» Blog Archive Interview with Three Days Grace's Barry Stock -

Canadian rock band Three Days Grace released the highly anticipated follow up to 2009’s Life Starts Now yesterday, Transit of Venus. The guys are gearing up to hit the road to promote the new album at intimate club shows and hit some big festivals. Guitar player Barry Stock took a minute to talk about the new album and tour.

MM: Your fourth album, Transit of Venus, came out just yesterday, and you guys played a show for your hometown fans in Toronto to celebrate. How was the response to the new material?

Barry: It was excellent. We’ve been playing the new stuff for about a week now for radio promos and acoustic shows. It’s pretty exciting for all of us you know, getting to play it for everyone.

MM: A few weeks back Dani, a touring keyboard player, was announced as a new addition to the band. What has he added to your live show?

Barry: You know, this record has more textures. We put in a lot more keyboards. Hiring Dani is allowing us to perform everything on the record and the older stuff too; some of the old stuff had a few piano parts. He’s able to reproduce the sound live, and does backing vocals. We’re a band that likes to stay real. We don’t run tracks, so for us it fits really well.

MM: Your upcoming tour is a small club run to promote the new album. Should fans expect a full, plugged in set at these intimate shows?

Barry: It’s gonna be a full rock show in an intimate club setting. It’s gonna be loud!

MM: How do you choose your set list, given that there are a huge number of hits that fans want to hear, but you also have some great new material that you want to get out there?

Barry: It’s a struggle. We were talking about that when we were rehearsing last week. We’ve only got an hour and a half show and it feels weird to pull out some old singles and replace them with new stuff. I think what we’re gonna do is just keep mixing it up so everyone can hear what they wanna hear, and then at the next show it’ll be something a bit different.

MM: To go back to the new Transit of Venus—this is the first time you’ve put a cover on an album. What made you choose Michael Jackson’s ‘Give in to me’?

Barry: It’s a sound we were just jamming around with for fun. We goof around with covers all the time. I don’t know how it came about exactly, but it was me and Neil actually, we thought it was cool. No reason why we chose Michael Jackson, in particular though, that’s not why we did it. It’s interesting though, it wasn’t a big hit in North America, I think just in Europe.

MM: Another song that stands out on the new record is ‘Expectations’. Lyrically it’s a different concept for you guys, and it seems as though you played around a bit more with new sounds, like the eerie keyboard track. Where did the inspiration for the song come from?

Barry: That one I dunno, you know we had the music first and it had a cool vibe. That’s one of the few songs that’s not from our own lives. Usually they’re personal experience. This song we were more just telling a story, not ours or from someone we know, just something different.

MM: Previous Three Days Grace albums all seem to be centered on an underlying theme, like battling addiction or learning to live with what life throws at you. Would you say this album has any specific theme, or are each of the tracks drawn from various experiences?

Barry: No theme on this one really, same kinda thing as the others though. Like I said we write from the heart and about what we go through, or someone close to us goes through. And that’s what really connects us to our fans. They take those emotions and experiences and they relate to them in their own way. We’ve always used writing as a way of venting, so the songs are usually pretty relatable and an outlet for us.

MM: Do fans often tell you their stories and how they relate to the songs?

Barry: We get that a lot. It’s really cool to hear, we can tell our story and put our hearts out there and it works for them to get through things.

MM: You’ve always been a band that hangs out with fans after shows and does meet and greets. Are you going to try to keep doing that even though your fan base has grown a lot?

Barry: We’ll always continue to do that. From day one we thought it was really important. When you do it every day, that’s the time when your fans will tell you what’s really important to them, it’s real quick, but they can tell their story or share their favorite song and just anything like that, its definitely important to us.

MM: One last question—what are your touring plans following the album release? Are there any bands you’d like to bring on the road with you?

Barry: We’re doing the promo club tour now. In the New Year we’ll be heading to Canada. As a band, we love touring. It’s our favorite thing to do, so we’ll probably do another 20 months to 2 years like we did for the last few albums. I don’t know which bands we’re gonna tour with. We’ve got a lot of friends from festivals and past tours, but I don’t know. I think we’d all like to go out with different bands. I like the heavier stuff like Deftones.

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