Shinedown's Brent Smith On "Planet Zero," Upcoming U.S. Touring, Hobbies Outside Of Music & More
[Music] about true cash now with their Bell draw bits get ready to listen to your favorite art artists [Music] hey Brent can you hear me hi Darren hey how's your day going aside from having to do media I'm so so excited to be here with you man I'm very I'm pumped likewise thank you for taking the time and Planet zero is the latest record and it's admirably produced by your bass player now he's got a great Studio setup but it did it take convincing to go hey Eric's going to produce the record or did you know outright hey we want to do with Eric at the elm it had been building up over time um throughout uh the trajectory of the band and the music that we were releasing Eric was stepping up to the Forefront not only as a songwriter but also he started to do Productions and we started working with him in his studio um in South Carolina which is actually where I am right now I just got here last night um but so he had done the production on diamond eyes and that was kind of the first uh Visual and as far as the audio was concerned for myself watching what he could do um and then we moved into his next production was cut the cord um threat to survival so moving into the album attention attention um and we'll get to planet zero But ultimately his first full-length record was attention attention and we just went through him and said you're you're ready for the captain chair you're ready to to be at the helm um the interesting thing about attention attention was um because it was his first record full-length record um as the producer the engineer and the mixer alongside Doug McKean um that was such a joy that entire record was such an amazing experience for everybody involved and when it comes to Planet zero if it ain't broke don't fix it you know what I mean and he just um and there's a difference with Eric because Eric is he's mixing he's recording he's taking a step back as the producer and really understands how to work with bands it just so happens that he happens to be in the band but not everybody can do that like it's not something that you learn overnight how to work with different egos um how to work with different styles but we're all there for the greater good of the project and of all the producers that I've worked with he is by far my favorite you've worked some heavy hitter producer scenarios you know Rick piedo which fiato et cetera et cetera so that's a lot coming up yeah Desmond child uh a lot well you never know what the bass player at the helm if you're going to get an overbased album or you're gonna get like 51.50 by Van Halen or you know uh metallic album where there's no base so congratulations on having the correct amount of bass on this record you know what's interesting about that particularly for Planet zero he really when it came to the base the great thing about him as a bass player too is he's probably a bass player last like he loves playing bass on stage and things like that but he's multi-faceted um the guy has Perfect Pitch A lot of that has to do with a mother that was a vocal instructor and a piano teacher growing up but on top of that too is he plays multiple instruments right and he also has he has an insane insane singing voice and um he's just very eclectic his palate is very vast um so yeah I mean you know working with him and learning from him on a on a daily basis when it comes to the bass guitar for this record he actually purposely he said it more in the frequency of the guitars so like when he was doing the bass like he put a lot of distortion on stuff or he would kind of carve certain things out in the mid-range if you listen to the record it has way more of an attack um as far as just sonically everything on planet zero is like pushed to the front there's not a lot of vocal effects on a lot of the songs um there's not a ton of layering uh with the guitar work and things of that nature it's very raw and the other thing they did with Barry and Zach on the record was he made everybody play through the songs right I saw in the press release No Loops you guys actually did it the old school way over those 18 weeks yeah and I mean we're using you know some sophisticated um equipment in regards to synthesizers and certain techniques that we're doing and and what have you but a lot of the loops that you hear were created in the studio like with grabbing you know just different in Adam inanimate objects or what have you like he was really customizing everything where you weren't going into a plug-in uh Plug-In or a program and just picking stuff out of there he really wanted it to have a very organic feel and the way he looked at it was if we create it then it doesn't exist somewhere else it's actually ours well said well this is this is a compliment there's no backhanded part as a warning coming to this bring it on okay shinedown's an arena band not many bands get to be in Arena band in this upcoming tour is some very big halls and at this point in your career theoretically if you were doing the 15 song set all 15 of those songs could potentially be songs that were on the radio or that charted in some form so Planet zero is a new record when the people come to see you on these upcoming dates around how many suns or Planet zero are they going to get right now they will roughly get they should get probably four um right around four here's the thing um I am never going to get used to the fact that in in present company right now at this point in time we are the band in the United States on the billboard mainstream rock chart um that holds the most number ones on that chart and