Chris Daughtry flops down on a sofa in the bar at the Sunset Marquis, cracks a tall-boy energy drink and takes a much-needed glug. It’s not yet noon on a recent Tuesday, but the 46-year-old rock singer was up before dawn to make an appearance on KTLA’s morning news show, and now he’s got an appointment to talk with me before heading home to San Diego.
“If I was smart, I would’ve come back here and taken a nap,” he says. “But I’m not, and I didn’t.”
Twenty years after the release of his debut album — a six-times-platinum smash that followed his fourth-place showing on Season 5 of “American Idol” — Daughtry has more going on than the vast majority of folks who triumphed on TV’s once-dominant singing competition: In July, he released a collection of rerecorded versions of some of his biggest hits, including “Home,” “It’s Not Over” and “What About Now”; that album followed a pair of EPs, both called “Shock to the System,” with songs inspired in part by the death of his stepdaughter, Hannah Price, who died by suicide in 2021.
Next month, Daughtry will launch an acoustic tour on which $1 from every ticket will go to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention; before that, he’ll bring his full rock show to the Agua Caliente casino in Rancho Mirage on Wednesday night. We spoke about his music and his activism as well as something maybe slightly less important.
What’s the story with these thirst traps you’ve been posting on Instagram?
Man, I’m trying to get the attention of the right people.
Which is who?
James Gunn, Kevin Feige. Hook a brother up — put me in a movie. Look, I was obsessed with superheroes from the time I was 5 years old, and that love of comic books and action films growing up pushed me into this obsession with bodybuilding and fitness. I’m in my 40s, and I’m in better shape now than I ever have been. And I still have that kid in me that wants to be a superhero — wants to be on camera and get my ass kicked by Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Do you enjoy working out?
I do.
I don’t mean the results.
No, I love the act of it. It’s a very masochistic way of living. But I love sweating bullets. I enjoy slinging weight around.
Was that always true, or did a switch flip at some point?
It’s certainly become more true in the six years since COVID. I quit drinking, I quit smoking, I quit all the indulgences and habits — all the fun s—. So now I’ve replaced those addictions with being in the gym.
You’d say there’s an element of addiction to it.
Thousand percent.
Ever miss drinking?
No. You know what I do miss sometimes? A cigarette. You see Matthew McConaughey in “True Detective” — man, he makes that s— look so cool. I have dreams about smoking cigarettes.
You’ve been an object of public scrutiny for 20 years. How have your feelings on being looked at changed in that time?
If I go back and look at the 2008 to 2010 era, where I was at my most unhealthy, I never saw scrutiny like I did when I got blackout tattoos [laughs]. That has brought on a s—storm of opinions. It doesn’t bother me — I don’t care. But that’s the thing that gets picked apart the most.
Are there things people could say that would bother you?
Only the things I already know are true. I’ll give you a specific: We played Sonic Temple this year and I jumped onstage with Shinedown to do this song “Monsters.” My ear mix was terrible, and as soon as I came in on the second chorus, I knew we were gonna have to course-correct as we went, which we did, and it got better. But that clip is what made the rounds, and people were like, “He is no Brent Smith — he should never touch that song.” It really pissed me off, but then I realized the reason I was so mad about it is because I felt the same way.
Tell me why you did this album of rerecorded hits.
I’m trying to get paid. It’s harder and harder to make money in this business, and owning masters is a big thing. Taylor Swift — it wasn’t new, but she certainly popularized it. What an undertaking she took on doing, what, six albums? We did seven tracks from the first record and I was ready to blow my brains out.
There’s some irony in the fact that you’re signed to Big Machine, which is the company that drove Taylor to rerecord her stuff.
We didn’t do this record with that label — we did it independently. We’re doing a new record with them right now, but we took this out of the deal.
One of the things that always stood out to me about the first album is that you’re basically doing R&B vocal runs over hard rock arrangements.
Growing up, listening to pop radio, I was always drawn to singers: Boyz II Men, Richard Marx, Michael Bolton.
