Brent Smith
The Shinedown vocalist on extra-terrestrials, getting terrified before shows, and wanting to make a great chocolate cake.
Words: Polly Glass Portrait: Jimmy Fontaine
It takes more than a pandemic to stop Shinedown. When studio time became problematic, they built their own. Situated on bassist/producer/mixer Eric Bass’s property on Kiawah Island, South Carolina, Big Animal Studios birthed the band’s seventh album, Planet Zero. A ferocious marriage of raw, heavy chops and dystopian atmosphere (much of it stemming from the wrath of social media), it’s an aural sucker punch that befits the stadium-straddling, Chuck Norris-rivalling manner of their shows. Powerhouse singer Brent Smith takes stock of the past two years.
Prior to the pandemic you lived in hotels, didn’t you?
I live in hotels pretty much exclusively. I had a house in California from 2011 to 2016 –I think I lived in it for seven months. The priority of my life is my son. He’s fourteen and lives in Florida. But my mother always said I was born with a gypsy heart. I don’t own anything apart from the two suitcases I travel with. The awards and those kinds of things are in my parents’ basement. I have a pretty substantial guitar collection there, too. It has humidifiers that keep the temperature controlled. They built it for my guitars because they live in the mountains of Tennessee, so the temperature fluctuates.