3 Pill Morning Vocalist Jeff Stebbins Discusses Touring, Songwriting, New Material + More

Minneapolis rock act 3 Pill Morning have made an impact at rock radio and toured with some of the best bands in hard rock today.  They are currently on a fall tour supporting their debut album ‘Black Tie Love Affair.'

During their stop with in New York City on their previous tour with Hollywood Undead and Escape the Fate, we chatted with frontman Jeff Stebbins, who spoke all about touring, a timeline for new music and how he goes about writing songs. He also shared the significance behind a very special dolphin air freshener. Check out our interview below:

You guys have been on a lot of great tours; what for you makes a great touring package?

Loving the music is a big thing especially if you have to hear it night after night – bands like Hollywood Undead and Sevendust both put on such killer shows. They’re so fan oriented that there’s a ton of energy every night. We’ve been on other shows where it’s kind of a sleeper by the end of the night.

Now even though ‘Black Tie Love Affair’ was released just last year, are there any gears turning for new material?

We need to always be writing and so we’ve got a lot of ideas in the can right now. There’s still a lot of life left in this album so we’re going to tour hard through the end of the year. You can expect us right around the winter break time to get back into the studio and start to flush some of these ideas out and start working on our next album.

Do you routinely write music on the road or is it more sporadic?

For me on tour, I’ll be driving the bus and all of a sudden a melody will kick into my head and all of a sudden I’m singing it into my phone then I’m typing lyrics. Ryan [Walch] will be jamming on the guitar so it’s very sporadic on the road, we try to lay out some time but everyday that you’re touring it’s just nonstop stuff to do.

I think we get a lot of ideas on the road and then we get to go back into the studio and rehearsal space and start working them out and putting them together. The ideas are there, maybe not full songs but we’ve got stuff to work with which is cool.

It’s going to be a lot more road doggin’ for the rest of the year but this is how we can build a name for ourselves. People are beginning to know us and it’s going really well. We’re excited about it.

With all of these bands you’ve toured with, is there one you can think of that you would love to tour with that you haven’t gone out on the road with yet?

We got to play one show with Papa Roach, we all love that new album and all their albums. They put on such an awesome show and Jacoby [Shaddix] is such an awesome frontman, that’d be a really killer tour for all of us.

And with all of this touring, you guys are trekking around in a bus hopefully and not a van?

Yeah, we got one of those shuttle buses. We modified that and bought a gutted one, took all the seats out, built six bunks in the back and a couple of little Ikea futons [Laughs] and we roll around the country in that. It’s not very elegant but it’s better other stuff we’ve had in the past.

What would you say is the weirdest thing on tour bus?

One thing that we’ve always kept with us, we’ve got this little dolphin that I think used to be an air freshener. I bought it with the first bus we got and we just kept it with every vehicle we’ve gone through ever since then. It’s sort of our safe harbor mascot that takes us down the road. So far so good with it in the windshield, so why not keep it there.