Live-Metal.Net - Interviews: Shinedown

May 1, 2006

After spending two years on the road playing more than 400 shows and spawning four hit singles from their 2003 debut CD, Leave a Whisper, Shinedown wasted little time before unleashing album number two, Us and Them, last October and resuming touring. The Equinox Tour, which features them co-headlining with Trapt, along with openers Halestorm and Mercy Fall, recently stopped at Rams Head Live in Baltimore, Md., less than two months after Shinedown played the same venue on the Winterfresh SnoCore tour with Seether. Before the show, bassist Brad Stewart took time out to chat with Greg Maki of Live-Metal.net about the band’s strong Baltimore following, life on the road and the hectic recording of Us and Them.

Live-Metal: Shinedown has played in Baltimore a bunch of times now. It seems like the fans here really took to you right from the beginning.

Brad Stewart: This city has been nothing but supportive of our band. It’s a Monday night, we just played here on SnoCore, and it’s sold out. I mean, that just says it all right there for Baltimore. We can’t get enough of them and they can’t get enough of us. And as far as the fans and just the support from radio that we’ve had here, it’s been like a second home to us. It’s gonna be a great show, and we have, actually this is Mercy Fall’s night on the tour, but we played with Halestorm before and Trapt on different festivals and stuff before. But, so far, it’s like the fifth show of the tour and it’s been really good so far, man. But, yeah, as far as Baltimore is concerned, God bless the place, man. It’s fuckin’ awesome.

On any of your stops here, have you had time to hang out and see the city?

Yeah, we’ve hung out at the Inner Harbor before, went bar hopping and ate at some of the restaurants and stuff. But we’ve also played the Ottobar. We played the Recher Theatre a couple times out in Towson. And we did the festival out there across the way one year, as well, which was fun, for 98 Rock, I’m sure. I can’t really remember who was on that bill because that was on Leave a Whisper pretty early on. But, yeah, since Leave a Whisper came out, he was adding the songs and the other radio stations here, as well. So we immediately almost had this fanbase that has only gotten bigger and better. We’ve played also out here at Power Plant Live before outside, as well. I think we’ve played pretty much everywhere there is to play in this city. It’s been great.

Shinedown definitely seems to have a deeper connection with the fans than most bands out there. Why do you think that is and how important is that connection?

You know, I think we treat them more like family. Some people have this barrier between them and their fans. Some people don’t talk to them or do meet-and-greets. We do interviews, phoners, meet-and-greets. On SnoCore, we’d go out just about every night to the FYE table, meet all the fans, and if FYE or some retailer wasn’t there, we’d go out just to our merch table and hang out. Usually it would work out better if we were in the third slot. We’d go during that slot, and then we’d come back and get ready to go for the show. But, yeah, man, I don’t know if it’s a connection as far as with the lyrics or if they look at us and we look at them as equals. We’re people. We don’t put ourselves on a pedestal. We’re very humble ‘cause we played shows even this late in the game where it’s like, we’ve sold some records and we feel like we’ve had some success, but we’ll still play for a couple hundred people sometimes. And it keeps you humble. If you ever start getting that big head, man, that’s when bad shit usually starts happening. You think you’re too cool for school or too big to do certain things. Like I said, it doesn’t matter if there’s two, 200 or 200,000 out there. We play the same show every night, and if the energy’s really coming, we take it even to the next level.

You’re on tour now with Trapt. You just did SnoCore with Seether. Do you like doing these co-headlining package tours?

Yeah, we pretty much split it up with Seether. They closed most of the shows probably on that tour, but towards the end there we closed the show. We look at it as we actually like the third slot. Closing the show or who’s headlining or whatever, we just look at it as we’re playing a show. We switch it off. It’s not like an ego thing or anything. Both bands have shared some success. I think a lot of Seether’s fans are our fans or Trapt fans, as well. They’re rock fans. So yeah, it’s cool to co-headline. At first, when you’re starting out, it might be kind of like, how’s that going to go? ‘Cause you never know what it’s gonna be like depending on what band you’re touring with.

