3 Doors Down – Mystic Lake Showroom – Shakopee MN – August 13th 2021

Mystic Showroom at Mystic Lake Casino Hotel presents 3 Doors Down “the Better Life Tour” with specials guests Candlebox.

Review and photos by Kyle Hansen

The Better Life came out 20 years ago. Now hold that in. 20 years ago. Bands have come and gone since then but 3 Doors is still together celebrating their debut album. I was working at CD Warehouse at the time and that album was huge due to the popularity of Kyrptonite. It was so popular we had a box of cd’s on the counter so many people were coming in just to buy that cd. So tonight we celebrate 20 years of The Better Life.

Candlebox is opening tonight as a special guest. They did have a smaller set so it was like a greatest hits set with 2 new tunes in the mix. They have a new album Wolves coming out on September 17th. So they treated us to Riptide and All the Way Downhill From Here from the album. They sounded like Candlebox for all you fans. They were in such great spirits tonight as it being the first indoors concert at Mystic since early 2020. Kevin Martin sounds fantastic. He made some fun about just about to turn 40 which I found funny. Welcome to the club my friend. The band played the songs just like the record and sounded perfect. Along with the new tunes we got Arrow, Cover Me, Change, Alive At Last, Sometimes, You and Far Behind. They they ripped into CHildren of the Grave from Black Sabbath. WOW what a way to end the set!!

3 Doors Down came out and went straight into the album The Better Life. So Kryptonite was the first tune and then right into the whole album start to finish. When Brad Arnold came out I thought it was a different singer. Just for a second. He looked younger so I thought maybe there was a change. But then I saw it was him. Would be weird if it did change but we were ok. I love this album. I could not wait to hear it in full. Loser has always been one of my favorites songs. The band sounded just like the record. At mystic the stage is so close fans were taking selfies and Brad hopped in with a few. After playing the whole album the band gave us Away From the Sun, Let Me Go, Landing in London, It’s Not My Time and for encore Here Without You and When I’m Gone.

As walking around there were a lot of first timers seeing the bands tonight. Maybe when they came out they were too young to see them or just couldn’t make it. So good to see people still seeing live music they never saw.