3 Doors Down decides to stretch its wings

By John Benson

The band took more time with the new album.

Raw and on the fly might work for punk bands and free-form jazz cats.

But the members of 3 Doors Down learned the hard way with its 2005 effort “Seventeen Days” – literally, the amount of time it took to record the album – that there’s nothing wrong with taking your time when writing and recording.

“It’s not brain surgery, but we do take pride in crafting and writing songs,” said 3 Doors Down guitarist Chris Henderson, calling from Minnesota. “We wrote that record really fast, doing a lot of 24-hour days and some marathon recording sessions getting the songs down.

“I just feel personally that maybe a couple of tones and arrangements might have suffered, but who really knows if songs could have been better because we didn’t really have a chance to let them grow organically.”

The funny thing is while Henderson talks about “Seventeen Days” as if it were a failure, a blemish on the group’s career, the reality is the disc went platinum during a time when labels are happy to death about gold sales.

More so, the disc debuted at No. 1 and yielded four top 40 singles (“Let Me Go,” “Behind Those Eyes,” “Live for Today” and “Landing in London”).

“You’re right, but for 3 Doors Down standards, we were really hoping for something else,” said Henderson, who spent much of his youth visiting his mom in Euclid. “So we thought a lot about that and what we wanted from this new record was that not to happen again. So one of the ways to combat that was to not let a deadline be a contributing factor to the writing process.”

With this in mind, Henderson said the band told its label, Universal Records, that it was going to take its time with the follow-up and recently released self-titled album. Already certified gold, the new 12-track album, which features No. 1 hit single “It’s Not My Time,” finds the Mississippi-based band stretching its wings within reason.

Among Henderson’s favorites are the midtempo and dark “Pages,” as well as the Imogen Heap-inspired song “It’s the Only One You’ve Got.”

However, don’t get it twisted. 3 Doors Down, which returns to Northeast Ohio today for a show at Blossom Music Center, isn’t about to ruin a good thing.

In many ways, the group remains an archetypal post-grunge band with catchy riffs, heavy grooves and male-oriented vocals.

Whether it’s “Kryptonite” or “Loser” from the band’s 1997 self-titled debut or “It’s Not My Time,” there’s little mystery when you’re listening to a 3 Doors Down tune.

It’s this notion that has often put the band in the crosshairs of unfriendly journalists who attack the group’s seemingly one-dimensional sound. In true rock ’n’ roll fashion, Henderson doesn’t care.

“I’ll tell you what, if the critics don’t like it, that just makes me excited because it means we’re going to sell some records,” Henderson laughed. “We’ve never got a good review and so far have sold over 13 million records.

“I don’t know who’s hiring those people, but I don’t think they really get what America’s getting. I don’t know what it is, it just doesn’t make sense to me.”