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Shinedown
Sunday, Oct. 29th
"I think we made one of the biggest-sounding records in the world."
- Brent Smith
After touring for 23 months and playing more than 400 shows, you'd think the four members of Shinedown would want to rest. They did. For about two weeks.
Then it was back into the studio to start work on “US AND THEM,” the hard-rocking Jacksonville, Fla., band's second album and the follow-up to their 2003 platinum debut, “LEAVE A WHISPER.” "We took two weeks off and then went right back into the studio. We basically wrote every song from scratch and recorded it, and here we are now with a new album," says frontman Brent Smith.
That should tell you exactly what you need to know about Shinedown. Smith and his bandmates – guitarist Jasin Todd, bassist Brad Stewart, and drummer Barry Kerch – don't want to do anything but rock. For them, writing, recording, and touring go beyond overused terms like "passion" and "commitment" and are, in fact, their reasons for being. They have a lot to say and a lot to play, so it should be no surprise that they only needed enough time to do the laundry and maybe catch a little extra sleep before the desire to make more music brought them back together.
Then again, “LEAVE A WHISPER” was the kind of album that would energize any band. It was one of those ubiquitous, won't-go-away records, spawning radio hits such as "Fly From the Inside," the controversial social commentary "45," and a remake of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Simple Man," a crowd-pleasing nod to their sweet home Florida roots. Shinedown wound up topping SoundScan's Alternative New Artist chart and also hit the top five on Billboard's Heatseekers ranking of new and developing artists. Four tracks from “LEAVE A WHISPER” reached the top five on the rock radio charts, making the album a veritable “greatest hits” package by today’s standards.
But it was on tour that Shinedown really established themselves following the release of “LEAVE A WHISPER.” The tireless group shared stages with Van Halen, 3 Doors Down, Tantric, Saliva, and Life of Agony during their run on the road. And it was there that Smith says Shinedown recognized just what kind of band they were.
"On our first record, we didn't really know who we were," the singer explains. "We were just four individuals who came together, were in the studio for two years, and had never played together live. When we got in a room together, it was extremely powerful and extremely passionate. And when we did that on stage, we just became this... machine. We became the band we wanted to be."
Shinedown also became a band people wanted to hear, and Smith thinks he knows the reason. "I said this from day one: if I had to describe the band in one word, it would be honest. There's no sugarcoating anything. We deal with the issues in the songs head-on. We talk about the things we go through in life and we make them very up-front. We've tapped into something that's extremely unique, with the human spirit as a guide." That was the force that guided Shinedown as they started working on the songs for “US AND THEM” in June of 2005 in Jacksonville and Orlando, Fla. Starting with a completely blank page, the group wrote 23 songs, recorded 17, and chose 12 for the final version of the album.
The growth is obvious – from the heart-starting bass roll of the first single, "Save Me," through the crashing end of the stomping rocker, "Heroes." It's evident what those 23 months on the road did for Shinedown; the performances on “US AND THEM” are taut and muscular, with soaring dynamics that make each song a keep-your-hands-inside-the-car kind of thrill ride. Tracks such as "Beyond the Sun," "I Dare You," and "Some Day" start gently and carefully swell to anthemic proportions. "Your Majesty" drives with stuttering urgency, while the trippy "Lady So Divine" (think about a similar L-S-D title by the Beatles) is highlighted by an epic guitar break by Todd.
While conventional wisdom dictates that you have your whole life to write your first album and just weeks to write the second, Smith begs to differ. "I had more to talk about on the second record than I did on the first record," he notes. And though they were written back at home, Smith says many of the new songs were inspired by Shinedown's travels – whether ruminations about his own state of being or reflections about the people and stories he encountered on the road.
"I wanted to talk about what I saw," Smith explains. "There are so many songs about fans and the people I talked to, and their lives and their relationships. They're just the most incredible people in the world, but they have so many serious, serious problems to deal with. I wanted to talk about those things. In a way, I feel like I took what they couldn't talk about and hopefully I wrote down what they felt.
"We're all different, and somehow we make a match," Smith agrees. "Nobody's singled out as the superstar or 'This guy' or 'That guy.' It's about a unity, a brotherhood, and about sharing what we've all been through and being able to take it to the stage."
Which, by the way, is where Shinedown will be taking it, again, when they take the stage at the LG Action Sports Championships at the Reunion Arena in Dallas on October 29.
