Chris Daughtry photographed at Aftershock Festival in Sacramento on Oct. 8, 2023. Mike DeWald/STAFF.

SACRAMENTO — Chris Daughtry is all smiles as he and his band walk off stage at Aftershock Festival. It’s a sweltering day, testing the limits of the performers and gear alike. The band’s latest single, “Artificial”—from its still-in-progress next album—jetted up to No. 5. on the rock radio chart, and fans are embracing the heavier sound that he introduced on 2021’s Dearly Beloved.

“I feel we finally found that place I’ve been striving for ever since I was 16 or 17, wanting to get into music in the beginning,” Daughtry, said. “It feels right; it feels like we’re home.”

Daughtry the band will once again be busy on the road in 2024, with newly reformed post-grunge powerhouse Creed, including its “Summer of ’99
Cruise.” Before the summer tour, Daughtry will team with Creed vocalist Scott Stapp for a co-headlining gig in Northern California.

The journey to “Artificial” was by no means an easy one. Daughtry acknowledged he got inside his own head with an avalanche of negative self-talk. There was pressure to write a hit for radio, and to hang onto his pop and country influences.

“Can we even get away with this? Are we gonna be taken seriously?” Daughtry questioned himself. “Just because we had success with something, does that mean we’re stuck doing something we’re not necessarily connected to?”

Then he realized he was letting the perception of outside noise get in the way of where he wanted to be. He was in control of his own decisions and was willing to live with the outcomes.

There’s no greater evidence of the band exploring its heavier side than the breakdown of title track”Artificial,” with the blasts of the double bass drum, chugging guitar riffs and Daughtry’s scream. With the instrumental part of the song the complete, Daughtry went into the vocal booth and told the producer he wanted to try something.

“It just kinda came out … It just worked and we decided to do more of that,” Daughtry said. “It was this feeling like we just crossed over into uncharted territory for us, but it also felt right and familiar at the same time.”

“Artificial” is dark and weighty, with the lyrics looking at the implications of a world bound by artificial intelligence and what it means for society. While the next Daughtry record is still in the distance, the singer says there are more tracks that capture the spirit of that moment in the studio.

He’s tight-lipped on the band’s next single, but does offer a few clues.

“It’s gonna be a little more personal,” Daughtry said. “I think ‘Artificial’ is the only song that we’ve ever written that has zero hope. It’s like, ‘We’re all fucked, game over, end of the world,’ but there’s a lot of personal stuff on this record for sure and I can’t wait for people to hear it.”

More recently, Chris Daughtry had a performance of the song “Scars” with hard rockers Papa Roach go viral—Jacoby Shaddix reached out and invited him to come to a show and guess on stage—whom he hadn’t seen since 2009.

The band is also riding high on its cover of Journey’s “Separate Ways,” alongside Lzzy Hale of Halestorm. The recording was a result of a conversation about putting a modern spin on an iconic ’80s tune.

“The first idea was to do ‘Final Countdown’ as a cover,” Daughtry said. “It would have been tough to wipe the cheese off of that one.”

He had actually shelved the idea until he watched an episode of “Stranger Things,” which also used the song.

“There’s this really epic scene where ‘Separate Ways’ is used, but it’s all chopped up and cinematic,” he said. “That’s when I knew we had to do it.”

When he brought the idea to his producer, the idea of a duet came up. The first person Daughtry thought to ask was his friend Hale, for whom “”Separate Ways” was a go-to karaoke song.

In some ways, Chris Daughtry sees his current sound as what his pre- “American Idol” bands Cadence and Absent Element were striving for.

“You start to get wrapped up in the weeds of what’s right for radio and what’s expected of you because you were on this TV show,” he said. “I had to deconstruct what I told myself I should be doing or what’s acceptable of me.”

Follow writer Mike DeWald at Twitter.com/mike_dewald.