It would have to be a band that you like and get along with for it to work, right?

Right, because if it gets into a pissing contest, then it’s lame. And that happens. I’ve heard horror stories about these bigger bands that go out together and try to do something like this and it just becomes a nightmare, just logistically, who gets the better parking, the better dressing room. It’s like, who fuckin’ cares, man? As long as people show up, that’s the main thing, that you want to play and perform. All that shit’s just petty, just nonsense. So yeah, we’ve been lucky, man. This tour, it’s like five days in and it’s been smooth sailing, seamless. Everyone’s getting along well. Our crews work together. Our lighting guy does their lights. Their merch person does our merch. It helps everyone if you run it like that. Otherwise, you’re spending a bunch of money just trying to have your own people do everything. It’s senseless. Why have two people doing the same job?

You’ve been touring a lot lately with Halestorm. How did you get hooked up with them?

Halestorm is an Atlantic band. We first met them through Silvertide. We played a show with them actually during the recording of our record, Us and Them. We had about six months between when we got off the road and when the record actually came out. So we did it very fast. But in the middle of that, we did some shows, probably every two weeks we’d have a fly show to fly out to. Well, we met them officially, I guess, in Milwaukee. And we were just like, wow, they’re very talented. We want to help them out. It ended up that they’re managed by the same people that we’re managed by and on our same record label. It’s cool to see a young band with a lot of talent. We definitely hope that we’ve kind of taken them under our wing. They’re able to tour with us and our fans are able to be exposed to them and hopefully that starts a bond or plants a seed for their own fanbase eventually.

Yeah, when you came through here a couple months ago, that was the first time I really heard them and they just blew me away.

They have an EP that they’re selling, a live EP, and they move hundreds of those things a night, man. So definitely, with the fans it’s a good mix. They’re like our little brothers and sister or something. We’re trying to help them out and hopefully it’s going to help them when they actually get their record done and get it out there.

From the time when you were first starting out to headlining your own tours to opening for bands like Van Halen, you’ve played pretty much every type of venue there is to play. Is a particular size you like best?

A preference? Well, it’s great to play the arenas. We’ve never done an arena tour where it was our arena tour. It was cool to open for those bigger bands and stuff. Me, personally, and this might differ from my other bandmates – they might be really into the arena setting. And I think it’s a cool thing. You feel like KISS or something up there. It’s awesome. But at the end of the day, if you’re able to sell out these more intimate settings and these mid-size clubs, I’d say, that would probably be my favorite ‘cause you know that the fans are there, they know the songs, they’re gonna sing with you, they’re gonna really embrace what you’re doing on stage. Some of these other, like, big hockey arenas and stuff, which we did with Three Doors Down and Van Halen – we did the Staples Center and just enormous places. That was great, but me, personally, I think, you’re able to see fans closer. The guard rail’s right there. It’s not 50 feet back and you’re like, hey, who’s back there? But it’s cool to do it all, though. We’ve played small club shows that have been some of the best shows we’ve ever played. We’ll never think we’re ever too good to play such and such venue or something. We still play smaller places and you know what? It’s a sweaty, dirty rock show and it’s fuckin’ fun like that sometimes.

For the first album, you did two years and 400 shows?

Two years, over 400 shows. Yeah.

Are there any songs from that album now that you just dread having to play?