Ooh, Michael Bolton.
Dude, he rips. Put that guy in a rock band, and holy s—.
Did you have any anxiety about being into Bolton and Marx in the age of Nirvana?
In my teens, I probably put that stuff on the back burner. But I do remember circling back to Richard Marx to the point where we called him in to do a song together. I was in the vocal booth doing the demo for “No Surprise” with Chad Kroeger at his house, and Chad was like, “That was sick what you just did there.” I said, “That’s just the Richard Marx in me,” and he goes, “I’m gonna call that motherf— right now.” And the next day, he flew in and we wrote “On the Inside.” I couldn’t believe it — I was like, is this even real?
The fact that it’s been 20 years since the debut came out — is that easy or hard for you to believe?
When they were showing old video clips at KTLA, it almost felt like I was looking at somebody else. It’s like a time warp. Where did 20 years go? How are we here? It’s a weird feeling to have records that when we play them live, I’m looking out at people in the audience that weren’t born when that song came out, and now they’re singing it.
Can you look back and identify an inflection point where you’d burned through the “Idol” fame and moved into a second phase of your career?
The “Baptized” album [from 2013] was where I felt like we might be a sinking ship. Then we did “Cage to Rattle” [in 2018], and that didn’t do anything we thought it would do. Between that record and COVID, it was like: Pump the brakes, take a step back, really analyze what you want to do — are you doing it? And the answer was no. I vividly remember being at the gym, listening to Alice in Chains’ “Dirt” and just that feeling of: This is what made me want to do this, but I’m not doing anything like this.
So what’d you do?
I thought about changing the band name — my manager talked me off that ledge. But it made me realize that I hadn’t had a clear-enough vision and so I’d allowed someone to create one for me: “I’m just this dude from North Carolina, what do I know? I guess everybody should throw away their guitars.” “Dearly Beloved” [from 2021] was like this love letter to myself and the fans saying, “This is where we’re going.”
How do you feel about the term “butt rock”?
It makes me laugh. When we get ready to play “Over You,” I say, “We’re about to play a classic divorced-dad rock banger.” Call it what you want — at the end of the day, to me it’s just rock ’n’ roll.
Stagecoach had Nickelback on the bill a couple years ago, which points to the overlap these days between butt rock and country music. I imagine you’ve been asked to do Stagecoach.
We haven’t [laughs].
I’ll say that Nickelback crushed with that crowd.
We played the Boots and Hearts festival in Canada with Hardy. I was like, Why are we on this bill? Everyone was in cowboy hats and boots — it was clear it was a country-centric festival. And they loved us. I can see that we share similar audiences.
You ever think about going country?
The conversation was brought up with old management around the second record, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I saw where they were coming from — how easy it would be to give in to that temptation. But it just didn’t feel authentic to me, even though I grew up with country music.
We’ll finish on a heavier topic, which is your work around suicide prevention.
It’s just about raising awareness for me — I felt like I had to do something.
Had to because why?
Because I didn’t want other people to experience it.
How would you say Hannah’s death reshaped your family?
I think we used to be really cagey: “We can’t talk about this around the kids.” All that went out the window — now our kids talk to us about everything.
Do you think it shaped your music in any way?
I definitely felt with “Shock to the System” that I had to be saying something meaningful. It had to be real, which is why all the songs are so dark.
Is there a song you wrote where you went to a place you maybe didn’t expect?
“Razor.” That was based on some realizations that happened after we lost Hannah — very hard realizations steeped in regret over how I handled certain things.
You play that one live?
We did it once — it wasn’t something I wanted to do after we did it the first time. To circle back to something I said earlier about criticism: “Razor” was born out of reading some old texts from Hannah that were really cutting — basically laying into me about the kind of dad I am. At the time, when she was around, it just pissed me off. But after I lost her, I went back and read them and I saw the truth in it. I see it now, and I can’t do a f—ing thing about it.
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