Daughtry: Town Where You Belong

Band Aid

The week of the "American Idol" eighth-season finale in May (Daughtry was rooting for Kris Allen, despite Adam Lambert's more overt rock leanings), the band is sitting in McIlwaine's office at 19 Entertainment in Los Angeles and chowing down on the nouveau rock god snack of choice: granola bars, water and coffee. They're laughing about the amount of bass and the volume at which McIlwaine listens to music in his office: "It's like 'Jurassic Park,' " Craddock says.

Their camaraderie is very much evident—they finish each other's sentences and mock each other with good-natured snark. Two of them are wearing the same boots, which of course draws jeers from the rest of the band.

Sure, Daughtry gets the lion's share of the attention—that inevitably falls on the lead singer, Borns notes—but Steely reveals that fans have made Web sites dedicated to all of the band's members. ("Yeah, like, we're the New Kids on the Block," Paul says.) And after erupting into peals of laughter, they uniformly go mum—and get a bit embarrassed—when asked about a dressing room prank Nickelback played on them when the bands toured together. "Google it!" Paul hisses under his breath. (We did. No luck in finding out exactly what the prank was, but Daughtry says "our families know about it" as he beseeches for the subject to be dropped.)

What all of this means is that now that Daughtry has cemented its relationship as a band, touring is a blast. It's where the members became friends and started to develop concepts for songs for the second album. The quintet hammered out ideas on the tour bus after each evening's show and traveled with recording equipment. In total, they developed more than 70 tracks for "Leave This Town." "It was easy to find the 20," Daughtry says with a laugh about the album's shortlist. "There were about 50 that were about nothing."

They road-tested some of the contenders during their performances—a smart strategy, given their touring success. According to Billboard Boxscore, as a headliner, Daughtry grossed $1.4 million from 29 shows, selling out 28 of those dates. The members really made their name as an opening act for both Bon Jovi and Nickelback; as part of those concerts they played to 1.2 million attendees and grossed $95.5 million.

In particular, opening for Bon Jovi was a turning point for the band—"It was like going to a Bon Jovi show every night," Steely says with a laugh—and it's an experience that the entire band speaks of with veneration. "At the end of the tour Jon did this speech in Atlanta and I was offstage listening to it," Daughtry says. "It was about how he met me years ago, and at the end of it he says, 'This man will never open for another band again.' To get that respect from someone who has obviously stayed relevant for that amount of time? It felt really good."