No. Actually, now we’re kind of doing about half and half right now with Leave a Whisper and Us and Them. It’s the kind of thing where those songs, we’ve played them so much and we really hit the pavement to try to just get the fans aware of not just the radio songs but some of the other songs that are on the record. I don’t really loathe playing any of those songs. Plus, you kind of just have to keep finding new things about it that you like and even finding out new ways to play it to keep it kind of fresh and interesting. Otherwise, you might be like, God, if I hear that fuckin’ song again, I’m gonna … But we keep it pretty fresh, like “45,” we used to start it a certain way and end it a certain way. Now we’re not doing that. We’re kind of going back to the way it was done on the record more so than we ever have before. “Fly from the Inside,” we changed the ending a little bit and there’s certain things that make it feel like an exclamation point on the end of the song kind of thing. It’s to the point where those songs are like our children. They’ve grown up and it’s good to see them growing up, and now we have some babies that we’re trying to see grow up, as well, as far as the live setting, I guess you would say, is concerned. You record an album and you lay tracks down, and the next thing you know six months later you’re out on the road with very minimal rehearsal time and you’ve gotta play those songs like you’ve been playing them for 10 years, because if you go out there are you’re like, uh, how’s it go, that’s not cool. Luckily, we’ve been doing this set – we’ve changed it up a little bit – but we’ve been doing a similar set for about the past six months. Confidence is really high and we’re actually still kind of changing some things to see what works best even six months later.

But it’s still probably fun to have new songs to play.

Oh, it’s great, man. I guess you could say at the end of the two years, we were like, we need some new songs. But then we’d start playing the old songs again, you see the kids light up and it’s like, alright, these are the songs that actually put us on the map. So we’ve gotta keep them around.

What’s life on the road like for you guys? What kinds of things do you like to do in your free time?

It kind of depends on the tour. SnoCore was like five shows on, day off, five shows on, day off. So on that day off, you’re head’s still spinning from just playing that many shows in a row. You’re sore. Not to complain because we love, obviously, what we do, but it can be physically exhausting out here. And especially, you know, we get about four or five cases of beer every night and several bottles of vodka and wine, so you add that in the mix of what we do. It’s supposed to be fun. We have a great time. We definitely take it very seriously. But spare time is sometimes spent just doing laundry and just getting away from fucking everybody. Just, dude, I’m gonna get my own hotel room and just do my laundry and just fuck off. But then there’s some cities you go to, like D.C. or something, where if you can actually go out and see the town or go to the museums. New York City is always fun, L.A.’s fun, Chicago, Baltimore. Anywhere we have a day off, if we can and we’re feeling good, we like to go out and see some things. We actually had a day off not too long ago in Salem, Massachusetts. And that was fuckin’ cool. We went on the ghost tour and did that sort of thing, went to the bars and the whole time you feel like someone’s behind you, watching you. It’s a cool place, though. But there’s all kinds of stuff we do. I think on this tour we’re gonna try to see a little bit more, ‘cause lots of times you see the back of the venue and you see the venue, and then you leave that night. It’s kind of like people are like, you get to see the whole country. And it’s like, if time permits, yeah, we’d love to see the whole country. But we’re usually moving on. After tonight, we drive down to Raleigh, then to Athens, then to Jacksonville, then to Fort Meyes, then to Tampa, Orlando, then back out to New Orleans. New Orleans is a great town, and we’re excited to go back there.

Have you been there since Katrina?

We have not, but we’re actually gonna do a Habitat for Humanity thing and help build a house the day of the show. So that should be cool. We’re gonna go out there and the news media and everyone is gonna be out there. We think it’s for a good cause. That city has so much history as far as music and culture. It’s an awesome place. It’s actually one of our favorite places to have a day off. But I know it’s been pretty much destroyed. I read the recent Rolling Stone and there’s an article in there, man, and it’s like, damn, dude, did people just fuckin’ forget about the people down there or what? It really was pretty sad. Hopefully, while we’re down there we’ll be able to make some kind of a difference.

You guys spend so much time trapped together on a bus. Are there times when you just drive each other crazy?

