PEAVEY INT'L. HEADQUARTERS—3 Doors Down thrives on the rigors of road life. Vocalist Brad Arnold, for one, has never shied from exploring the simultaneous guilt and glory of playing in a rock 'n' roll band, and this theme permeates the band's newly released Seventeen Days.

Recorded in little more than a fortnight—essentially so the Mississippi-based band could get back on the road—Seventeen Days' southern-flavored riffs are as thick as the band's native Pascagoula River mud. Writing and recording within such a brief timeframe prevented 3 Doors Down from over-thinking its songwriting, resulting in a more accurate snapshot of the band's personalities than shown on previous albums The Better Life and Away From the Sun.

"In the past, we've been so worried about pleasing everybody else," bassist Todd Harrell explains. "Now we're just writing songs that we like, and we definitely have that southern influence. For years, people didn't want to be labeled as a 'southern' band, but that's what we are and we're not going to hide it."

Sonically, producer Johnny K finally gets the energy of the band's live performances on record, and the guitars and bass—Matt Roberts with his Triple XXX® and 6505™ guitar amps and Harrell with an extensive Pro Series™ rig—are up front and punchy. Seventeen Days marks the studio debut of Harrell's Peavey bass rig, and it's no coincidence that he calls its low-end tone the best bass sound he's ever had.

"You can hear my bass on this record," he raves. "We miked it in a room by itself and turned it wide open."

Harrell has used his Peavey Pro 500™ head, Peavey Pro 810™ cabinets and Crest Audio Pro 5200™ power amps since 3 Doors Down's summer 2004 tour with Nickelback, and while his amps may show the physical abuse of continent-hopping in a major rock band, they're a testament to Peavey's celebrated reliability and durability.

"I've got my Peavey rig slammin', man, and everything's good," he says. "I've got my cabinets next to the pyro, and you ought to see 'em. They're burnt pretty good and they still slam!"