in the 39-year history of the chart um one of the things that's really fun about that is this next tour that we're getting ready to do with our friends in Three Days Grace We're the two bands that hold the most number ones on the chart as well and we were like we were ever gonna do it you know where we're gonna do it let's do it now together so we can go out there it's a night of number ones but when you are putting a set list together you have to pull from every record and you have to do your best to make sure that the audience is going to get everything that they wanted to the best of your ability our set right now is about 20 songs um it's a two-hour show um and we try to pull from every record but there's going to be moments where you're not able to do that all the time we have 19 songs on rock radio and we're getting ready to release um our our single who were crossing into other formats we're getting ready to release a song called a symptom of Being Human to Top 40 and hot AC radio that will be our 30-second single as a band 32 singles and so that doesn't include the Smith and Myers sideband stuff that's charged as well okay so another compliment on that compliment are you okay with that I I'm humbled So yeah thank you okay but I gotta make I gotta make a really big you know a point to this that's because of the fan base that's because of the relationship going back 20 years with terrestrial radio you know obviously we're in modern day 2023 the exposure for music and the consumption of music I mean it's so I mean it's instantaneous I think it's something like 400 000 new songs a week a hundred thousand you know 100 to 120 000 songs in some in some circles a day that are released uh that's mind-boggling um but the thing is is we are constantly evolving and we've always looked at age as just a number and our fan base has always allowed us to evolve and to grow we try to not make the same record over and over again we do our best to not write the same song Twice sure is this uh the seventh album that you've done on Atlantic yes okay how many bands stick around at the same label for seven albums so that's a rarity unto itself did you know outright when you're making this record that it was going to be for Atlantic yeah 100 um here's the thing about the relationship between Shinedown and Atlantic Records um it's very in a way it's it's quite Shakespearean um that's the only way I know how to how to say it you know there's definitely a romance there and a friendship and they are family it is not the norm in modern day for an artist of any genre of music uh to be on their record label for two decades plus and still continuing to release records together um so a lot of that I give credit to Craig Cowman and Julie Greenwald at Atlantic Records because they've been there from day one and I give a lot of credit to Steve Robertson who has been the anr for Shinedown from from day one and you know the interesting thing is on this record we're working with the lecture records promotion staff on this album so it's in it's crazy to actually be working with two labels at the same time but at the end of the day it's all under Warner Music Group which is WIA which stands for Warner Electro Atlantic so right those companies work together and it really is a foundation but I tell people this there was always an understanding from the get-go and I got to say something else too having the same management for the last two decades as well Bill mcgathey's been the manager from day one and in the good entertainment um but the reality of that is people need to understand that it's called the music business for a reason and in this industry it's very uh challenging it's very competitive but you have to stick to your guns and the one thing that Atlantic has always allowed us to do as a bandage they've never put a clock on us in the studio and they've they've always said to us you turn it in when you're ready and um they trust us that when we do come in with it that it is ready but even in the past you know if it's not been a hundred percent where they needed its beer they felt like we needed to continue writing or not all the way there 90 of the time when they would have us go back in it was it was the right call so there's a there's a very real artistic relationship together but there's also a very real respect that yo it's still a business right I think the only other band that I can think of besides Shinedown that had that long relationship with the same label and same management company ZZ Top otherwise everyone's familiar uh I think I think things easy top 40 years with the same manager and wow 40 years on RCA or something like that that's rad though man I love hearing stuff like that right so kudos to you on the loyalty and all that involved so what is life like for you outside of music when I asked that I said that shinedown's one of those about the music kind of bands like we don't know if you own a racing car team or anything like that we don't know anything about Brent besides yup he gets up there he plays he has hit songs he tours he goes home is that by design that you're kind of mysterious um I don't know if it's by Design it's just who I am um I often will tell people that will say to me do you know you're a rock star and I go I don't necessarily know how to answer that question because if I am a rock star or what I would consider a performer I am from my set time so oh the other 20 hours out of the day what you see right now is exactly who I am and I spend a lot of time now as much as I can with my son who just turned 15 in December of last year and he's got a lot of you know a lot of things are going on in his