Actually, for all of Leave a Whisper, we traveled on one bus with a trailer, and for Us and Them, the beginning we traveled one bus, one trailer. Then for SnoCore, we actually got a tractor-trailer. Still one bus. Eleven guys on one bus. It only sleeps 12, there’s 12 bunks. That was probably the point where we had to say, you know what? The next tour, let’s get two buses. And we knew that just from a cost perspective two buses is very expensive. And a lot of these shows, some people don’t understand that they’re paying the ticket price, but then after everyone including Uncle Sam gets his cut, then it has to trickle down to the band. But then we have our production costs and our crew and our gas and our travel expenses and everything. And pretty much for this tour, we’re not making any money. But to have the ability to ride and be comfortable and kind of have a little bit of space. It’s another thing, too, where the band’s up ‘til six in the morning ‘cause they’re still excited about the show. Well, the crew’s gotta get up a few hours later, and you’re on the same bus and you can really piss each other off. It’s not even a respect thing. We all respect each other and everything, but you’re just inside a fucking metal tube. People are like, God, that’s a bigass bus, man. You’re like, not really. For five or six people, that’s fuckin’ awesome, but for 11? This tour has just been really cool, even just the beginning of it has been a lot more – we just feel better. We feel like we have our own space more. There’s more peace. There’s not as much frustration and hostility that can arise. But, yeah, like I said, so the crew can now get up. They can even travel to the city before us or travel to the venue. We can stay at the venue or on the bus, then kind of roll in for soundcheck and that sort of thing. We started in a van. We were actually in a box truck and our own cars. Then we got a van and a trailer. Then we got a RV and a trailer. Then a short 35-foot bus and a trailer. And we just keep notching it up. With the tractor-trailer, we can actually bring these gigantic lighting trusses, which you can’t really do in a normal trailer. With the bus being 45 feet long, the trailer can only be a certain length. So you can’t carry another gigantic thing behind you. We’ve got an 18-wheeler out there, man. We actually split costs and stuff like that. Some of the bands put their gear in our truck, too, so that helps them out, as well. That’s what we did on SnoCore anyway. It was us and Seether and Halestorm was in there and Flyleaf. So all the crew guys had a packing order and it made sense. It made it easier, actually on everybody. It’s good that we’re able to step it up now.

You said it was six months between when you finished touring and when the album came out. How long did you actually spend writing a recording the album?

On Leave a Whisper, we toured it for so long and people think we’d be into writing songs all the time. But just the circumstances, I don’t want to make excuses, but, like I said, with the difference in when people go to sleep and the privacy thing of actually having an environment conducive to writing and a focus. One guy wants to go do his laundry, one guy wants to eat. That was really tough for us on Leave a Whisper, so when we went in, we did the March 5 show in Myrtle Beach, which was our DVD. Then we went home and it was like, that was pretty much the end of full time touring Leave a Whisper. We need to make a new record. OK, cool. We went and we started in Jacksonville in [guitarist] Jasin [Todd]’s house, actually, about three weeks later, around April 1 or so. We literally went in there, man, and everyone just started coming with ideas. About 23 songs were written in a very short amount of time, probably like a month. But the way we did it, we would write the song and get the arrangement down in Jasin’s house and there would be a structure to the song, and by the end of that day we would try to get the bass and the drum tracks already laid. That way if Brent was trying to figure out which ones were inspiring him to write – some of the songs, he’d hear it and he’s like, I think it’s an awesome piece of music, but I’m not really coming up with anything to that, let’s focus on this on next. And we’d focus on that one next, get it to a certain place and he’d be the whole time just brainstorming ideas for all these different songs. He really had a lot of pressure on him to come up with this ‘cause we were able to go in there and, surprisingly enough, as a band just make all this music all at once. Everyone thinks certain songs should get the full attention and this song should get the full attention. It was tough to kind of decipher that. We whittled the 23 down to 17 and that got whittled down to about 14 more. And then those 14 songs got the full monty, the full drums, bass, guitars and the overdubs and guitars, which we kind of kept it kind of stripped on this record. And then they got the vocals and they got mixed and mastered, and that was the record, man. Next thing you know, Brent had like two or three songs not only left to sing when “Save Me” hit radio, a couple of those songs he had to finish lyrics for. It was like a couple songs were getting mixed, one song went to radio, then these songs were getting mixed, he was recording and writing still toward the very end, and then finally it was all mastered at once after it was mixed and that was it. Fuckin’ let’s go. So it was pretty freaky. It was amazing that it even got done that fast ‘cause literally that’s probably about three months of writing, recording – maybe four months – and by then, the label, we’re doing photos, we’re doing the video, we’re doing all this shit and we started touring with Three Doors Down and we were gone again.

