Top-selling rockers experiment on new album Re-imagining Imagine Dragons

June 17, 2015 at 12:05a.m.

Imagine Dragons bassist Ben McKee said the last time his “Radioactive” band played a show in Northeast Ohio, the night ended with delicious nonsense.

“I have a bizarre memory after the show hanging out with some friends and actually caught somebody who was about to be drunk driving,” said McKee, calling from his Las Vegas home. “There was a parking lot across from a late-night restaurant with crazy sandwiches. We watched a guy wearing a nice suit but no shoes stumble toward his car.

“We were enjoying those sandwiches as I was calling the police. They actually called me back to say they had found him five minutes later. He tried to swerve across all the lanes of traffic. I felt like I had done my diligent duties.”

Wow, McKee is kind of like Batman.

“Yes,” he laughed, “if Batman just sat around and called the police.”

Being in the right place at the right time is nothing new to McKee and his band, Imagine Dragons, which watched its quadruple-platinum 2012 debut “Night Visions” become the No. 1 album on Spotify for 2013.

The success was led by the album’s second single, the nine-time platinum “Radioactive.” Not only did the ubiquitous track hit No. 1 on the Billboard Rock chart but it also earned the band a 2014 Best Rock Performance Grammy Award. The debut album also included top-five track “It’s Time” and No. 1 tune “Demons.”

Collectively, Imagine Dragons has sold more than 27 million tracks worldwide and has surpassed 1 billion streams on Spotify. Now, the outfit is out with its highly anticipated sophomore effort “Smoke + Mirrors,” which includes top-10 singles “I Bet My Life” and “Shots.”

McKee said the band knew the spotlight would be bright on the group’s follow-up effort to “Night Visions,” so the outfit decided to take proactive steps to alleviate external pressures. Specifically, the band bought a Las Vegas home and converted it into a recording studio where the meter wasn’t running while they re-imagined the Imagine Dragons.

“This album was a really fun process for us,” McKee said. “I won’t say it was easy, but we had a lot more opportunities to explore and to really get creative in the studio. We went into the studio with over 150 demos, which is kind of similar with the way we did ‘Night Vision.’

“So it was the matter of exploring different ways to expand and really nurture the song idea without making the production the feature in the song. We really liked to focus on the songwriting and melody at the core.”

Some of the new tracks that benefited from the experimentation and acoustic sounds were “Broken Mirrors” and “I’m So Sorry.” The latter was actually originally written for “Transformers: Age of Extinction” but was so strong the band decided to keep it for what would become “Smoke + Mirrors.”

Now Imagine Dragons is on the road supporting the new album with an arena tour. The group is scheduled to play Friday at Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh and Monday at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland.

Considering his prior law-enforcement experience in the Rock Hall City, does McKee have any special plans to make sure audience members get home safe from the upcoming gig?

“You know, maybe I’ll take the night off from drinking and offer some kind of designated driving service after the show,” McKee said. “And we’ll definitely be getting some crazy french-fried, coleslaw, fried- bologna sandwiches.

“Oh my God, it was just nonsense. It was so delicious.”