Ravinia 2019, Issue 6, Week 11

"I don't know if it's because we're Canadian or what, but we didn't have any public drama. We kept it together." (Left to right) Daniel Adair joined Nickelback co-founders Ryan Peake, Chad Kroeger, and Mike Kroeger in early 2005, just as they began working on All the Right Reasons , and the foursome has been all rock and no hard place ever since. Tell us a bit about your relationship with the Chicago area over the years. Chicago’s been a regular stop for us. We’ve got a lot of ne peo- ple that turn out to see us when we come play in Chicago. We love coming to your city. We’ve always had a good time—some of which I can remember and some of which I can’t, but it’s all been fun. e ones that are kind of hazy started o as really fun. en one thing leads to another and you’re going with the ow [ laughs ]. What have you heard about Ravinia in advance of your debut? I’ve heard a lot about the place from some friends who live in the neighborhood and some friends that have played it. Everybody that I’ve talked to kind of said the same thing. “You mean you haven’t played there yet? You’re gonna love it.” e experience comes so highly regarded in the community. It’s very widely regarded as one of the best gigs in the country. Can you give us a sneak preview of what concertgoers can expect in general from Nickelback in ? Nickelback shows are really simple. We’re going to play all of your favorite songs, and you might not remem- ber that some of them were ours until we start playing them. Everybody knows we did “How You Remind Me,” but there are all these other songs. As we’re play- ing them, you look out in the audience and see this realization of people who go “oh man, I didn’t know it was them too.” What classics do you nd resonate the most with fans? ere’s a certain group of songs we don’t think we could get out alive if we didn’t play them. We have to play things like “How You Remind Me,” “Photograph,” and “Far Away” for sure. We’re almost to the nostalgia part of our career now, where it’s people coming out to see us play the soundtrack of their lives kind of thing. It’s interesting when it’s no longer going up there to promote and showcase your new material, but you’re seeing people getting very emotional about songs of their past. I go to concerts like that all the time. Just being in that moment, seeing and hearing your favorite artist play those songs you grew up with when you were maybe going through some hard times or maybe some great times, can transport you back in time in a really cool way. So how has the response been thus far when you’ve played newer material from Feed the Machine ? e response has been really good. It was a really straightfor- ward rock record, a heavy rock record. at’s what we were aiming to do, and it looks like the fans recognize that intent. It’s not one stream of consciousness. It’s a song-to-song kind of album, and they’re all over the map, from the standard kind of touching, intimate, ballad-ish songs to the heavier, metal songs and everything in between with various topics. Where do you feel you t in today’s modern rock landscape? It’s hard to even know what that is right now. I think we’re see- ing a pretty big shi in music. It’s starting to be the beginning of rock making a recovery of sorts. It’s been a really tough place to be for the last several years. Rock hasn’t really been on the forefront of everybody’s minds. But I think the days when it’s cool to be a dude playing a guitar are coming back. And I guess we’ll see where we t into that new revival. I don’t know where we t in today. Most likely elder statesmen on some level, just simply chronologically speaking, but we’ll have to see where it all kind of shakes out in the coming years. You recorded and toured really hard throughout all of the s. Can you describe what it felt like to be on the ride? at decade, from to , was pretty much the most extraordinary experience that a musician or a songwriter or a performer could ask for. To use that old adage, it was like being in the eye of the hurricane where everything is sort of calm and chill where you are, but outside of you, it’s just a maelstrom, like the thing’s going crazy. You’re ying everywhere and doing everything and meeting everybody. ere’s a lot to be said about not being able to remember stu . I’d hear about it from these older artists that were doing these epic doses of drugs and drinking like crazy that they didn’t remember stu , but I don’t think you can blame it all on that. When it’s really going 26 RAVINIA MAGAZINE | AUGUST 12 – AUGUST 25, 2019