After the success of Leave a Whisper, did it feel like there was more pressure on you?

There was pressure. Leave a Whisper ended up going platinum. It was on its way. We knew it was gonna go platinum as Us and Them was happening. So, yeah, definitely, man, there was pressure. I mean, we didn’t have to live up to a juggernaut, 10-million seller, so it kind of gave us freedom, though, too, to do it a certain way. There’s no one saying you need to have this kind of song ‘cause that song was on the last record and that was successful for you guys. It was kind of like let’s make this thing, see what happens and the best songs will kind of stick their head up. So that was kind of cool. But we definitely felt pressure. Luckily, the label – I know there’s a couple bands on our label I won’t mention, but major success first record and they toured and did their thing, the cycle ran its course and then they go in and start writing songs and shit, then the label’s like, not there yet. So they sent them back to the drawing board and it’s like, after all that success, wow. But you’ve gotta live up to a certain level. You’ve gotta take it further, actually, than your first record. And I think we were able to do so. There’s different opinions about the record. But if you’ve lived with a record for two years and you get something new, you probably have it in your head what you think it’s going to be. So that can kind of jade your opinion of the new stuff. One thing we did with Us and Them is we definitely wanted to have a variety of not only styles – and I don’t know if we went in to it consciously thinking this, but, like, “Lady So Divine” is seven minutes long. It’s one of our favorite songs. “Save Me” is more of just a straight rock song. There’s “Begin Again,” which is pretty metal sounding. There’s an acoustic track, “Shed Some Light,” on there. We ended up making “I Dare You,” I don’t know if tried to, but it ended up sounding more worldly, kind of like a U2 sound or Coldplay or something. I think that when fans get a record and there’s all that different influence and variety, I think sometimes the song might not hit them at the right time and they have to kind of live with it for it to do so to them. It was a fuckin’ whirlwind. It’s good to be back out on the road.

What are some of your favorite songs from the album?

I love “Begin Again.” I love “I Dare You.” I love “Save Me.” It’s like anthemic song. We usually close the set with that, people start jumping and they scream every word. “Yer Majesty” is a fun one to play. “Heroes,” of course. I think “Heroes” is going to be our next single. “I Dare You” is still pretty much happening at radio, but I think we need to go back to more of our roots, a rock radio kind of track. I love the record. There’s a lot of great songs, I think, on there. There’s a couple songs where I was like, they’re good songs, but they’re not my favorite. If I was a listener, I don’t know if I would go to those, but I don’t think they suck either. You don’t really love any of them any more because they’re like having children. You’re not like, he’s my favorite child. You love them all like your kids, but there’s definitely certain ones that you know are going to connect and you know the crowd are going to respond to. When you’re out here for 400 shows, those are the songs you want to be playing. You don’t want be playing sleepers for them.

My favorite from the album is “Atmosphere.” I love that Southern rock riff.

Yeah, we call that one “the stomp.” We play that one in the set live, too. I forgot about that one for some reason, but that one’s a fun one to play. The lyrics in the verse, when he came up with those words, we were like, holy shit, man, you’re coming from such a different place when he’s talking about a bastard that watched his father die, a blind man still looking for his eyes, and just like, holy fuck, bro. That’s some crazy shit. But it’s in that Southern rock vibe and there’s solos on it and stuff. Jasin, he really likes to play that one live, too, for all the solos and he kind of added a Lynyrd Skynyrd influence, I think, with the soloing, maybe some Allman Brothers in there. Yeah, that’s a fun one to play live.

You’ve added a second guitarist. Is he just for the live shows?

