![]() ![]() It's just a song about the person that you love and that you miss and that you still believe in, and that's the only thing that you have to hold onto sometimes. "At least a hundred times, I've awakened at 4:03 in the morning, and it's usually from missin' her. "For some reason, I would always wake up, and I still do to this day,” he said. It becomes apparent in talking to Smith that his girlfriend became a major factor in his recovery, his return to the studio (where the album took 18 months to complete), and his eventual return to the road where, like the song says, he has trouble sleeping at night when Ashley isn't there. He told Smith to take all the time he needed.īy this time, Smith had crossed paths with his old friend Ashley again in Florida, and friendship had turned into love. ![]() But Kallman - an "amazing guy,” Smith said - apparently thought the singer had earned a break. "He was like, ‘Are we going to gonna get another record in six months?' And I said, ‘There's no way in hell.' And he said, ‘Well, what do you need from me?' And I said, ‘No time limit at all.' And he was like, ‘Well, does that mean like a year, does that mean a year and three months?' I just said, ‘That means no time limit.'”Ī lot of other industry suits would have shown this guy the door. When he was rested enough to make the trip, Smith paid a visit to Atlantic Records Chairman Craig Kallman in New York. "I'd gone through tons of addictions, and my body was just beat up, and my brain was just gone, and I had to take some time off from everything.” "Honestly, I had to take about a month and a half off after we finished ‘Us and Them' to just kind of decompress, because I just wasn't myself anymore,” he said. Meanwhile they were earning a rep as one of the hottest live bands on the festival circuit with a nonstop touring schedule that was beginning to take its toll on Smith. "Us and Them” followed in 2005 with more fierce yet melodic guitar-vocal attacks that racked up gold-level sales. Join thousands already receiving our daily newsletter.Shinedown went on to record and release its first album in 2003, "Leave a Whisper,” which unleashed the hit singles "Fly From the Inside” and "45” on its way to platinum status. Tickets: $16 advance, $18 day of, available at Smith’s Tix locations (800-888-TIXX, Info: (801) 456-0000, Newsletter “We’re trying to pack them in there as much as we can,” he said. Smith said fans can expect to hear the hits from “Leave a Whisper” along with a healthy cross-section of songs from “Us and Them” Shinedown figures to continue enjoying momentum as the group tours this fall with Godsmack. The effort has paid off, as “Us and Them” has kicked out a string of rock radio hits. ![]() Smith was candid in admitting that as the band’s chief songwriter, he felt considerable pressure to deliver another hit CD with “Us and Them.” When Shinedown finally came off the road in spring 2005 after some 400 shows, “Leave a Whisper” had topped 1 million copies sold. I was really given a one-in-a-million (second) shot.”Īt the suggestion of Atlantic A&R representative Steve Robertson, Smith relocated to Jacksonville where one by one he met the other future bandmates - Todd, bassist Brad Stewart and drummer Barry Kerch.įrom there, the band’s success was built mainly the old-fashioned way - with a combination of two years of heavy-duty touring behind “Leave a Whisper” and a series of singles that all went top five at rock radio. It was signed for nine months and then I was dropped and then I was signed two weeks later to a development deal (with Atlantic). “It was a band that never, ever saw the light of day. “What basically happened is I was signed to Atlantic with another band,” Smith said. In fact, the wheels were in motion for Smith to succeed well before there was a Lynyrd Skynyrd connection. Shinedown certainly doesn’t need to apologize for its success - which has continued unabated with the band’s second CD, “Us and Them.” It really helped the band and brought us to another audience.” “The Skynyrd cover, it wasn’t a planned thing,” Smith said. The song got posted on the station’s Web site, where listeners downloaded the song some 500,000 times. Shinedown was asked to play “Simple Man” by a deejay at a Boston radio station, WAAF. The cover of “Simple Man,” was hardly a calculated attempt at getting airplay by covering a popular song. For one thing, Smith and Todd met at a studio in Jacksonville where Todd was working, and it wasn’t until later on that Smith found out about Todd’s relationship with his future wife, Melody.
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