as the sort of benchmark for what
we wanted the record to sound like.”
Rounding out the team on Outsider
were co-producers Gavin Brown and Howard
Benson. Brown, as mentioned, worked on
Three Days Grace’s 2013 self-titled debut
record and again on their last album, Human,
in 2015. Similarly, Benson was a past collabo-
rator on One-X and Life Starts Now.
“Gavin helps us dig deep within our
own psyche. He’s like us; he can be a little
neurotic at times and very passionate about
the art and he’s a fun guy to be around,” says
Brad. “So I think sometimes it’s just digging
deep and getting that material out of you
that’s going to spark the creativity because
it’s real. Even if it’s a heavy subject and, I
mean, Three Days Grace, we’ve never shied
away from writing about the heaviness of
loss and dependence and all the daily strug-
gles that go with all that kind of stuff. He
helps get that out of us. He’s a great cheer-
leader in the trenches with us.”
“For us, it seems like a winding journey that
we’re on and it’s got different chapters and
you don’t quite know what’s around the
corner. You make a record of a time in our
lives and that’s how I’ve kind of perceived
our career,” says Sanderson as drinks gets
finished.
As that journey keeps winding, the
band has passed numerous milestones. One,
which Billboard announced on March 28 th , a
few weeks after Canadian Musician met up
with the band, exemplified their outstanding
success. That week, “The Mountain” reached
number one on the Mainstream Rock Charts.
It was Three Days Grace’s 13 th single to do so,
tying a two-decade-old record held by Van
Halen.
To be going strong after 15 years de-
spite whatever trends the music culture goes
through and still have a dedicated global
audience is an enviable position. “For us, it’s
like a journey that fans are on with us,” Sand-
erson adds. “It keeps it really exciting for us
and we’re not afraid to kind of do something
different on this record and do something
different on that record because for us, it’s a
continuous path.”
Michael Raine is the Senior Editor of
Canadian Musician
C A N A D I A N M U S I C I A N • 37