He was central to pop culture in the 2000s, and so this only made sense… in the year 2003, Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s was establishing himself as a premier NASCAR Winston Cup title contender, achieving a career-best 3rd-place finish in the points standings. He was driving the No. 8 Chevrolet for Dale Earnhardt Inc. (DEI), securing two wins, 13 top-five finishes, and 21 top-ten finishes, and finished with a great season that certainly put him in the spotlight.
That iconic Budweiser #8 car was already a fan-favorite, and Jr. was very much at the forefront of pop culture at this time, and in many ways to the younger generation, he was the most recognizable figure in NASCAR.
So who else would you call for a music video for a 2003 rock music video? Dale Jr., of course… and that’s exactly why he’s the star of the music video for 3 Doors Down’s song “The Road I’m On.”
Sadly, the band’s frontman Brad Arnold passed away on February 7th, after he first revealed last May that he had been diagnosed with cancer, and it was in stage 4 when he was diagnosed.
He was a man of faith, and leaned on that throughout his battle.3 Doors Down got its start in Escatawpa, Mississippi in 1996 by Arnold along with Matt Roberts on lead guitar and Todd Harrell on bass. After passing out demo tapes to local radio stations, one in Mississippi began playing “Kryptonite” – which Arnold wrote during class while he was in high school at the age of 15 – and it quickly became the station’s most requested song.
The band would then go on to release their debut album in 2000, quickly becoming one of the most iconic rock bands of the new millennium with six #1 singles and multiple Grammy nominations. In their statement mourning his passing, 3 Doors Down paid tribute to Arnold not just as a singer but as a songwriter and – most importantly – a husband to his wife Jennifer:
Many tributes from artists and friends of his have been pouring in, and Dale Jr. knew Brad for many years, after they first met around the year 2000 at a small venue in Charlotte called Tremont Music Hall.
They both ended up sponsored by Bud Light, and crossed paths many times over the years, and so it only made sense for Jr. to be part of the aforementioned music video back in the day. “The Road I’m On” was written by band members Brad Arnold, Todd Harrell, Chris Henderson, and Matt Roberts, and was released on March 17, 2003 as the second single from their second studio album, Away from the Sun (2002). The song reached #8 on the U.S. Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart and #24 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart.
The music video finds Dale Jr. and Tony Stewart both pulling up at a stoplight in Concord, North Carolina, with a pretty girl waiting in her car in the middle, and of course, it quickly turns into a street race that eventually finds them on a small track competing and doing what they do best.
It just perfectly captures the glory days of the 2000s when all of these people were at the tops of their careers, and 3 Doors Down would follow up “The Road I’m On” with their signature song “Here Without You,” and the rest, as they say, is history… the nostalgia of this time is just too cool, and it’s thanks in large part to Dale Jr. and 3 Doors Down.
Check it out if you haven’t seen it yet… it’s epic:
“The Road I’m On”
This week on his podcast Dale Jr. Download podcast, Jr. spoke a little bit about how he and Brad first met, which went like this:
“A long time ago, there was a place where bands would come play called the Tremont Music Hall. Single floor, rough as hell. We aways went there, because we felt like we were seeing the bands before they got big. We get there, and we pulled up beside their bus, we didn’t know it was their bus, but of course, those buses, you see them, [you know] it’s a musical act. Somebody said, ‘Hey, you wanna meet the lead singer of the band?’ And it was Brad.
And he sat down in the limo, and me and him sit down and talk for 20 minutes. They had just come out with ‘Kryptonite,’ it had been out a couple of months, maybe. Immediately, I recognized that he had no idea what was coming. I didn’t know if I’d ever see the guy again…
He came to my 30th birthday party, a bunch of us got in a boxing ring in the middle of the night and beat the s*** out of each other, and he was one of those guys. I’m sitting there watching the lead singer of 3 Doors Down with a bloody mouth, standing there going, ‘I’m ready for more.’”
They kept in touch over the years, and just a few years ago, Brad and his wife attended the NASCAR banquet in Nashville with Jr. and his family. Jr. called him a “super good dude,” adding that Brad’s “humbleness and kindness” set an example for everyone:
“You know, we spent a lot of time together, and I had a table at the banquet at the Nashville for the awards about five years ago, there or four years ago, and I invited him and his wife to come sit with us at our table, because he lived nearby. He came to the banquet, sat at our table, got up when we were done, ‘Good to see you, nice to talk to you, we’re going home.’
I say all that to say that I knew him well, I felt like, I appreciated his friendship, it meant a lot to me. He set a great example for me, and others, because of his humbleness and his kindness. He was a good friend, and a good dude. A super good dude.”
RIP Brad.
