A "Southern Rock" band from Jacksonville,
FL. Heavily influenced by Otis Redding, Led Zeppelin and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Those influences are heavily reflected in their music, as they have re-recorded Lynyrd Skynyrds' "Simple Man". Shinedown is made up of: Brent Smith(vocals), Jasin
Todd(
guitar), Barry Kerch(drums) and Brad Stewart(
bass).
First brought to the world with their debut album "Leave a whisper", they toured on that album for 2 years. In October of '05 they released their 2nd album entitled "Us and Them".
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. So when the album comes out and they hear the songs, they'
ll be able to look at themselves and say, 'He said
everything that I wanted to say.' "
That, he adds, is why Shinedown decided to call the album “US AND THEM.” "It's a dedication to our fans," Smith says, "a thank-you to them for the support, for
everything they've given us, and for being there from day one. It's US AND THEM."
(taken from their bio located at www.myspace.com/shinedown)