It’s pretty much he’s a touring guitarist. We’ve known Zach [Myers]. He teched for a lot of bands, like Saliva and a band called Future Leaders, he was out with them for a while. And Chris Henderson from Three Doors Down, he was his tech. But Zach was actually signed at a very young age as a guitar player. He’s a blues guitar player along the lines of Kenny Wayne Shepherd, that sort of thing. He was signed around the same time, when he was 14 or something. He’s an excellent musician and he had his own band going too. We always want to further things and take it to the next level, and to have two guitars I think it thickens the sound, especially when one person’s soloing and it’s just bass and drums, another guitar can kind of fill in space in the mix. We decided to bring him out on SnoCore, and he actually filled in for me when my wife and I had our baby for a few shows. On bass, he filled in. So pretty much his role is to do the shows out here with us. He’s a good guy. We like him a lot.

Since he joined, have you played “Lady So Divine” live?

We have not played “Lady So Divine” yet because we want it to be as magical as it is on the CD. Like I said, we’ve got to really rehearse. We didn’t get to rehearse very much because it was a short time period by the time the fuckin’ thing was even done, before the first tour was booked. We mainly rehearsed the songs that we knew, OK, we’ve gotta do “Save Me,” “I Dare You,” basically some of the shorter songs. Plus, we were opening for Three Doors. We had 45 minutes and to play a seven-minute song, it kind of just really didn’t make sense at that time. But I think probably on this tour we’re gonna play it, especially if we’re closing the show, maybe we’ll encore and play “Lady So Divine.”

You guys have been going pretty much nonstop for a few years now. How long do you think you can keep up this pace?

On Leave a Whisper, we had hardly any breaks. It was like, you might get a few days home and you’ll probably have to fly home from somewhere on your own dime if you want any time at home. On this record, we had a couple weeks off over the holidays before SnoCore. And then we had a couple weeks off after SnoCore. So there’s been a little bit more time between tours on this run. But we were still doing shows. It just wasn’t like a package, OK, you’re doing X amount of shows this month and it’s gonna be a tour with a bus. A couple of them were fly shows. Some of them we actually took the bus and the gear to. I think that just by realizing if we don’t get two buses and if we don’t do certain things like this then this thing could really get ugly. I think just by realizing that, I think that’s why we’ve been able to kind of keep going at this pace that we have. We’re gonna go to Europe between the first leg and second leg of this tour. And there’s gonna be a Japan thing, too, that happens before this record’s over, which is gonna be cool. But then after this tour, there’s a couple weeks off or something. But they’re booking all the way into the fall and into next year. It came out in October and it’ll at least go a year and a half, I would imagine, if not another whole two years. We’ll see. As long as we’re promoting singles and we’re promoting the record. And we’ve been able to on this record do things like the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. We just did CD USA. We’re hoping to get Leno at some point soon. This record, we have been able to finally go to Europe, ‘cause we’ve never been. I guess from all the hard work from the first record we’ve been able to open some doors that weren’t necessarily open to us before. And we just found out – I don’t know if I should say it because it might not happen – one of the American Idol folks might want to do one of our songs. We were like, wow, that’s never happened before. That’ll be interesting. It’s the rock guy on there, though. I think he’s good singer and he’s probably gonna win the thing. He’s always gone up there and done non-traditional what you would think American Idol contestants would pick. So I think it’s kind of cool. A lot of people would probably be like, that’s sold out, fuck this, fuck that. But I’m like, look, this guy’s a rocker and I think it’s cool that he likes the band. He’s done a Fuel song. When they pick country, he does Johnny Cash, which I think is cool, ‘cause Johnny Cash was like the renegade in that whole thing. So I think he gets it. He also did a Seether song. He did “Broken.” It’s cool because right now a lot of what’s happening in music is rock bands aren’t given, I guess you could say, a pedestal or mountaintop to shout from that they were in the past, except for maybe like Evanesence or some bands like that. You watch American Idol or you listen to pop radio and you watch some of the networks and they’re not playing really rock rock. It’s either kind of pop-punk or it’s adult contemporary kind of stuff or it’s mainly country or solo pop artists or urban stuff. We love all that stuff. We listen to all kinds of music, but it’s great to see some rock out there, too, man. You look at the charts and Nickelback is the only rock band in the chart. And Fallout Boy, I mean, we like Fallout Boy OK, but they don’t do what we do. Back in the day, when rock was in, I guess you’d say, there was a lot more room for rock on other formats besides rock radio.

