3 Doors Down tour hits the road for early year dates 

Just coming off a round of December concerts, Mississippi-based hard rock group 3 Doors Down has new plans to tour again in 2009. The 17-date run begins January 22 at the Sovereign Center in Reading, PA, and concludes February 28 at the House of Blues in Atlantic City, NJ.

Highlights for the trek include a January 28 concert at Hard Rock Live in Orlando, FL, a February 7 gig at Concrete Street Amphitheater in Corpus Christi, TX, and a February 24 set at Bowery Ballroom in New York, NY. Band members Brad Arnold and Todd Harrell will also make a special appearance on January 6 at the Cannery Ballroom in Nashville, TN.

The band is continuing to support its fifth studio record and second eponymous effort, released in May. The album came three years after 2005’s Platinum-selling “Seventeen Days,” named for the amount of time the band took off between touring and re-entering the studio. But this time around, the band took nearly a year off before regrouping, a lull that 3 Doors Down credits as a major factor in the album’s sound.

“What it took, was for us to take some real time off, go home, and then gather again as the band we know how to be,” explained lead singer-songwriter Brad Arnold on the band’s Web site. “It was so appropriate to self-title the album, because after taking what amounted to almost a year-long break, we were hungry for each other’s company…. I’ve known Matt [Roberts] and Todd and Chris [Henderson] since grade school. With a foundation like that, we were secure enough to take the time necessary to make us want it.”

3 Doors Down guitarist Henderson commented, “What I’m most proud of about the new album is we left ourselves a way out. Everybody hit the proverbial brick wall. Everybody fell down and everybody got back up, then we all went back in the room and, what was great, was we found all these different paths to go down.”

3 Doors Down itinerary:
(Dates are subject to change.)

* Brad Arnold and Todd Harrell only