Three Days Grace Aim For A Hole In One

Three Days Grace have developed a passion for the fine art of golf.

"The most important [way to pass the time] is golfing," says drummer Neil Sanderson. "[Bassist] Brad Walst and I brought our road cases for our golf clubs and we have our tour manager advancing tee-off times."

Keeping busy is important for Three Days Grace, who usually hit the road for months at a time. Apart from playing shows, Sanderson says, touring can be mind-numbing.

"It's the most stimulating for the hour you play on stage, but that's pretty much it. There are a lot of hours in the day."

To pass the time, Three Days Grace became the cover artists for the June issue of Chart, are working on an upcoming DVD and their website, and are brushing up on their Xbox skills. One thing they didn't do on the road, however, was complete their new album, One-X, which hit stores on Tuesday.

"We do a lot of riff writing on the road," says Sanderson. "But as far as putting it together, we had to wait to get home."

Unfortunately for 3DG, writing from home proved to be about as big a challenge as finding a good tee time. Toronto's busy-ness didn't mesh well with these small-town boys from Peterborough, Ont., so they packed up and moved to the country to work on the record.

"Toronto wasn't the right place for us," says Sanderson.

"There was too much around us. It was a bit of shellshock. So we went to Northern Ontario and wrote One-X at my cottage."

The result is an aggressive 12-song rock assault. While One-X sounds similar to their self-titled debut, it's far more focused, and singer Adam Gontier's vocals are more melodic than ever. The increase of hooks is due in large part to the band's new producer, Howard Benson, whose past experience with melodic rap-rockers P.O.D. made him a perfect fit for 3DG.

"What was cool was that he really focuses on the lyrics and the melodies," says Gontier. "The engineer was recording music, guitar and all that stuff.

"And while the band was doing that, I was sitting in the vocal booth with Howard coming up with crazy harmonies and melodies. That was a different thing for me."

That wasn't the only new experience for Gontier and crew. The band recorded in Los Angeles.

"We started in Toronto," says Gontier. "We were working with Gavin Brown on the record, but things weren't happening the way we wanted them to so we had to make a change. That's when we ended up going to L.A. to meet other producers."

Now, an uber-popular band like Three Days Grace could get into a lot of trouble in L.A. Luckily, none of them loved the city enough to partake in its famed nightlife.

"None of us really liked L.A. to go and party there," says Gontier.

"When we were there, there was nothing else to do but record. We'd wake up in the morning and drive 20 minutes to the studio and spend 10 hours working pretty hard."

Sanderson says that focus and hard work afforded them more freedom in the studio.

"Howard left a lot of the music side of things up to us. It really challenged us to step up to the plate and do what we wanted to do. We made the record that we truly wanted to make."

And if their current tour is anything like their last two-year jaunt around the world, their next record will be all the better for it.

"Having gone on for a couple years and playing in front of crowds, you can have an idea of what types of songs are going to affect people," says Sanderson. "We always have that in the back of our minds."

Here are Three Days Grace's Canadian tour dates:

July 2 Charlottetown, PEI @ Festival Of Lights
July 14 Toronto, ON @ Molson Amphitheatre w/Nickelback
July 25 Edmonton, AB @ Capital Ex