Who are some of the bands that you’d like to tour with?

We’d love to do an Audioslave tour or Metallica or Foo Fighters. There’s a lot of bands that we’d like to travel with. You’re out here, you’re doing your own thing and then you’re like, shit, man, why can’t we get out there with those guys? Sometimes you get a lucky break. Maybe the band actually likes your band and they request you or someone pulls a deal and you’re able to tour with them. There’s been talk of Godsmack. We’ve always liked Godsmack. We toured with Seether, obviously, before. I’m trying to think of who else is a bigger band that we’d like to see happen. Alice in Chains, I know they’re getting back together. We’d love to do that or something like that. We actually toured with Velvet Revolver before. I’m not sure what’s happening with their camp, but I know there might be a Guns N’ Roses thing happening, too. Anything like that would be fuckin’ insane to do. Some of the shit you’ve grown up with and stuff. It was cool to do the thing with Velvet ‘cause I was into STP and I was into Guns N’ Roses and now it’s kind of a mixture, so it’s awesome. The new Buckcherry is fuckin’ great. I think that guy is a fuckin’ rocker, man, and I love what he’s done before in Buckcherry. I wasn’t really too fond of his solo thing ‘cause I didn’t think it really worked for him, but it’s cool to see him doing the rock again.

They played at the Recher Theatre a couple weeks ago. It was a good show.

Was it good?

Yeah.

Of course, if Aerosmith wanted us to come out, we’d do it. Or someone like that. But Buckcherry, bands like that, man. We’re more, I guess you could say, traditional, kind of classic rock than some bands out there that are more maybe pop-punk. There’s just a lot of different varieties. Actually, we did a couple shows with Avenged Sevenfold, which we like them too, and Coheed and Cambria, and Nine Inch Nails and Rob Zombie. We did a festival with them. There’s a Florida run we get to do, like Zombie and some of the bands, Mudvayne, Staind. We’re looking forward to that.

Do you have bands or artists that you listen to that would surprise a Shinedown fan?

Well, we listen to Westside Connection. That’s Ice Cube. We love him. I love Ludacris and I’ve always liked Eminem and Dre and Snoop. On any one of our iPods you can anything from James Brown to James Taylor to Jim Croce. We’re into singer-songwriters, too. And there’s Creedence and Skynyrd. I don’t know if that would necessarily surprise people. There’s definitely a variety of tastes depending on which band member you ask. I like Mazzy Star, I like Radiohead, I like Coldplay. Some of the guys in the band might not agree. But then Jasin will listen to everything from Blind Melon to …

[Jasin walks by]

Jasin: Deicide.

Brad: … Deicide. And then he’ll put in Susan Tedeschi or something. So it’s varied and I think our fans kind of know that because of how our records kind of come out and sound. There’s lighter. There’s heavier. There’s variety. There’s Southern. There’s modern. I don’t know if I can pick one band to tell you. Sorry about the ambiguity, but that’s just kind of how our band is.

I think that’s all the questions I have for you. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Thank you for time, man. We really are out here to reach not only the fans, which I think they’re the most important thing that this band is concerned with, but to have people that actually come in and have their shit together and ask us questions like you have. We do appreciate that sort of thing because you’d be surprised. We do it for the fans and we hope that they know that. We hope that they realize that everything that we decide in this band is just based on we want our fans to not only respect our decisions but to embrace the band. And they’ve stuck with us so far. We’re gonna be out here for, hopefully, a while. We don’t want this to be a one or two record band. We want to be able to do this. Hopefully, by building it brick by brick and not by having the runaway single and the runaway album and not being able to follow that, that we’ll be around for a long time. So we’ll see what happens.