The tour bus is a claustrophobic metal tube that smells of stale coffee and ambition. For Shinedown, it has been home since Oct. 2018. They are not just playing shows; they are surviving a marathon. Most bands would have folded by now, but Brent Smith and his crew are doubling down.
They kick off the fall leg of the ATTENTION ATTENTION World Tour on Sept. 17 in Roanoke, Virginia. This is not a victory lap. It is a calculated push into the heart of the continent, eventually crossing the border into Canada for a string of dates in Quebec, Alberta and BC. It is a month-long trek that feels less like a tour and more like a siege.
And let’s be clear about the stamina required here. This band has been grinding for nearly a year straight. But that is the Shinedown way. They do not do things halfway. If they are going to tell a story, they are going to scream it from every stage from Laval to Abbotsford.
ATTENTION ATTENTION is the band’s sixth studio outing. It is easily their most jagged, uncomfortable and necessary work to date. It is a concept record, though Smith prefers a different label. It tracks a human being’s descent into a room—a literal and figurative one—where they have to face every ghost they have ever tried to outrun.
The record follows a character from the lowest possible gutter to a state of equilibrium. It is about the dissipation of anxiety and the quiet death of demons. But it is not a clean process. It is messy. It is loud. It is the sound of a person being disassembled and put back together with missing pieces.
We caught up with Smith just as the machinery was spinning up for this latest run. He is a man who speaks in deliberate, heavy sentences. He does not waste words. He wanted to clarify exactly what this record represents to the fans who have been carrying it like a bible.
“We call it a story album because it's a story about a lot of people just in the world in general,” Smith says. “We want everybody to be able to find themselves inside of the album because it doesn't matter whether you're a man or a woman, whether you're young or your older, the colour of your skin, your religion. That's nobody else's business but yours. It's kind of a navigation in a lot of ways because inside of the album too, this individual is going through not only a mental, physical, and psychological and sometimes spiritual journey to find themselves and dissect themselves in a lot of ways. I don't want to say it's the traditional thought process of like, break yourself down to build yourself back up; it's more about really chasing every single dynamic in your life.”
That "dissecting" is where the album finds its teeth. It is easy to write a song about feeling sad. It is much harder to write a song like “GET UP,” which became a massive crossover hit. The track has racked up over 45 million streams, but its value is not in the metrics. It is in the empathy.
Smith wrote the song while watching bassist Eric Bass struggle with clinical depression. It is a vulnerable, naked piece of songwriting. And then you have “MONSTERS,” which pulls from Smith’s own history with substance abuse and the wreckage of the Sound of Madness era.
Holding the physical vinyl of this record, you can feel the weight of those themes. The yellow and black aesthetic is a warning sign. It is a high-voltage alert. The production is crisp—maybe too crisp for some purists—but the emotional core is undeniable.
Smith is currently in a state of constant motion. When we spoke, he was not at home. He was in the middle of the industry hive.
“I'm actually in Los Angeles at the moment and we're getting ready to do something that has been in the works for over a year now,” he reveals.
He is tight-lipped, but the rumour mill suggests a visual component that matches the album’s narrative scope. Shinedown has always understood the theatre of rock. They know that a song is only half the battle; the rest is how you present the scars.
The live show is a mirror of the record’s structure. It is rigid and intentional. Every night, the setlist is bookended by the same two tracks: “DEVIL” and “BRILLIANT”. It is a closed loop.
“DEVIL” starts the night as a frantic, terrifying invitation into the room. By the time they hit the final notes of “BRILLIANT”, the audience has gone through the same psychological wringer as the protagonist. It is a smart move. It forces the crowd to acknowledge the narrative arc rather than just waiting for the radio hits.
We call it a story album because it's a story about a lot of people just in the world in general. We want everybody to be able to find themselves inside of the album because it doesn't matter whether you're a man or a woman, whether you're young or you're older, the color of your skin, your religion. That's nobody else's business but yours. ...It's more about really chasing every single dynamic in your life.
But the real story of this fall leg is the Canadian routing. Shinedown has a weird, deep-seated loyalty to the Great White North. They are not just hitting the major hubs. They are going into the secondary markets, the places where rock fans often feel forgotten.
“On the last album, we decided we hadn't been to Canada for a while, so in 2015 when we were releasing Threat to Survival, we actually rotated through Canada quite a bit,” Smith says. “With ATTENTION ATTENTION, we started off in some secondary markets in Canada and then went up to Toronto for the first time in 10 years. Part of the structuring of that tour was to make sure that we did some very specific Canadian dates during that tour. We're looking forward to it. We haven't played Quebec in a decade.”
A decade is a lifetime in the music industry. To ignore a market like Quebec for 10 years is a gamble, but the ticket sales suggest the fans have long memories. The band is hitting Place Bell in Laval on Sept. 24 and the VideoTron Centre in Quebec City the following night.
This blue-collar work ethic is baked into the band’s DNA. They remember where they came from. There is a piece of folklore that follows them around concerning a venue in Flint, Michigan called The Machine Shop Concert Lounge.
The story goes that in their infancy, Shinedown played the venue for a measly $100. In an era where they now sell out arenas, that sounds like a myth. But Smith is quick to confirm the legend.
“It’s true,” Smith says. “We totally played at The Machine Shop for $100 back in the early days. Kevin (Zink) who runs The Machine Shop there in Flint is a very, very dear friend of not only me, but the entire band. It's funny because I have a side project with Zach (Myers) - it's just called Smith and Myers, our last names. It was something that we started with the fan base a few years ago that kind of took a life of its own. The last time we played The Shop, we actually played three nights in a row and all three of those shows sold out in 15 minutes.”
That jump from a $100 payout to selling out three nights in 15 minutes is the American dream with a distorted guitar riff. It is the result of 11 million albums sold and a stranglehold on rock radio that few bands can match.
Critics often dismiss Shinedown as "radio rock," as if being accessible is a sin. But standing in the third row of one of their sets, watching thousands of people scream the lyrics to “MONSTERS”, you realize the critique is hollow. They are providing a service. They are giving words to people who do not have them.
The tour continues through October, hitting spots like Winnipeg, Edmonton and Dawson Creek. It is a punishing schedule. But for a band that built its empire on the back of a $100 gig in Flint, it is just another day at the office.
2019 Fall Tour Dates:
• Sep. 24 - Laval, QC @ Place Bell
• Sep. 25 - Quebec City, QC @ VideoTron Centre
• Sep. 27 - Buffalo, NY @ KeyBank Centre
• Sep. 28 - State College, PA @ Bryce Jordan Centre
• Oct. 01 - Grand Rapids, MI @ Van Andel Arena
• Oct. 02 - La Crosse, WI @ La Crosse Centre
• Oct. 04 - Evansville, IN @ Ford Centre
• Oct. 06 - Mankato, MN @ Mankato Civic Centre
• Oct. 08 - Bismarck, ND @ Bismarck Event Centre
• Oct. 09 - Winnipeg, MB @ Bell MTS Place
• Oct. 11 - Edmonton, AB @ Edmonton Convention Centre
• Oct. 12 - Dawson Creek, BC @ Encana Events Centre
• Oct. 13 - Calgary, AB @ Stampede Corral
• Oct. 15 - Penticton, BC @ South Okanagan Events Centre
• Oct. 16 - Abbotsford, BC @ Abbotsford Centre
• Oct. 18 - Kennewick, WA @ Toyota Centre
• Oct.
