“It really fits Shinedown and who we are and where we are right now, because Shinedown the name means, sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down, it’s kind of a rebirth of Shinedown, this album, and it just kind of fits our mood right now.”
One of the biggest rock bands out there at the moment is Shinedown, after their 2008 release ‘The Sound of Madness’ that spawned the hits ‘Second Chance’, ‘Devour’, ‘Sound of Madness’ and more that took them to the stratosphere and beyond, they toured for three years solid on it and became the International force they finally needed to be, especially after two previous albums (‘Leave a Whisper’ and ‘Us and Them’) that bode well in the States. Now they are back with their newest album ‘Amaryllis’ hitting on March 23 in Australia and March 27 in The USA and it’s good, damn good.
In Nashville and having just finished packing up his drums and getting ready to hit the road to LA to start rehearsals for their new tour we had a chance to chat to Shinedown drummer Barry Kerch all about their new album ‘Amaryllis’, touring plans, and what lies ahead for this kick ass band!
We’ve been lucky enough to hear the album and just want to say congratulations, it’s an absolute ball tearer are you excited to unleash it on the world?
Absolutely, were thrilled, we put a lot of hard work into this album and it’s been a long time since we’ve released an album so we’re very excited to get out there and share these songs with everybody.
OK, I have to ask, can you tell us about the title, what’s the meaning behind Amaryllis?
Amaryllis is a flower. There’s many different varieties but the specific one we’re talking about is one that grows in South Africa and it really grows in desert, and what was cool about it is that it comes out of nothing, really you’ve got this desolate environment and very stark contrast to this beautiful flower that blooms in the middle of the desert. It really fits Shinedown and who we are and where we are right now, because Shinedown the name means, sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down, it’s kind of a rebirth of Shinedown, this album, and it just kind of fits our mood right now.
It’s now been four years since ‘The Sound of Madness’ what has taken so long to get us the new album?
We’re slow ha ha, you know we tour extensively and we toured for three years on ‘Sound of Madness’ and we just don’t really write songs on the road because we’re so focused on the live show and the aspect of the live show and we wear ourselves out so much that kind of the creativity of writing disappears. So when we finally get the time off, you’re writing and recording, it’s just kind of how we do things, how it works and it’s unfortunate cause it does take a little long but we always come back with something that we think is strong and I think it’s worth the wait.
Song wise, how were these put together compared to your previous albums?
Not necessarily differently but it was nice to have more input with Eric and Zach now being a part of the writing process which we didn’t have before, it was kind of fun and reinvigorating for me and Brent to have some new blood in the writing process, so it was nice. Everything typically starts with an acoustic guitar and a voice and it goes from there, and then we fully demo it out in to a computer with programed drums and a few guitars and layers of vocals and decide whether we like the song or not and then move on to the next one. We wrote about thirty three songs for this record and from there said, alright, I think it’s time to get in the studio and pick our favourite seventeen of those and twelve made the record.
You’ve once again worked with Rob Cavallo on this album as producer, what is it that he brings to the band that you love?
He’s really just an amazingly smart man when it comes to arrangements and getting the best performances out of everybody, and tweaking those little things that make it sound the way it does. He gets really a big sound between him and his team, Doug McKean the engineer and everybody, it’s just he brings something special and it’s really cool. ‘Sound of Madness’ was such a successful record for us we though why not use him again? Will we use him on the next album? Who knows? Maybe we’ll try something else just to say we did, but for this album I think it was very important for us to stick to that way of doing things because of the success of ‘Sound of Madness’ and how great it sounded as a record as a whole just sonically, we wanted that kind of sound again.
Well, we’ll wait until 2016 for the next one then yeah?
Ha ha ha yeah, we’ll see…
So what, if anything did you do differently on this album compared to previous releases?
We did. We brought in some more synth sounds, we had a bigger orchestra, a thirty six piece orchestra I believe it was and we also did a horn section on ‘I’m Not Alright’ which is something we’d never done before, kind of a ‘Sgt Pepper’s…’ vibe to it and we thought that might be kind of cool, so we tried it, and it worked. Other than that, it’s a rock band, its guitars, drums, bass, vocals, that’s who we are and what we’re known for.
The song ‘Bully’ is quite a powerful song, as is the video, what is the inspiration behind the song itself?
That was one of the first songs really written for the record and it’s something that’s been kind of a hot topic, at least here in The States and I think pretty much everywhere, but it’s also been happening since the dawn of time, people get bullied, humans bully, it’s almost human nature. I think it’s something that almost everyone is affected by in one way or another, whether you are a bully, you’ve been bullied or you’ve seen bullying and it’s relatable for people, and it was something we felt like talking about at the time. When it came to do the video we went how are we going to make this impactful? Really stir some people up and that’s what we tried to do and I think it worked, but it’s a relatable song, it doesn’t matter if you’re a kid at school getting bullied or if you’re at a workplace as an adult getting bullied, it happens and you just have to say ‘No, enough is enough, I’m done with this’ and we’ve had to do that in our own lives, I mean, face it, we’re a bunch of whiny little musicians ha ha in that respect, we’re very emotional people and I think artists are typically emotional people and to sometimes pull from those places in our psyche it comes from being bullied as a kid or being the outcast or the different one, at least all of us and I know at least in this band were an outcast in one way or another.
Can you talk us through the cover art and what the concept is behind that?
Initially it started that we were looking at mandalas And we just thought they were cool and what an interesting design and the story behind mandalas and we wanted something like that, and we went to the guy that did the art, Dave, and said look, we kind of want a mandala kind of thing, but we also want you to listen to the songs and we want imagery on the album that relates to all the songs, and that’s what he came back with and it was amazing, we were blown away. We made very minor tweaks but it was such a cool impactful thing, we wanted the album art to be where you could listen to the record and look at the album art like we did when we were kids and find stuff in it and go ‘Oh wow, that’s where that comes from, that song’ and things like that. We want people to really spend time with the record, we don’t write a song and then put bunch of fluff tracks around it, we write a record from front to back that hopefully you can listen to, from front to back.
