In a time of high-flying celebrity, when fame is just a sordid scandal or Internet fad away, Three Days Grace has secured success the old-fashioned way: They’ve earned it.
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The Toronto quartet has become a staple of the airwaves and the charts after years of slogging it out on the road, steadily honing its melodic hard rock into a formidable radio-ready formula. Having notched a pair of platinum albums and a sturdy batch of hits — “Home,” “I Hate (Everything About You),” “Pain” — the group has embarked on its first arena headlining tour, a cross-country run with fellow neo-grunge acts Breaking Benjamin and Seether. The tour comes to Moline on Thursday.
“It’s been cool to see things grow. We’ve been out for almost two years on this record,” drummer Neil Sanderson said. “We see this tour, how many fans are coming out to the shows, the size of the arenas, and it’s really exciting for us, because there haven’t been any shortcuts.”
As you’d expect from their music — a typically dark-edged, post-Nirvana sound — Sanderson and his band mates are an earnest, no-nonsense lot. Three Days Grace works from the old-school rock rule book, where chops count, hard work goes a long way and keeping it real — as in, no backing tracks in concert — is everything.
“We get asked a lot for advice for aspiring musicians. We say: ‘Remember that it’s a long road,’ ” said Sanderson, 29. “Even if you’re just talking about touring. All these towns we’re playing that we had never heard of in America — we’ve been to these places eight, 10 times now. If you blow their minds at a show, they’ll definitely keep coming back. And we’ve seen it grow like that.
“We take it seriously and take our musicianship seriously.”
Three Days Grace
When: 7 p.m., Thursday
Where: i Wireless Center, 1201 River Drive, Moline