Thursday, June 29, 2006
The show was moved to the Chevrolet Centre parking lot because of strong ticket demand.
By JOHN BENSON
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
Shinedown singer Brent Smith isn't one to rest on his laurels.
After his Jacksonville, Fla., band finally broke through into the mainstream with its 2003 debut "Leave a Whisper," which created quite a platinum stir with three hit singles -- "Fly from the Inside," "45," and "Simple Man" -- and a touring schedule that included opening for Van Halen, 3 Doors Down, Tantric and more, there was little time to bask in the glory.
"I think that it would have been suicide for this band to have been gone for a year," said Smith, calling from Tucson, Ariz. "When we got off the road, the label said take two months off and that lasted about two weeks for us. We didn't have any material written while we were on the road so we wrote the record, recorded it, mixed it and mastered the new album. We turned it around in six months and had it in stores."
Smith doesn't deny the band's quick turnaround for its sophomore album "Us and Them" (we'll get to the Pink Floyd title later) is nothing more than insecurity. More so, he explains the group's reasoning as if it were an independent contractor without any guarantees for future work.
A fickle bunch
While on one hand Shinedown has obviously grown a loyal following, the truth is that rock fans can be a fickle bunch.
"You have to stay ahead of the game," Smith said. "There's always someone behind you that will take your place if you start getting lazy. So for us, we just take that work ethic to heart. I think when we play as much as we do, it allows us to become a machine live, and the people identify with that."
Invariably, it's the band's blue-collar ethic and everyday anthems that have attracted its audience. Smith mentioned that the group recently experienced a surprise when its latest single "I Dare You" started to get spins at top-40 radio. In fact, the singer and guitarist Jasin Todd will be hitting the road in a few weeks on a radio station promotional tour supporting the acoustic track, which is the second single from "Us and Them."
As for the Pink Floyd reference, Smith said he had never heard the band's classic track of the same.
"The 'Us and Them' came from the fans that we met while touring the last two years," Smith said. "Really the whole record was based around the people we met on the road and all of the stories and inspiration they gave us."
So would he have changed the title if he knew about the Pink Floyd song?
"Not at all," Smith said, "I wouldn't change it for the world."
Shinedown will return to Youngstown on Wednesday for an outdoor show in the parking lot of Chevrolet Centre, downtown. The show was originally scheduled as an outdoor show at The Cellar in Struthers, but overwhelming ticket demand forced the change in venue.
For now, the members of the band find themselves on a mission. "I feel like the industry right now and what we call the gatekeepers, the people from coast to coast, are saying that rock music is dead," Smith said. "I think all of those people are idiots, and I think that rock music is going to be here for a very, very long time."