Touring wise, if your last is anything to go by, you’ll be out on the road for quite some time, what are the plans so far?
Well this year’s pretty much backed, we’ve already done a European run, we’re getting ready to start a States run then come June we’re already booked for festivals again in Europe, we’ll do that, and some one off shows there, back here for probably a Summer tour and then we haven’t really figured out what we’re going to do for the Fall. We’ve got to get back to you guys, and we’ve got to get to South and Central America, and Asia as well so we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us for sure.
I have to ask, are there plans to bring Shinedown back to Australia?
Nothing’s been set, but absolutely we’re going to come back, we have to. We had such a great time there and we’ve only been there that one time, so we need to make an effort to get back there and I think this time in making it there we’ll be able to make it to New Zealand and then up to Asia which we haven’t been to at all. There’s definitely plans for it, there’s talks about it but when that’s going to happen, I don’t know yet.
The last time you were here was in 2010, do you have any fond memories of that trip?
Yeah I’ve got tonnes; I mean it was our first time in Australia, the one thing that impressed me most about Australia is how similar it is to Florida, at least in my mind, it reminded me of home. It was just a great time and it was a different tour for us cause we had never done one where you just fly every day to another city, we’re usually on a bus and things like that and Sydney was special, we had three days off I want to say, before we did the shows so we really got to see the city and walk around and do the tourist things and find some good bars and meet some people and have a great time. I have fond memories of it and we have a thing in our band, that’s no matter ten or ten thousand you play the same show, in fact myself, Eric and Zach have different tattoos on each of us that say ‘Ten or Ten Thousand’ because that’s something we truly believe, we’re in the entertainment business and we’ve got to get up there and entertain and people pay good money for a rock show and it’s not easy to come by these days, so you better give them 110% every time. I can’t wait to come back and do it all over again and hopefully even play to bigger rooms and more people. I would like to do a proper club tour of Australia, rather than a festival run, the festivals are tough and you get on the side stage and everything’s messed up and there’s cables everywhere, so you can’t really put on your best effort even though you really try and it’s hard on all the bands, it’d be nice to do a proper club tour where you get a little bit of time, and a sound check, really can hone it in and give people the full Shinedown show.
You mentioned New Zealand before as a place you haven’t been, is there anywhere you haven’t been yet that you would like to play?
Oh there’s tonnes. Japan, China, Russia, Italy, we’ve only been in Milan once, South and Central America, Brazil, we’ve never been to any of those areas, there’s probably more places that I can count that we want to go to than ones that I don’t ever want to go to again that’s for sure ha ha. We really want to see the world, that’s one of the perks of being in this business is getting to see the world and we love to travel and we love to tour and make new fans.
What I love about the band and it’s evident on your ‘Somewhere in the Stratosphere’ DVD that the songs can be played acoustically yet the passion in them remains both lyrically and performance wise. How do you treat the acoustic performances compared to the full blown extravaganzas?
You treat them the same in some respects cause it’s still songs, but most Shinedown songs are written on an acoustic guitar to begin with and that’s why they translate so well and I actually enjoy doing the acoustic shows, especially on that ‘Somewhere in the Stratosphere’ tour because it really showcases Brent’s voice, it really does, it gets lost sometimes in the heavy guitars and tracks and loud drums, on a typical rock show sometimes you can really lose the essence of his voice and you really get that in the acoustics, but the acoustic show also gives you time to almost do a ‘story tellers’ and stretch out and really talk about the songs with the really hardcore fans and say where the songs came from and sit back and play as an artist and play as a drummer instead of trying to beat myself up every day ha ha you really get to lay back and enjoy the songs in a different light, in a different way.
I’m going to get corny here, but the song ‘Second Chance’ do you feel that it was in fact just that, your ‘Second Chance’ as it truly put the band out there in the public eye?
Yes and No, I think it was our biggest song to date, but I think ‘Sound of Madness’ was our second chance. ‘Us and Them’ just wasn’t where we wanted it to be, we were not happy with that record and the band was in a horrible place, we weren’t getting along, going through all the line up changes and everything else, plus all Brent’s addictions, it just was a bad time for us. Coming in to ‘The Sound of Madness’ was a rebirth for the band, and ‘Second Chance’ definitely was a large part of that but it wasn’t the only part of that.
Although it was the song that introduced you to Australia I believe…
Yeah, definitely, it introduced us to a lot of places we hadn’t been before, but we also had two records before that and had already had a few number one hits of both of those records so we never went away but ‘Sound of Madness’ definitely took us to another level.
Lastly, as the album hasn’t hit yet, can you give us a mini review of your own on it to share with the fans.
It’s bad ass. Period. Ha ha. It’s a good journey for a listener, somebody who really wants to listen to a rock record, it’s a rock record from start to finish and it’s all true stories, they’re our stories of what we’ve been through and what we’ve seen, so it’s one of those that you should throw on a set of headphones or sit in front of your favourite speakers, grab a nice cold one and sit back and enjoy it. It’s not background music, it’s something to listen to.
Essential Information
From: USA
Band members: Brent Smith – Vocals, Barry Kerch – Drums, Zach Myers – Guitars, Eric Bass – Bass
Website: www.shinedown.com
Forthcoming release: Amaryllis – March 23 (Australia) March 27 (USA) – (Roadrunner Records / Atlantic Records)
Check out our review of ‘Amaryllis’ here…