life right now and I need to be there with him but he also understands that I have to be gone also that's why I'm very thankful that we have technology like FaceTime because he's Generation Z and they don't want to text and they don't want to talk on the phone they want to FaceTime which I absolutely love they like to look at each other um and but I appreciate that for me you know it I look at the Rockstar element as the set time for when I'm performing as soon as I walk on stage there is a switch that goes off because I'm there to perform and then when I walk off the stage I come back to reality um I think that that's one of the reasons why mentally I've been able to do this at the level that I'm doing it at not to mention the people around me I always express this to people you have to you have to surround yourself with the hardest the people in your life with the hardest workers in the room and you need to lead from the front um and that's what I just try to do I'm so immersed in my family which really and truly is my son um but my livelihood is this band and has been from from day one this isn't a hobby this is my this is my life you know and I'm also responsible for a lot of other people's lives yeah because we have a we have a crew now and that's something that I make very very poignant to everybody your crew if you are a live musician they are your anchor they are what keeps you grounded and and allows you to be able to do what it is you do I can't stress the fact that you know we are in a place now and our career as a band where we have a staff of about 80 people on the road and we're responsible not only for them and there's a lot of lifers with us too people that have been there for over 10 years plus um and we're responsible for their families as well and their livelihood so it's a big responsibility right the stupid direction that I was going to take that one is so there's not a diamond Dave equivalent of Brent where you go there's three personas there's the guy on stage there's a normal Family Guy and then there's the backstage guy you don't have that third one no and I kind of the guy on stage is is still me yeah you know um the thing that I've always looked at like people will ask me like what are your hobbies what do you like to do and you know what how do you decompress here's the thing about me I lived in California from 2010 to 2016 because I do a lot of work out there and so I got a house it's a beautiful house but I was never in it I was always on the road so I sold that house I haven't owned a home since 2016. I live in hotels I I go rental car to rental car but I'm constantly moving because I'm off I'm constantly networking for Shinedown there's always another step there's always another country to go to another city to be explored um we're always up we the rule of thumb is at least for me is I'm always five years ahead so I'm trying to make sure that we're laying out the groundwork ahead of time because communication is key in this industry also there's a lot of moving parts and for me I don't do very well with downtime but as I've gotten older the place that I am the most at home if I'm not on the road is with my son okay well down to two quick questions and I'm Gonna Let You Go and the first one is I said the words Diamond Dave and you worked with Bob Marlette who did an album for David Lee Roth did you ever I love it Bob for David Lee Roth stories I never pumped Bob for for David Lee Ross stories it's so interesting how the universe is real here recently I've been seeing Bob's name pop up and uh that guy I'm just gonna say it right now that dude is Bob Marlette as a producer songwriter engineer massively underrated yes um like massively underrated um he I mean for for me you know I remember him geeking out when I met him um back in 2002 when we were for when we were basically um recording our debut record which is even crazier this year because on May 27th it's the 20-year anniversary of our debut album legal whisper this year and I just remember him uh I remember him geeking out that he got to work with Tony Iommi yes and um he also has some really interesting stories he played um if I'm not mistaken and because we have Google I'm I'm sure we can fact check this but I'm trying to remember from memory if I'm not mistaken he played piano or synthesizer on fast car from Tracy Chapman that is correct that was his first big session and one of those credits you go what okay I agree like amazing if you look up Bob Marlette to your viewers and your listeners and what have you go and research this guy because he has a like really really uh tight with John five did a lot of work with him um but like just a plethora of different styles and different kinds of musicians anyone who gets along with Rudy sarzo and Ozzy you know is the real deal yeah 100 and he's got an interesting story about Andrew W.K um yeah Andrew wk's debut album I believe Bob was in the running in the beginning to to help him with that production wise I don't think that they ended up obviously being able to do it and John Fields I think did it right uh but Bob is like he said that guy just ahead of his time uh even when Bob was like even when I met him he was ahead of his time because like the digital side of that sound if you go back and you listen to I think that record is called I get wet yeah yeah if you go back and listen to Andrew WK and that first record in 2023 that record is still crushing everything that came you know that came out after it and that was in such a very um early stage of digital of what he was able to do and how they were able to create that record it's pretty mind-blowing
2023-03-02 10:51
